I just introduced databases to 75 more people today, and another 15 to go today before I resume more grading. Amazing how quick the transition between "caught up" and "way behind"...
Just thinking about my own by-line for this little blog, which I never expected to compulsively update for this long. The latest version went like this: "I'm a returning PhD student and instructor in Information Science, married, with two kids at home. I've been back in Albany for two years now, after 9 years in Jersey City, NJ. It no longer feels weird being back."
I've been back for 3 1/2 years now. At some point, I'm not "back", but just plain "here". I'm now a full-time instructor, working on a dissertation... kinda. Let's just say when you finish your coursework, you still have to remind yourself you're not done yet. I guess I could identify myself as a PhD Candidate, but in reality I'm just another ABD (All But Dissertation) until either finishing or giving up. But it's a time of transition, and trying to identify myself as something other than the "Programmer/Analyst" I was for a decade.
But I do find I like teaching Java, Databases (even if it's Access), and Information Systems. I'd like to teach web development again-- I'm booked for a course in Javascript and one in XML over the summer, a tough schedule of 4 hours a night, 4 nights a week for 6 weeks.
Ah- time to head to lecture again.
Wednesday, February 27, 2008
Thursday, February 14, 2008
learning about teaching is about learning about learning...
Yesterday, classes were canceled for Faculty Workshop Day, where we had some seminars about teaching effectiveness. One talk was from the author of What the Best College Teachers Do, one of the best lectures I've seen in a very long time. A lot of it seemed to formalize intuition and casual observations- reliance on multiple choice questions in tests promotes "shallow learning", a learning style I didn't have a good name for, much less a good impression of.
I can't say I'm going to abandon multiple choice tests-- but you have to define exactly what a test is. In a course I co-taught a couple of years ago with one of my PhD colleagues, we used to discuss the role of tests-- should assessments be punitive, merely survey instruments, or something in between? School, and the college class in particular, is already such an artificial construct of learning with its pros and cons which won't be debated here. Is it even a social experience? The fact that co-location and time synchronization is imposed by penalty can be both an asset and a liability.
Case in point. I took a semester of Russian and two semesters of German in college, in the late 1980's. I can read far more Russian (relatively speaking), despite the fact that I got a far worse grade. But Russian was my first semester of college, before the regimen of "shallow learning" kicked in and I was trying to internalize the material rather than memorize as the other students did. The end result is that, 20 years later, I still remember about half a semester's worth of Russian, where I remember only about a Hogan's Heroes episode worth of German- what I'd probably passively absorbed before ever taking those courses.
Even so, there were some good-enough take-aways from the workshops to brighten up my lectures, even if I don't change my testing style. My self-composed test questions have a tendency to suck, and at least the list of questions from the Instructor Manuals are more pedagogically sound. But if I continue to think of them more as survey instruments rather than punitive assessments of memorization skills, I'll have to go the whole route-- lots of questions with overlaps, Scantron bubble sheets, archived data, and the inevitable post-run analysis that I wouldn't have with grading the papers directly.
I can't say I'm going to abandon multiple choice tests-- but you have to define exactly what a test is. In a course I co-taught a couple of years ago with one of my PhD colleagues, we used to discuss the role of tests-- should assessments be punitive, merely survey instruments, or something in between? School, and the college class in particular, is already such an artificial construct of learning with its pros and cons which won't be debated here. Is it even a social experience? The fact that co-location and time synchronization is imposed by penalty can be both an asset and a liability.
Case in point. I took a semester of Russian and two semesters of German in college, in the late 1980's. I can read far more Russian (relatively speaking), despite the fact that I got a far worse grade. But Russian was my first semester of college, before the regimen of "shallow learning" kicked in and I was trying to internalize the material rather than memorize as the other students did. The end result is that, 20 years later, I still remember about half a semester's worth of Russian, where I remember only about a Hogan's Heroes episode worth of German- what I'd probably passively absorbed before ever taking those courses.
Even so, there were some good-enough take-aways from the workshops to brighten up my lectures, even if I don't change my testing style. My self-composed test questions have a tendency to suck, and at least the list of questions from the Instructor Manuals are more pedagogically sound. But if I continue to think of them more as survey instruments rather than punitive assessments of memorization skills, I'll have to go the whole route-- lots of questions with overlaps, Scantron bubble sheets, archived data, and the inevitable post-run analysis that I wouldn't have with grading the papers directly.
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