Hallowe'en Carnivalesque

Hallowe'en Carnivalesque

Carnivalesque LV is up at Bavardess! Full of spooky goodness!

Cliopatria Awards

Cliopatria Awards

Hello, world!!

I'm judging the Cliopatria Awards this year, along with David Silbey of The Edge of the American West and Miriam Burstein of The Little Professor. We'll be judging the Best Individual Blog and Best Post categories. If you have a nominee, please click on the appropriate button below!

Blogging for Kids with Disabilities

Blogging for Kids With Disabilities

We talk a lot about children out here in the academic blogosphere. Much of the time, the conversation is about how kids and parenting affect us in the workplace, whether we *are* the parents or we feel that we are expected to pick up the slack for our colleagues so that they can be better parents. Most of those conversations touch on the issue of choice, whether it is our choice to remain child-free, or the choice of our colleagues to have children. I happen to be one of those people who tend towards seeing my colleagues' families as a lifestyle choice, and one that I should not be expected to subsidize through my efforts, even though I also am very happy to rearrange my time to accommodate their schedules whenever I can. I might feel differently if I didn't work in a place where my colleagues were also my friends, I suppose. As it is, the kids are people I know and like, and I enjoy spending time with them as well as their parents. Still, there are times, professionally and socially, when my colleagues' chosen lives have an impact on mine and, if it comes down to someone else's finding a sitter or me rescheduling a trip, they can find a sitter. It was their choice to have kids.

Sometimes, though, it's not always that simple. When we choose to have kids, most of us imagine that the kids will be healthy and relatively happy. Yes, we expect illness and tantrums, and that little kids will need more care than their older siblings, but that they'll eventually grow up and take care of themselves -- and maybe even us. Sometimes, what we ask for is not exactly what we get. The choice to have children ends up coming with obligations we never imagined. That's something we don't talk about in our conversations about academic parenting, either because we instinctively know that a child with disabilities creates a different situation, or because we are uncomfortable talking about it, or because we have mixed feelings about how to deal with our colleagues when the colleagues may themselves not be dealing well -- or when they seem to be dealing very well. Mostly, I think we just aren't sure of how to handle the whole subject.

The reason I bring this up is that it's Blogging for Kids With Disabilities day, or so I hear. I have several friends and family members whose children have disabilities, from genetic disorders to autism to milder learning- and speech impairments. The Kid, about whom I have not spoken for a while, has a congenital hearing problem, so that she is mostly deaf in one ear, and partially deaf in the other. Even something so relatively explicable can have unforeseen problems: when we lived abroad, and tried to explain to her teachers that she needed to sit near the front of the room to read lips and that her loud voice was partially due to not being able to hear how loud she was, or that the teacher might have to touch her or tap her desk to get her attention in a loud room, we were told that she might be better off in a 'special' school. WTF? Because she was embarrassed about it, we had to mention these things to other parents, so they wouldn't think she was ridiculously rude. It was difficult, and still can be, but it's hardly insurmountable.

Still dealing with the Kid, and with some behavioral issues that were in part the result of her being treated for years as a problem child who couldn't pay attention, ate into a good chunk of my dissertation time. This is something we don't talk about much, either, even when talking about childcare and the fact that women academics often still bear the brunt of housework and childcare, and how it affects their careers. If childcare and equity are feminist issues, then perhaps we should think a bit more about how having a child with disabilities might make things even tougher.


The reason I would like people to think is because, contrary to what you might be feeling right now, I don't see this as a problem to be dealt with. I see this as something we should think about, and if we do, we might be reminded of how amazing some of our friends, families, and colleagues are. Not because they have a problem, but because honestly, parenting is hard, and parenting a child with disabilities can be even harder. And yet, when I think of my colleagues who have children with disabilities, they are all scary overachievers. They are the people you most want to work with, and honestly, I don't know how some of them manage sometimes. Well, I do, a little. They make other choices, choices we don't see. They don't go for the jobs that will keep them away from home at all hours. They don't travel as much, sometimes, because it would be too hard on a partner or child if they took that fellowship. They might not eat out or go to movies much, whether because they are paying for extra tuition or maybe because they know their kid isn't quite ready for the sensory input of a crowd, or darkened cinema with loud noises and flickering lights. They may not come to parties because they are spending extra time helping their kids train for the Special Olympics ...

