November 2009 Archives

OREM, UT - I was asked to address a group of faculty at the Utah Valley University, where there is a strong commitment to engaged learning. In the presentation that follows, I offer a model by which social media technology can be used to cultivate the active engagement of students in their own education. This model has been developed in my Philosophy courses taught at the Pennsylvania State University.

The model is based on two insights:

1. Learning is social and so it is most effectively pursued in communities of education in which teachers and students are actively engaged together.
2. Social media technologies are transforming education because they are able to open dynamic communities of learning between teachers and students.
   

The power of new social media technologies for education lies not in the information they deliver, but the communities they can create.

Let me begin with a short presentation on the pedagogy of blogging and why I think it is particularly powerful in cultivating dynamic communities of engaged learning.


In order to speak in practical terms about how faculty might begin to cultivate such a dynamic community of learning in their classrooms, I would like to highlight the structure of my course on Ancient Greek Philosophy at Penn State.

This course focuses on the question of Socratic politics and is driven completely by our course blog, Socratic Politics in Digital Dialogue.  All the writing for the course except for the final research paper is posted to the blog.

Here is the syllabus for my PHIL200 Ancient Greek Philosophy course in pdf format.

There are no specific writing assignments. Students write when they are moved to write by the texts we are reading. As faculty, I have clearly set out the expectations for the course in the Blogging rubric (.pdf), which is the key to the success of this model.

The other way I try to cultivate the active participation of the students is through the Weekly Round-up podcasts they produce in teams each week.  The goal of these podcasts is for students to reflect upon the week of class and to highlight readings, aspects of in-class discussion, blog posts and to connect them to issues of contemporary social-political concern.

Highlighting Success
Here I have gathered some links that highlight some of the ways we have been successful in cultivating a community of learning this semester:

• Cody Yashinsky and Pam Dorian produced a weekly round-up podcast that focused on the media's influence on Philosophical discussion, the question of the Good and specific blog posts of the week.

Listen to Cody and Pam on Weekly Round-up #2

• Themes and topics emerge organically as students gravitate to issues of common concern.  This semester some of those issues have included:

• The question of the Good, exemplified by the robust comments received by Jordan Sanford's post Why Should We Be Good?
• The issue of piety and how it is related to the life of philosophy Socrates lives: here is a post from Cody Yashinsky entitled "Is Religion Part of the Good?" that typifies the sort of discussion this issue has generated.
• We encouraged Marina McCoy from Boston College to invite her students to participate in our discussion when we realized that they were reading the Phaedrus the week we were.
• Marina's post on Rhetoric and Soul Leading was commented upon heavily by her students and mine.
• The dialogue between my students from Penn State and hers from Boston College was excellent.  Take a look at the response Pam Dorian received on her post about the Charioteer Allegory in the Phaedrus.

• Critical to the success of this model is how the blog is integrated into the classroom discussion.  I use Evernote to highlight specific posts and comments in class for discussion.
• This is a great way to get the students who are more reticent to talk in class to contribute to the discussion: call up their post and ask them to summarize it for discussion.
  

These examples beautifully illustrate the power social media has to cultivate a dynamic community of engaged learning.

SUNDANCE, UT - Today I participated on a panel for the honors program at the Utah Valley University, whose director, Michael Shaw, invited Marina McCoy and me to present papers for a panel dedicated to Women in Sophocles.

Michael and Marina joined me for Digital Dialogue 20 to discuss the panel and the honors program at UVU:

Digital Dialogue 20 with Michael Shaw and Marina McCoy: Sophocles in Utah

To subscribe to the Digital Dialogue through iTunesU, click here.

Marina gave an excellent paper entitled Exile and Blindness in Oedipus the King and Oedipus at Colonus in which she argued that Theseus is the real hero of Oedipus at Colonus because he shows himself to be capable of genuine compassion and is open to the persuasive words of those around him.

My paper entitled, A Father's Touch, A Daughter's Voice: Antigone, Oedipus and Ismene at Colonus, traces three moments of touching in Oedipus the King and Oedipus at Colonus that mark the emergence of a politics other than that of patriarchal domination. 

Here is a brief overview of the itinerary of the paper:

This paper pursues a path marked by three moments of touching in Oedipus the King and Oedipus at Colonus, each of which articulates something of the logic of what I call the politics of the between and the economy endemic to the community it opens. The first occurs when Oedipus reaches for his daughters at the end of Oedipus the King. It marks the institution of a community between Oedipus and his daughters no longer dominated by patriarchal sovereignty.

The second moment of touching occurs in Oedipus at Colonus when Ismene and Antigone embrace Oedipus after their abduction by Creon. In this scene, a constellation emerges that beautifully embodies the very structure of the politics of the between. Here, situated between Antigone and Ismene, Oedipus is bound to a community of reciprocal support born of a trauma that anticipates the resurgence of the politics of violence and retribution that will condition its ultimate demise.

The destitution of this community of compassion between them is marked, however, by a third moment of touching, one that mirrors the first, as Oedipus hands his daughters over to Theseus thus opening the possibility that Athens herself might once again serve as the site of a politics of the between.

For more information on the nature of the politics of the between and my critique of patriarchal politics, see my article: The Daughters of Metis: Patriarchal Dominion and the Politics of the Between, available here as a pdf file.

