Lights out in the Piazza

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports on Pooja Sankar’s Piazza, a website that allows students to ask questions about their coursework and allows both students and their professor to post answers:

At first blush, the service seems unnecessary. Students can already e-mail questions to professors or fellow students, and most colleges already own course-management systems like Blackboard that include discussion features. But Ms. Sankar feels that such options are clunky. She says professors are finding that Piazza can save them hours each week by allowing them to post answers to a single online forum rather than handle a scattershot of student e-mails.

Says the Chronicle, “Pooja Sankar may eliminate the need for professors to hold office hours, or to endlessly respond to student questions by e-mail.”

Perhaps. But would that necessarily be a good thing? I’ll invoke my mantra about technology: Technology makes it possible to do things, not necessary to do them. And its converse: Technology makes it possible not to do things, not necessary not to do them. That it might be possible to eliminate office hours and e-mail responses doesn’t mean that it’s necessary to eliminate them. Piazza holds no appeal for me, for exactly five reasons:

1. The Chronicle, paraphrasing Sankar: “students typically keep Piazza open on their screens as they work on homework, often staying on the site for hours at a time.”¹ That habit of work hardly fosters the sustained attention to a text appropriate to English studies.

2. Working with Piazza would also seem to do little to encourage self-reliance. As one mostly enthusiastic professor quoted in the article says, “I got the feeling that students were asking the questions because that was easier than thinking.” Imagine doing a crossword puzzle as answers (perhaps correct ones) are revealed in bits and pieces. How do you look away? And if doing work in an online study hall (Sankar’s metaphor) is anything like doing work in the study halls of my high school days, it’s an exercise in gleeful communism: from each according to his ability, to each according to his need. Whadja get for no. 3?

3. Piazza is also touted as a means by which “shy students” can “ask questions anonymously.” With a small class, the identity of an anonymous Piazza poster might be awkwardly apparent. But even if true anonymity were attainable, the inability to ask a question of a professor or fellow student (even by e-mail) suggests a crippling social deficit that might be better addressed with therapy.

4. And speaking of e-mail: it’s a Good Thing for students to have at least some practice in communicating with their professors by e-mail. Getting the hang of such communication — informal yet professional — is good preparation for the world beyond college. And speaking of communication: many professors (though hardly all) like talking with students during office hours. Talking to professors during office hours is another Good Thing, even better: a way to engage in genuine intellectual dialogue. I think that students need all the experience they can get in such dialogue, which is less about getting answers and more about exchanging ideas and trying to solve problems.

5. And anyway, must every question have an answer? Education often involves grappling with questions for which there are no clear, immediate answers. The point is to do the thinking, the exploring, exactly the work that Piazza would seem to cut short. I’m reminded of an observation from Richard Mitchell in The Graves of Academe (1981):

The acts that are at once the means and ends of education, knowing, thinking, understanding, judging, are all committed in solitude. It is only in a mind that the work of the mind can be done.

Two related posts
How to answer a question in class (guest-post by Stefan Hagemann)
How to talk to a professor

¹ What’s with “homework”? That’s a word better left in high school.

[Post title with apologies to Elizabeth Spencer. My five reasons is sardonic: on the Internets, five is a magic number.]

About machine-scoring

In the New York Times, a report on machine-scoring college writing:

Imagine taking a college exam, and, instead of handing in a blue book and getting a grade from a professor a few weeks later, clicking the “send” button when you are done and receiving a grade back instantly, your essay scored by a software program. . . .

EdX, the nonprofit enterprise founded by Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to offer courses on the Internet, has just introduced such a system and will make its automated software available free on the Web to any institution that wants to use it. The software uses artificial intelligence to grade student essays and short written answers, freeing professors for other tasks.

It is worth asking: is this scheme meant to “free” professors for other tasks, or for unemployment? Machine-scoring seems to point toward a future in which the human presence is ever more superfluous for the work of teaching and learning.

Especially galling is the claim, from University of Akron professor Mark D. Shermis, that critics of machine-scoring tend to come from the nation’s elite schools, where human beings do a much better job than machines. “There seems to be,” he says, “a lack of appreciation of what is actually going on in the real world.” Indeed. The great variety of institutional affiliations represented by the signers of the Human Readers petition against machine-scoring suggests that opposition to the practice extends well beyond elite schools. Thoughtful and helpful evaluations of student writing by what the Times article calls “human graders” can be found at all levels as well.