And they may not mind, or they may be resolved, or they may scream and cry in frustration to the world, and then show up to the office, looking a little drained, but still plowing through the backlog that we all have.


Maybe when we start talking about children being a choice, we might want to also think about the other choices people make, from changing one's research agenda and mobility to being a scary overachiever who not only has incurred the wrath of David Horowitz, but also spends a lot of time blogging about politics and disabilities, all the while shaming the rest of us mortals who never, ever threw a birthday party this cool, to handling so much of the behind-the-scenes work at the biggest conference most of my friends and colleagues attend, writing amazing fiction, and making pottery so lovely that I could easily go broke buying it -- all the while trying to balance the needs of both of her children. I'm just sayin'...

Brain Fart

Brain Fart

I'm applying for a job. I remembered to ask my Dean for a referral. But as for others, I forgot that I haven't yet asked people, and also I have no idea to ask anymore. I seem to be in a weird place where my only publication is forthcoming and in pedagogy, and I'm trying to think of people who have come to my presentations, and I don't really know them well enough to ask on what is becoming very short notice! Aargh.



I spend an awful lot of time thinking about applications, so that I write good letters and statements, but I don't know how I managed to blank on this part. D'oh.

Has anybody got suggestions for how to dig myself out of this one?

Does this qualify as Irony?

Does this qualify as Irony?

Longtime readers will know that I am not really fond of theory qua theory. I mean, I think it's important to be able to identify a Marxist, or Feminist, or PoMo, etc., approach, but I tend to switch lenses like a crazed lighting director changes gels. For me, the sources and questions they inspire sort of dictate my approach to them, and theory is something that sneaks in around the edges. I admit that I really do need to read more, but I'm not sure that I have to read *that* much more theory to understand what Judith Butler's 'performative acts' and how that may or may not inform my readings of Althoff and Buc on ritual, for example. Yes, I realize that those things are in and of themselves 'theory' ... but I tend to think of such things as bring really straightforward, so, um, right.

Anyhow, here's the possibly ironic part. Nice Colleague is teaching our methodologies and historiography class this year. She's working from the syllabus I put together when I taught it, which still needs some work, because I'd never taught it before. But basically, we decided that, since it's a departmental requirement, anyone who wants to teach it should contribute to the syllabus and agree to teach the same basic assignments, although we would all teach within our own general fields. She's an Americanist, and is using lesbian pulp fiction as part of her discussion of gender and feminist theory. I'm kind of jealous, and am so using the Rykener case next time I teach it.

But anyhow ... we realized that we really want to do a lot of things with this course that are really sort of, well, theory. Damn you, gender construction, for hooking me!

another stock-taking post

Another Stock-Taking Post

Well, it's the end of Fall Break, a weekend where I traditionally try to get caught up on everything, and usually fail. So instead I take stock and try to organize myself for the rest of the semester so that I can have a couple of days of rest at Thanksgiving and Christmas -- providing I remember to get online and see if I can redeem some miles to go back to the Left Coast and see X, the Kid, and friends. It was a good break -- not only did I manage to get all my marking up-to-date, but I managed to drive through three states yesterday to go and see my cousin and her kid. Sadly, they are moving back West. Happily, at least they are headed back to the same town my mom and sisters live in, so at least now most of my family is located on the same coast -- or in London.