One of the most difficult things for new Graduate Students to manage effectively is their time. This is in large part because graduate study has built into it large segments of unstructured time that can easily be wasted. One of the most important skills graduate students can learn early in their career is how to structure their time effectively. 

I have gathered here some suggestions that might help students take control of their time so that it can be used most productively.

Know Thyself
I mean this not only in the ancient Greek sense of knowing one's limits--although this is part of it--but specifically I mean: know when you do your best creative work and reserve that time for writing or other intellectual activities that require a high degree of concentration.

• Are you a morning person? Do you do your best work at night?

Time Thyself
One of the best tricks I learned some time ago was to set an alarm on my desktop for a certain amount of time during which I would focus on a single task, be it reading an article, writing notes, free writing or editing.  Focus on nothing other than the task at hand until the alarm goes off.

• Here is a link to Unclutterer's discussion of desktop timers which has some suggestions about free alarm clocks for the PC and Mac.
• About.com suggests a nice little timer trick in which you focus on specific tasks for shorter, 20 minute periods.
  

This timing strategy does on a small scale what you should also do on a larger scale: set deadlines for yourself. You can do this with self-discipline or shame; for the latter, try making an appointment with a colleague or professor in which you will discuss some element of your work that will be complete by that time. You'd be surprised how motivating it is not to want to seem clueless in front of others - this is part of what motivates many of us teachers to prepare like crazy.

Take Control of Email/Social Media
Studies have shown that each time you check your email it takes an average of 15 minutes to return to your original task. You need to take full control of when you give yourself over to checking email and other forms of social media.

• Turn off the automatic alert on your email, IM service, etc.

Get Organized
You need to have a reliable calendar that you can easily use to keep track of all your appointments.  You also should have a dynamic way to track and prioritize what you have do. There are many computer programs that can help in this regard.

With regard to ToDo lists, it is helpful to be able to organize them according to projects that keep the work in various courses and other academic and personal projects separate.  I have been using Things lately, and like it quite a bit.  A nice, free, but less involved, list maker is available at Zenbe.com.

I have also been making excellent use of Evernote, which allows you to keep notes of all kinds in the cloud and syncs with multiple computers and smart phones.

A Quiet Space
It is not always easy to find a good, quiet space to work; one with few distractions.  It is critical to locate one, be it in your apartment, on campus or in a cafe.  If you are working in public, it is often helpful to have your earphones in your ears even if you are not actually listening to anything through them.  Earphones can function as earplugs, filtering out distracting noise and fostering concentration. Plus, people are less likely to interrupt you if they think you are listening to something.

Down Time
I often see graduate students who are exhausted and over extended.  People don't often realize that intellectual activity is often as tiring as physical exercise. Make sure you give yourself down time as it cultivates creativity and increases productivity.

• Get enough sleep: it seems that less than seven hours a night cripples productivity, memory retention and creativity.  See this article on How Much Sleep Do We Really Need? on the website of the National Sleep Foundation.
• Allow your mind to wander: I know it sounds strange for me to suggest this, but allowing your mind to go where it will as you perform menial tasks can help you work through a particularly difficult question or issue.
• Move: when your body is healthy, your mind becomes stronger, so be sure to get out from behind the desk and walk or exercise. This is not wasted time, but part of an overall strategy of success.
• Reward yourself with something fun you like to do when you have accomplished something; or use it as an end toward which your work is directed.
  

Some Resources

•  Unclutterer.com is a blog about getting and staying organized that has some good suggestions about time management.
• 43 Folders is a blog about finding the time to do your best creative work.

Two weeks ago, I was asked to present my model for Integrating Teaching and Research with Technology.  Although today I return to that material in my presentation to the University Information Technology Faculty Advisory Committee, three exciting new developments have occurred that must here be emphasized. 

These developments concern the manner in the community of learning we have cultivated on the Socratic Politics in Digital Dialogue blog has expanded beyond the boundaries not only of the classroom, but also of the institution itself.

1. Marina McCoy, Associate Professor of Philosophy at Boston College has encouraged the students in her course entitled Rhetoric: Truth, Beauty, Power, to comment on our blog. Since we welcomed the BC students to our digital community last week, the conversation on the blog has exploded.
   
2. In order to encourage dialogue across universities, I worked with TLT here at Penn State to add Professor McCoy as a co-editor of the blog so she could write posts of her own.  She published a post on the question of the meaning of soul leading which generated a lot of commentary about contemporary political speech.
3. The Digital Dialogue, the podcast I have been producing dedicated to cultivating the excellences of dialogue in a digital age, now has a Facebook page and Professor McCoy has again invited her students to comment specifically on the latest episode, number 15 with Holly Moore, a former Philosophy undergraduate student at Penn State who received her PhD from DePaul University in mid-October.  My digital dialogue with her focuses on her dissertation. Professor McCoy has encouraged her students to subscribe to the Digital Dialogue via iTunesU [link opens iTunesU] and respond to episode 15 by commenting on the blog.

• This has generated a very interesting discussion around Dr. Holly Moore's work.  Although my favorite comment is the one that compares my "radio voice" to that of Peter Sagal, the most exciting thing about this is that we have on our course blog a class from BC engaged with a visiting Professor and recent PhD currently at Colby College engaged in dialogue about philosophical issues of mutual concern.