My mantra re: technology, which I will now repeat (because that’s what makes it a mantra): technology makes it possible to do things, not necessary to do them. And its converse: technology makes it possible not to do things, not necessary not to do them.

Clay Shirky bans devices

Clay Shirky has banned devices in his classes at NYU: no laptops, no tablets, no phones. A partial explanation:

There is no laissez-faire attitude to take when the degradation of focus is social. Allowing laptop use in class is like allowing boombox use in class  —  it lets each person choose whether to degrade the experience of those around them.

Why I Just Asked My Students to Put Their Laptops Away (Medium)

I’m not especially impressed by Clay Shirky, who is, after all, the guy who declared that “no one reads War and Peace” anymore (“too long, and not so interesting”). I’ve talked with many students who could have explained second-hand distraction to him a long time ago. But Shirky’s change of mind is noteworthy, at a time when at least some college faculty seek to encourage greater student use of digital technology in classrooms. Click. Click. Click.

I’ll invoke my mantra: Technology makes it possible to do things, not necessary to do them. That we can use devices in a class meeting doesn’t mean that we ought to. And the converse: Technology makes it possible not to do things, not necessary not to do them. That we can, say, replace office hours with Skype doesn’t mean that we should.

Wireless or wireless-less

In light of recent news items about college students messaging and playing online poker during lectures, it didn't seem to me that there could be much debate among academics about the inappropriateness of wireless connectivity in classrooms. But On Campus, published by the American Federation of Teachers, has two profs debating this question in its March 2006 issue.

Dennis Adams, who teaches "decision and information sciences" -- i.e., he's a computer guy, not a technophobe -- argues against laptops in classrooms, pointing out that students who have been raised in a culture of ever-diminishing attention-spans need to learn how to focus. Rudy McDaniel, who teaches "English and digital media" -- i.e., he's also a computer guy, not a technophobe -- argues for the usefulness of laptops and suggests ways to deal with students who are idly surfing. One such strategy:

The next time you spot students with glazed eyes peering into a laptop during your lecture, consider a new approach: Ask them to find an online example of a topic you’re discussing and share it with the class. Repeat as necessary with new offenders. That "distracting laptop in class" problem might just take care of itself.

I started daydreaming today about how such a strategy might work out. Imagine a class devoted to Book Four of Virgil's Aeneid, the episode of Dido's passion and death. What would count as an online "example" of that "topic"? Unrequited love? Devotion to duty? Royal suicide? Roman marriage customs? (Aeneas notes that he never held the torches of a bridegroom, never really married Dido.) The role of Mercury in Roman mythology? Sword wounds? A map of Carthage? An MP3 of "When I am laid in earth" from Purcell's Dido and Aeneas? An MP3 of the pop singer Dido?

I wonder too how quickly a student with glazed eyes would be able to think up a suitable "example of a topic." And were a student to begin searching for one of these possibilties, what would be the point? What are the other students supposed to be doing while the search is underway? And if class simply goes on while the searcher searches (still out of it!), won't the sharing of the discovery make for yet another interruption of forward movement?

Now imagine this sort of interruption occurring with two or three students, perhaps with arguments and protestations of innocence. Allow two or three minutes for the necessary details of identifying each perp, assigning the task, and hearing a brief report. In a 50-minute class, these scattered minutes would eat up roughly 10% to 20% of the available time. I'd hate to be a student intent upon following and learning from a lecture or discussion while my prof's attention repeatedly shifts from the work at hand to students whose minds are elsewhere.

A truth that bears repeating: Technology makes it possible to do things, not necessary to do them. It's possible to type a shopping list into a cellphone, but pencil and paper are simpler and more efficient. And it's possible to watch tv while driving, but it's not a good idea. It's, uhh, distracting, just like a wireless connection in a classroom.

» Should wireless laptops be banned from the classroom?
(from On Campus)

Robert Schneider sees things clearly

Professor Robert Schneider sees things clearly:

Podcasts of university courses are not "every student's dream"; they're totally bogus, a thin surrogate for real instruction, a fig leaf for disengagement, an excuse for lack of commitment from professors and students alike. People who believe in the transformative value of higher education will resist podcastification with a passion.

I hope that he's right.