I have to say, I love living east of the Mississippi. The drive to the cousin's was wonderful (except for the drivers on a long stretch of the road, where OMG they are frakkin' crazy). The weather was nice and dry, and the colors of the leaves were gorgeous. There are lots of miles of country highway on the route, and sadly, lots of roadkill. Raccoons seemed pretty big on this trip. One skunk. Countless furry-tailed tree-rats. Possibly a ground-hog. And something really, really big. Deer meets semi-truck is my guess. And it was mostly still in the road... just...open. Yuck. And yet, I couldn't help thinking about the Gary Larson cartoon with crows using spatulas. That and what a human body might look like after getting hit by a truck and a couple of cars. Ugh.

Oh -- and I managed to work on getting rid of most of a nasty cold -- yay me!

So, right -- stock-taking.

I need to do some revamping of my classes. Or maybe take some time out to talk about why I teach the way I do. I don't lecture. I stopped lecturing a while back, when I was teaching at Jesuit U, because my evaluations indicated that the students did not like it and expect more Active Learning. Since then, most of my classes are really discussion-based. This means that students really need to be prepared to discuss and they have to be able to put things together in different ways. Now, fortunately, my program's outcomes are also kind of geared towards my kind of teaching -- they focus mainly on teaching the skills of the historian. This is problematic in its own way, but that's another post.

When my students show up, they really don't know what to expect, and most are not prepared for this sort of class. But honestly, I don't think that they would be successful in the sort of class that I took as an undergraduate. I would sometimes like to craft nice lectures and expect the students to take them, the primary source readings, and the textbook readings, integrate them, and use that information to answer solid historical questions. But that isn't going to happen in the World History survey. My students have enough trouble keeping the information in the textbooks straight. So instead, I focus on using primary sources and discussion to highlight the most important issues. It has been pretty successful so far, but I'm finding I need to do a few new things as well.

My students are not particularly good at reading essay questions. This is true for multi-part questions that, when broken down, tell the students exactly how to structure the essay, as well as the more simple-looking questions that require students to consider the question and demonstrate that they understand all the issues at stake. Since they don't read -- or understand-- the questions (and really, these are the same questions we've all asked and answered: I've even poached questions from exams I took!), they don't answer them. I can't stop giving essay exams and papers, so I'm going to have to spend a bit more time early on explaining how to write essays. Where I'm going to find that time, I'm not sure. Possibly group work -- perhaps letting them use their computers in class to work on a wiki, and workshop the opening paragraph of an essay?

Beyond that, I probably need to add a bit more structure. Hmmm. And remind the upper-division students that they are responsible for information that I haven't talked about in class, if it's something that was in the reading. And I'm still behind on making the podcasts I wanted to make for this year, and on my reading. At least that last part I can do :-)

Apart from that, I'm feeling overwhelmed this semester, and shouldn't. Departmental administration is more difficult than I had expected. There's a lot that needs doing in terms of curriculum and program revision, and getting buy-in is ... interesting. Coming up with outcomes was pretty easy, but getting people to make the leap from outcomes to coming up with assessments that really do reflect the outcomes? Different animal. Plus there's a job application to write, a search committee to serve on (touch wood it's only one -- there are a bunch of searches this year).

And then there's the writing. I've got a book I've done bugger all on in months, and an article to write, whether or not it's going into a collection a colleague is proposing. I totally botched getting in a proposal for Leeds (but if anyone finds they need a chair at the last minute, do please let me know). I have to start thinking about a panel for Big Berks. And do some background work for the professional organization I'm a member of ... oh -- and maybe actually read some books and professional journals.

So, pretty normal for an Associate Professor of History, I think. Guess I'd better figure out how to get going on all of that. Reading for tomorrow first, I guess.

I'm Best at Something!

I'm Best at Something!

Or at least the people at Online College think so!

Back to grading now...

OMG The Vajayjays are killing SF

OMG The Vajayjays are killing SF!!!!!

I hate to give a blog like this any traffic, and I would like to think it's just irony-packed.


But seriously. Really? It can't be real sf if girls like to read it or write it. Because the balls of sf must be made of big and clanky stuff like TESTOSTERONE!!!

