October 2009 Archives

Where the Wild Things Are - NYTimes.com

In Homer's poetry, every hero has a trait. Achilles is angry. Odysseus is cunning. And so was born one picture of character and conduct.  In this view, what you might call the philosopher's view, each of us has certain ingrained character traits. An honest person will be honest most of the time. A compassionate person will be compassionate.

These traits, as they say, go all the way down. They shape who we are, what we choose to do and whom we befriend. Our job is to find out what traits of character we need to become virtuous.

But, as Kwame Anthony Appiah, a Princeton philosopher, notes in his book "Experiments in Ethics," this philosopher's view of morality is now being challenged by a psychologist's view. According to the psychologist's view, individuals don't have one thing called character.

Do we have free will? - New Scientist

In 2003, the Archives of Neurology carried a startling clinical report. A middle-aged Virginian man with no history of any misdemeanour began to stash child pornography and sexually molest his 8-year-old stepdaughter. Placed in the court system, his sexual behaviour became increasingly compulsive. Eventually, after repeatedly complaining of headaches and vertigo, he was sent for a brain scan. It showed a large but benign tumour in the frontal area of his brain, invading the septum and hypothalmus - regions known to regulate sexual behaviour.

After removal of the tumour, his sexual interests returned to normal. Months later, his sexual focus on young girls rekindled, and a new scan revealed that bits of tissue missed in the surgery had grown into a sizeable tumour. Surgery once again restored his behavioural profile to "normal"

Moral in Tooth and Claw - The Chronicle Review - The Chronicle of Higher Education

While we all recognize rules of right and wrong behavior in our own human societies, we are not accustomed to looking for them among animals. But they're there, as are the "good" prosocial behaviors and emotions that underlie and help maintain those rules. Such behaviors include fairness, empathy, forgiveness, trust, altruism, social tolerance, integrity, and reciprocity--and they are not merely byproducts of conflict but rather extremely important in their own right.

I generally poll my online Ethics students each semester asking them, "if this course were not offered online, would you have taken in in a traditional classroom?"  About half of my students respond that they would not be able to take the course if it were not online due to scheduling issues and the like.  Students like the flexibility and relative asynchronicity of the online classroom.

And, often, I like this flexibility too. I like getting up early in the morning and working on my online classes before coming to the office. And, I like being able to log in to my classes while at a conference or at other times when I have to get a substitute for my traditional courses.

But, there is a dark side here too. In the traditional classroom, students and instructor implicitly understand the boundaries of the course. For the most part, the teaching happens during the 3-hours per week that the class meets. For the most part, students expect their questions to be answered during class, right before or after class, or during set office hours. Some e-mail or phone communication might take place between classes, but there are limited expectations here. 

As we all know, there are no clear boundaries in the online classroom. Instructors create boundaries for students ~ setting assignment due dates, outlining expectations for discussions or group work and so forth.  As an example, I expect my online Ethics students to be active participants in the online discussions at least 3 different days per week for a minimum of about 3-hours per week.

It is more difficult, I think, to set boundaries for ourselves as instructors. How often should I log into my course? How many discussion posts should I read? How many discussion posts should I make?  We know that whenever we are not logged into our courses, students probably are ~ new discussion posts and e-mails are accumulating 24/7!

I want to feel competent and to gain a sense of personal fulfillment from teaching my online classes.  I want to earn my students' respect and for them to have a good experience in my class.  But, I must admit that these goals are much more difficult to achieve in my online classes than is the case with my traditional courses.

I am interested in exploring how we are setting boundaries for ourselves as online instructors. I want to talk about both the big picture but also the practical details of our practices. I want to examine proposed "best practices" and the efficiencies that you have found that help make online teaching fulfilling and manageable.

I'll start by outlining the boundaries I have set for myself.  First, I log into my online courses at least 5-days per week immediately checking e-mail and then discussions. I answer all e-mail right away, even if only to say, "I will investigate and get back to you,"  I spend at least 20-30 minutes reading new discussion posts and selectively responding.  If I have time, I will often check into my classes multiple times per day, often for only 5 minutes or so. Again, I will check e-mail and discussions.  I find that I am most fulfilled as an instructor when I am actively engaged with my students. On the contrary, I feel most alienated as an instructor when I feel like an outsider in my own course ~ when I have 100 unread discussions and I realize I have not been involved as a participant and facilitator.  I think my students, generally, understand my boundaries and respect them. When I take weekends off, students understand not to expect an e-mail reply until Monday morning.

I would love to hear about the boundaries you've set for yourself and how you have communicated these boundaries to your students. What do you do to feel competent as an online instructor? What give you a sense of personal and professional fulfillment?  And, what efficiencies have you discovered that might help the rest of us?

In Good Spirit,

Eric

Can the Right Kind of  Play Teach Self-Control? - NYTimes.com

Over the last few years, a new buzz phrase has emerged among scholars and scientists who study early-childhood development, a phrase that sounds more as if it belongs in the boardroom than the classroom: executive function. Originally a neuroscience term, it refers to the ability to think straight: to order your thoughts, to process information in a coherent way, to hold relevant details in your short-term memory, to avoid distractions and mental traps and focus on the task in front of you. And recently, cognitive psychologists have come to believe that executive function, and specifically the skill of self-regulation, might hold the answers to some of the most vexing questions in education today.