Professor Schneider is writing in response to a student-journalist's commentary on said "dream." He quotes from her description:

Wake up for school, stumble over to the computer, and download the day's class lectures . . . then crawl back into bed -- iPod in one hand, notebook in the other.

This scene reminds me in some way of the picture of intellectual and emotional isolation near the end of The Waste Land:

We think of the key, each in his prison
Thinking of the key, each confirms a prison

I remember being presented some years ago with the argument that a college course consisting of videotaped lectures was a good "alternative" for students, particularly students who did not seek much contact with professors. "Professor in a can," some of us were calling it (or was it "in a box"?). What would the person "administering" the class (who would not be the professor on tape) do? Give and grade exams two or three times a semester.

As I've written in a previous blog post (about wireless classrooms), technology makes it possible to do things, not necessary to do them. It's possible to be a professor in a can. It's possible to stay in bed and take notes on a voice coming to you through headphones. But there are better ways to teach and learn.

Follow the link for the rest of Schneider's passionate rebuttal of what he calls "dystopian nonsense."

The Attack of the Pod People (Chronicle of Higher Education)

“That’s better”

We might still think of Wi-Fi as fracturing family life, with each member of the group off in front of a screen. Here’s an earlier story of improved technology and one family’s response. Ben Logan (1920–2014) recounts what happened when his father bought an Aladdin kerosene lamp for the dining-room table. “The new lamp gave more light,” Logan writes, “opening up the corners of the dining room, letting us scatter away from the little circle we’d always formed around the old Rayo.” And then one night Logan’s mother announced, “‘I’m not sure I like that new lamp’”:

Father was at his usual place at the table. “Why not? Burns less kerosene.”

“Look where everyone is.”

We were scattered. There was even enough light to read by on the far side of the stove.

“We’re all here,” Father said.

“Not like we used to be.”

Father looked at the empty chairs around the table. “Want to go back to the old lamp?”

“I don’t think it’s the lamp. I think it’s us. Does a new lamp have to change where we sit at night?”

Ben Logan, The Land Remembers: The Story of a Farm and Its People. 1975. (Minnetonka, MN: NorthWord Press, 1999).

“I don’t think it’s the lamp. I think it’s us”: exactly. As I’ve written more than once in these pages, technology makes it possible to do things, not necessary to do them. Logan describes what followed in his family’s farmhouse:

Father’s eyes found us, one by one. Then he made a little motion with his head. We came out of our corners and slid into our old places at the table, smiling at each other, a little embarrassed to be hearing this talk.

Mother sat down with us and nodded. “That’s better.”

[Thanks to Chris at Dreamers Rise for pointing me to The Land Remembers.]

A chart, not especially helpful

The New York Times has created an ingenious scrolling chart (gift link) to sort out congressional Republican responses to the second indictment. The only problem: an ingenious scrolling chart is not especially helpful for anyone who wants to check on a particular member of Congress. There are no names, just small photographs of faces, greyed out until one scrolls to a relevant category of response and some faces turn full-color. Faces are arranged from less to more conservative, though it’s not clear what their arrangment into rows means.

I had no problem finding Illinois’s Mary Miller: I looked at the more conservative end of the spectrum and scrolled until her tiny head turned blonde. There she was, one of just thirty-three members who claim that the indictment signals the advent of autocracy (“BANANA REPUBLIC,” Miller wrote on Twitter), and one of just nineteen members who call the indictment “election interference.”

What would be a much more useful presentation: an alphabetical list of members, with categories of response to the right of their names. That would make it easy to find a given member and see how many categories of response apply to that member’s comments.

I’ll invoke my mantra about technology: Technology makes it possible to do things, not necessary to do them. That one can arrange tiny greyed-out faces into a chart doesn’t mean that one should.

Technology, not always progess

Here’s a good post by Marco Arment on what it’s like to deposit checks — or is it “deposit” “checks”? — by iPhone. His conclusion: “Sometimes, new technology is not progress.” Which reminds me of something I’ve written in previous posts: Technology makes it possible to do things, not necessary to do them.

“Why E-mail No Longer Rules”

Because of Facebook and Twitter:

Instead of sending a few e-mails a week to a handful of friends, you can send dozens of messages a day to hundreds of people who know you, or just barely do.

Yes, you can. But as I’ve written in a previous post, technology makes it possible to do things, not necessary to do them.