Should I or shouldn't I?

should I or shouldn't I?

So there is one reason at SLAC that I really do not love it. It's nothing I can do anything about, sadly. It will play itself out, one way or another.

Otherwise, I love my job, mostly. I love my colleagues, mostly, and I have made really good friends here. I am happy to work with them AND play with them. I love working for Superdean. He's a great boss in almost every way (nobody's perfect), and knows me well enough to nag me about my scholarship. Frankly, I could use a bit more nagging, but that's not really his job. I also just get along really well with him.

We have a cool new Provost and an energetic BoT, and I think that the direction SLAC is taking is one I like. In 5-10 years, I think we may have moved along to much closer to the kind of place where I want to end up. It's a neat idea to think of myself as someone who can help take it there.

Speaking of which, I really think that there's a chance of building a much stronger program, one known for producing good teachers, public historians, and grad students.

And I really like my students. Sometimes I wish they were more driven, but as human beings, they are some of the nicest I've taught.

So why am I thinking about applying for the really cool job? Especially when I really am not competitive compared to many of the candidates?

Well, besides working with an incredibly cool scholar I really admire, that is?

Because honestly, as much as I love SLAC, I sometimes feel that I work best when surrounded by people who function at the levels I aspire to. When I surround myself with people who are good teachers AND good scholars, I find myself more energized and more productive. It's not that SLAC doesn't do that, but ...

so, my loyal readers, should I or shouldn't I? Am I disloyal to SLAC if I do? Am I being selfish?

Or is it just smart to keep reaching higher?

what am I doing wrong?

what am I doing wrong?

Ok, so I've been teaching for a while now. I'm now at a point where students who have been taking my classes since they were freshmen are in my upper-division classes... and yet they seem to have learnt nothing. At least, they seem not to have learnt to use primary sources very well. And this makes me crazy, because it's something I focus on in the surveys all the time. It's not that they are hopeless; they are not bad at using the material in the documents, at least. But they seem really unwilling or unable to consider the source, if you know what I mean.

It makes me crazy. I set up assignments that are gradually more difficult -- assignments that require them to think about authorship. And they do it, more or less. In class, before we talk about a document, I always ask the students to tell me about the document -- author, temporal and geographical context, you all know the drill. And yet, when I give them an assignment that requires them to tell me what a set of documents tells me about X, it's as if each document exists in a vacuum.

Argh.

Double Argh.

So, I'm going to finish up with my marking and do some revamping of classes, I think. And I think I'm going to add an assignment or two that require the students to work in groups to tell me everything they can about the documents and their authors before we even start to look at the contents.

I think.

Maybe.

What do you think?

grading Jail message

Grading Jail message

I'm in Grading Jail, but I have a couple of posts lurking behind the scenes, one on 'institutional wisdom' and the second half of the interdisciplinarity post. Till then, watch Jay Smooth, who is becoming one of my heroes, talk about Polanski.

Grading Jail

Grading Jail and Institutional Wisdom

OK ... I'm sick and in grading jail. Not so much fun there. And I'm procrastinating a little, as do many of us when we are staring at mounds of papers and exams. The papers so far are pretty good -- upper-division papers, that is. The exams? I anticipate some dreadful ones, but also some good ones. If I could just stay home and mark for the next few days, I'd be happy, but for some reason I have to teach, too. Feh.

In the meantime, I'm sort of marveling at something. It's institutional wisdom that isn't. Most of the places I've taught, there were ridiculously long contracts and handbooks, and orientations that told us what we can do and what we can't. That's also been true for non-academic workplaces, as well. The only places I've worked where that was not true were start-ups and SLAC. I have a feeling that this is not just my SLAC, but maybe something that is related to the breed, the suddenly growing SLAC. Maybe you all can tell me if that's true.

Institutional wisdom can be a slippery thing. In a lot of places, there are one or two people, often admin assistants, who know everything about a place. They know where the skeletons are buried, they know people's direct extensions and have them memorized. They also know who to call to get things done, even when someone else says they can't be. These are the people I like to know. Hell, I used to be one of those people. In some ways, I still am. I like to know stuff, and I really like it when someone mentions how nice it is to see someone doing things right. Yes, I admit it... I am a Do-Bee. And since I hate to have paperwork handed back to me, or lose out on money, or any number of things that can happen when things aren't done correctly, or when you annoy the staff people who handle our paperwork, I really think it's important to learn and follow procedures. Yeah ... I'm also kind of rule-oriented when it has to do with a procedure that makes sense to me, or that is set up to make things easier for everybody. It is in some ways a bad quality: it can stress me out way too much and it can also make me a pain in the ass.

But here's the thing for me: this stuff is not so hard to find out. And yet ... I'm sometimes amazed at how many times I hear that X is the way we do things, X is always the way we do things, X is the way we have always done things ... despite the fact that Y is what is written down in several places, and if one does X where X is something connected to the people who handle money, one is likely to have one's paperwork sent back with a note to please do Y!

I would understand if this sort of thing were restricted to my more senior colleagues, the ones who have been doing X for donkey's years and just refused to see any reason to change to Y, even if Y were a change that made things much more sensible and simpler for many people. But it always confuses me a little when I hear similar things from my more junior colleagues, some of them junior faculty. It's especially weird when you hear from them that Z is the norm. Because, you know? the handbook still says Y. And my mind is breaking from the idea that so many people don't bother to look, and then pass on misinformation to others.

Is it me, or does this happen elsewhere, too?

Cross-listing courses and Interdisciplinarity, part 1

Cross-listing Courses and Interdisciplinarity, part 1

This is actually one of those few times where I'm posting about something of particular relevance to something happening at SLAC, even though I'm sure that y'all have all dealt with such things before. One of the reasons I'm posting is because I told a colleague I would, and would share with hir the comments that are left. So zie is sworn to silence about this blog. And cannot share it with anybody else. Otherwise, I might not be able to continue blogging, if a ton of my colleagues start reading this. And that would be a shame, since I'm up to judge the Cliopatria Awards this year. Dunno which category yet, but watch this space for more on that.


Anyhoo ... cross-listing. Last week, a colleague asked me whether zie could cross-list a course as a history course. As department chair, it's my call. This ended up opening up a few cans of worms, not the least of which is a conversation about interdisciplinarity. One of the other cans was how different my own ideas about cross-listing seem to conflict with what seems to have been the norm at SLAC. The feeling I've got from speaking to more senior colleagues is that cross-listing has often been treated as a sort of unofficial barter system based on the way FTEs have been counted: a faculty member wants to teach a course in a special topic, but the course won't make unless it's cross-listed with another department, because students don't have a lot of electives to spare. So the course gets cross-listed, the faculty member gets to teach the cool class because there are enough students, and the department that allows the cross-listing gets credit for additional FTEs that accrue into the departmental total.

To be honest, I've never seen anything like this before, but then, most of my teaching experience is at state schools. My response to the request was in line with what I've seen done elsewhere -- I asked for a syllabus and typical assignments, and said that, in order for a course to be listed in my discipline, it needed to clearly address and fulfill my department's outcomes and assess them in ways consistent with what my departmental colleagues and I have agreed are acceptable for courses at that level, and are consistent with what we actually do. My initial rationale for this was pretty basic -- our accreditors require that we show that we do the things we say we do, so if a course is listed as history, it has to do those things, and I have to be able to work the assessment data into my annual assessment report, which means comparing apples to apples. Period.


There are other ramifications that have come to light here that I want to talk about, because they touch on things like gatekeeping, interdisciplinarity, and our own definitions of our fields. And my own personal pet peeve, which I sort of worry plays into it: the idea that anybody can teach history. But before I go there, I'd like to put out a call for input especially on how your campus goes about cross-listing courses. If you could comment below, I'd really appreciate it. I checked with the institution where I taught for the longest time pre-SLAC, and it was even more complicated than I remembered. First, a faculty member would approach the cross-listing department or program with a syllabus in hand. That syllabus would have to reflect the outcomes of the cross-listing department and assessments for those outcomes. Next, once verbal agreement was reached, the faculty member would fill out a course proposal form and get sign-off from both department chairs and the dean. Then, the proposal would go through the regular curriculum committee process, which could take up to several months, and the course would be approved for the next academic year.

Now, one problem with this particular approach at SLAC is that, if in a case like mine, it's a special topics course being cross-listed as a special topics course, then that would mean that all courses taught in both departments under the special topics numbers would be forever linked. That's just a bad idea. But we have a rule that we can't add new courses permanently until they've been taught twice successfully as special topics. Be that as it may, my own impression is that most institutions handle cross-listing more as former college does. Or am I wrong? How does it work at your place?

How can I say this?

How can I say this?

Hello, readers. I'm looking for a gender-neutral way of getting across the sentiments incorporated in the phrase, "to man up." You see, I really like those sentiments, but I don't like the phrase, because it's anything but gender-neutral. Actually, I don't really like the sentiment that is embodied in the "this is a manly quality, even when applied to women," part of it. Um ... does that make sense?

Suggestions?

Working harder, working smarter

working harder, working smarter

Disclaimer: I'm not talking about the whole 'working smarter' thing in this post, because at the moment, I need to be working a little harder in order to even contemplate working smarter. I'm behind on writing, but am incredibly happy that it looks like the K'zoo panel I'm chairing is going to rock in a serious way. Still haven't made the right contacts for Leeds, and don't have a topic for a paper. Anybody need a respondent or chair? Part of this is sort of deliberate -- Superdean wants me to focus on getting some of my stuff that I've already given into the publishing queue, rather than giving new papers I don't have time to turn into articles. And the book is way behind schedule. But I hope to go to Leeds either way.

Anyway ...

This semester, I am already suffering from serious student ass-kicking. That is, my students are kicking my ass. I'm starting to think there are two sorts of teaching-tired. There's the, "OMG, these people are not doing their work and I am just terribly drained from having to carry this class!" tired. And then there's the, "Oh Noes! The students are doing the work and liking it and making me think!" tired.

With the former, part of the exhaustion comes from the emotional drain of having to keep up energy levels, and having a bunch of people waiting to suck you dry. I had a couple of vampire classes like this last year. Exhausting. But mentally, not all that much work, because at some point, I found myself moving from my usual discussion/active learning classroom mode to content delivery. Content delivery takes so much less work. It takes less prep, especially when you know that the most students are going to ask for is a clarification of spelling. But honestly, I find it soul-destroying.

On the other hand, when classes are doing all the work, and asking good questions, I find myself scrambling, especially when it's after a bad semester. I find myself wanting to live up to the students' expectations, to be worthy of standing in front of them every day. I also feel like beating myself up if I'm not as prepped as I'd like, because dammit, they did the reading! They're participating! I need them to like my class and come back! I need them to become History majors and never stop taking my classes! Um ... I am sounding like a vampire myself, aren't I? Except that, when I have good classes, I feel rejuvenated, or at least tired in a good way, when I'm done. Speaking of which, I've got some marking to do.

Still, if I'm going to have students kicking my ass, I know which way I'd like it to happen.

In the meantime, is anybody else having hir ass kicked (yeah, I'm liking that phrase too much this evening) so far this semester?

Roommates for Haskins

Roommates for Haskins

Is anybody going to Haskins? 'Cos I'm thinking I want to go ...

Assessment by stealth is a different animal

Assessment by stealth is a different animal

I know I defended Outcomes and Assessments in my last substantive post. But since then, I've run across a huge exception to that.


Actually, it's not an exception. I think OA is great in theory and can be done well, in a way that enhances our teaching. For that, it has to be faculty driven.

This is different. I am currently in the position of having to change my syllabi to say that I teach things that I find entirely inappropriate to my courses. Because I believe the syllabus is a sort of contract, I will therefore teach those things. Why? because if I don't, our secondary ed students will have to add another mandatory course to their already very heavy load. The alternative? The Ed. School loses accreditation.

So basically, NCLB and the state K-12 wonks are able to drive what is taught in the universities. And that is wrong. THAT is a case of non-experts telling us what we can and can't do. And one of the best parts? they are getting the curriculum in part from outdated textbooks, which makes it almost impossible for us to correct many of the things that current research rejects, i.e., we are forced to perpetuate bad history, just so we can teach students that the people we taught to teach them in K-12 were wrong.

How screwed up is that?

Huzzah! Carnivalesque is up!

Huzzah!! Carnivalesque is up!

As you might remember, the August Carnivalesque was pre-empted by a break-in and the theft of a brand new Macbook. But Carin Ruff at Ruff Notes has put together a wonderful back to school edition, packed with good reading and excellent advice for students and professors alike!

Read and enjoy, and pass the word ...

On the Outcomes and Assessments Borg

On the Outcomes and Assessments Borg

There has been much in the blogosphere lately about Outcomes and Assessments and (mostly) how we should Just Say No. It's all Clio Bluestocking's fault. She started it. Then Historiann picked it up, and Sisyphus riffed on that, and then Dance offered an alternative. The shortest post I could make right now is to say, "Wait, people? you know that idea of Dance's that you all seem to like? that's a lot of what OA is when done correctly!"

Somehow, I think people might expect me to say a little bit more, given my lengthy comments elsewhere. So here are some reasons I think OA is not necessarily the Borg:

1. As I just said, OA done well can be as simple as sitting down and thinking about what you are doing, what you want to be doing, articulating those things, assessing for the evidence of those things, documenting how your expectations fit what the students are doing, then going back and tweaking your teaching and/or your expectations the next time around, documenting that, and so on. It's about documenting process and goals. Having said that, there are people who want to use 'bad numbers' to beat us over the head. Those are the people we need to fight, not the idea. Self-reflection is not a bad thing, whether on a personal, departmental, or institutional level.
   
   
2. Outcomes at the course level are good pedagogy. Too often we find ourselves building new preps in a hurry, and many new faculty who have not taught before, as well as some of their more senior colleagues, are wont to build the class based on coverage -- Look! a textbook that has the same number of chapters as the semester has weeks! we'll do a chapter a week, and then ... This is not a good way to plan a class, unless your idea of history is to teach a narrative via lectures, and then get the students to paraphrase your narrative on essay exams. I don't think that's what a good history class should be, even at the survey level. A university history class, IMO, should be teaching the discipline of history, as well as a (or several) narratives. So I'm all for thinking about what I want students to get out of my classes, and it's not a difficult step for me to translate that to course outcomes.
   
   But that's not really what we're talking about -- this is more department- and program-level outcomes. Well, honestly, I can't find any reason that my department shouldn't have a common set of ideas about what somebody graduating with a degree in history should know, and know how to do, when they finish. Since my department has a capstone course, something that, by the way, seems to make a lot of accrediting agencies very happy, if it's done well, it only makes sense that we sit down together and decide how to make sure that the students are given the chance to learn the skills for the capstone no matter whose classes they take. It also makes sense that people teaching the same course should agree on how they are going to measure the students' performance, rather than having one History 101 prof giving weekly quizzes, two midterms, a paper, and a final, and another giving a research paper and a final and a power-point presentation for the same course. And generally speaking, the students should be learning the same material, although obviously different people will focus more on their strengths and interests. But if there is such a thing as canon, then it should be taught in each section of a course taught by several people. It's only fair to the students.
   
   
3. Speaking of departments, one of the things that Historiann and others have said repeatedly is that we are all professionals, and we already examine our teaching, and do the kind of self-reflection that OA is supposed to encourage. In a perfect world, yes, that's true. In the one where I teach? Not so much. I've never taught at a place where there was not at least one truly dysfunctional department, and usually a couple of faculty colleagues who weren't professional, weren't at all self-reflective, and were the pedagogical equivalents of a night on bad tequila -- the students can't help but vomit, and they can't bear the thought of getting near the subject again for years. Now, these colleagues are not going to go away, and these departments are not going to get functional, but the process at least allows the faculty who do want to teach in a solid program, and do want to serve the students who want to learn to work together more efficiently, document when their unprofessional colleagues are not playing nicely with other children to the detriment of the program and to its students, and let the students know what is expected of them.
   
   
4. Students. They are not customers. But they do pay money to be allowed to study with us. Is it a bad thing to work together to make it clear to the students why we do things the way we do? to give them clearly articulated expectations and then demonstrate that we grade according to the expectations we say we're going to grade by? Is there anything worse than the perception that a faculty member is unfair (well, other than the things that are really worse, obviously)? But seriously, is it a bad thing to have an outcome that says that students will learn to differentiate primary from secondary sources, and use them to create a well-supported narrative or analysis? And then to say, "this is what we mean by well-supported"? Let me tell you, I've been in meetings where my very professional colleagues cannot give examples of these things, or even the characteristics of them, instead relying on the, "I have a PhD and know it when I see it," argument.
   
   This is the one that annoys me the most, I think. The idea that we are somehow above explaining what it is we do. There is an intrinsic beauty in history and its study, I think. And I don't really buy the idea that we should have to justify our disciplines to non-experts. But at the same time, we really don't live in a world where people think that way. And we are employees of universities and colleges. If they are public, well ... when does, "trust me, I'm the expert," work for us academics? Moreover, we have a glut on the market in the humanities these days. If you can't explain what it is you do, and how you grade to your own colleagues, then there are people who can do your job just as well who can and will.
   
   
5. That last bit kind of brings me to my second-to-last point for right now. I'm a little freaked out by how authoritarian I sound. Because honestly, I'm all about good faculty governance, good contracts, and the tenure system (with regular post-tenure reviews). But I also see myself as an employee of my institution. There are things I am required to do as part of my job -- I have to provide receipts for reimbursement, I have to turn in grades on an A-F scale no later than the semester deadline, I teach history, and not English or Religion, I teach the students the university admits, whether or not I think they should be there, and I go to godawful meetings when I am supposed to. Sometimes I even teach a class at a time I'd rather not, because that's what the Dean has asked me to do. In exchange, I get to teach my subjects pretty much in the way I like, I get to teach courses I like, more or less -- as long as they serve the students and the university, I get support to travel and research (to some degree -- and lots of moral support!), and a paycheck.
   
   Having said that, I can't imagine the sort of top-down approach to OA that a lot of people are complaining about. The places where I've encountered something even in that realm are places where either the administration didn't take assessment seriously and are therefore cacking themselves because they have to try to come up with masses of data all at once, or where there was never a clear explanation to the faculty of why they needed to drive the faculty part of OA -- or where faculty are just so disaffected that they refused, and are now facing something that is not at all what they expected. No matter the reason, Clio N's experiences sound pretty abysmal, and I can see why she doesn't want to do it.
   
   
6. Last point ... institutional assessment. I'd like to think that it worked. I'd like to think that Student Services, Admissions, Computing, the Registrar, Campus Life, Facilities, etc., were really assessing themselves the way good faculty do. Even if they aren't? I think that OA can help to support some faculty concerns, because my guess is that this is one of the places where number crunching can give a fairly accurate idea of what's going on.

It's dinner time.

carnivalesque update

carnivalesque update

Hey all, the newest Carnivalesque has been delayed due to laptop theft... It will be up in a couple of days.