Plagiarism

Interesting article today on plagiarism in the Chronicle for Higher Education.
http://chronicle.com/blogs/profhacker/plagiarism-an-administrator%e2%80%99s-perspective/31775?sid=at&utm_source=at&utm_medium=en    While plagiarism has been inherent in many students' collegiate lives, there are many ways of discouraging it in your class. One of the main guidelines is to create more authentic assignments, quizzes, and tests that cannot be easily copied or compromised. By using deeper order thinking skills such as synthesis, students must know the materials (as opposed to filling in multiple-choice questions) in order to succeed in the course.

I really liked one of the suggestions- "Do not assume that students have learned to cite sources as you wish in previous writing courses or in high school."  It has been my experience that most students really have no idea what is or what is not plagiarism.  Give them some assistance by explaining it in class with examples, do some role-playing games and give them a handout for future use.  Though you will probably see students reverting to plagiarism under stressful times (i.e. the paper is due in 2 hours), most will albeid by the rules if they are educated to do so.

Brain Research- How We Learn

Interesting article on Brain research found in the Tomorrow’s Professor eMail Newsletter. http://cgi.stanford.edu/~dept-ctl/cgi-bin/tomprof/postings.php   It recalls research by Zull (2004) that true learning comes from practicing (repeatedly firing the brain neurons), emotion (i.e. feeling good about learning) and engaging the whole brain (getting, making, creating, synthesizing and acting on information). 

It has just been in the past few decades, brain research in Western society has exploded.   In fact, according to the article, the 1990s were “officially” declared the “Decade of the Brain” by the U.S. Congress.  Other cultures such as Ayurveda science/medicine has been studying the brain for centuries. 

Zull, J. (2004). The art of changing the brain. Educational Leadership

Planning for the Unexpected

It is always good to have a backup plan (Plan B) when devising your face-to-face or online courses.  Whether it is hurricane season, a surprise snowstorm, or your learning management system that has crashed, things happen. Think about adding something like "Emergency Preparedness Instructions" to your syllabus.  Examples can include: possible assignment/tests date changes, possibility of altering meeting dates, how can the instructor and students contact each other (Facebook, phone, Blackboard), announcement, posting short Jing videos on content, etc.  It also is a good idea to get students's email address and phone number in a secure location besides Blackboard. One of the main things is communication with the students. The world is so connected and they will probably be concerned that this event/emergency will cause them to make a bad grade. Soothe their minds and yours by planning ahead for the event that might happen.

The Google Art Project

The Google Art Project has been launched.  http://www.googleartproject.com/ This is really a wonderful resource for learners everywhere.  Students and faculty can explore museums from around the world, discover and view hundreds of artworks at incredible zoom levels, and even create and share their own collection of masterpieces.  Many academic disciplines could incorporate assignments using this resource.

One of my favorite assignments for the freshman University 101 class is to have my students visit the Columbia Museum of Art, find a particular piece of artwork (any type) that evokes feelings for them and write an essay on that piece.  Student usually complain at first that the "museum will be boring" or "I have never been to a museum", but the course evaluations and commentaries suggest that they learned a lot about themselves while learning to appreciate art.  I want my students to be productive members of civilized society and while they don't have to be connoisseurs of all art forms, there is bound to be something that moves them.

The Rise of Kindles, NookBooks and the Like

Having gone through the mass marketing/consumer frenzy that was the 2010 Holiday season, I was wondering about the rise of ebooks, Kindles, NookBooks, and the like. From the media coverage and commercials, it would seem that they were in the hands of everyone in the U.S.   However, not many people that I know have one.  I could be in a vacuum though.  How many of you have an ebook?  How often do you use it?  Has it encouraged you to read even more?
My main thought about this digital reading proliferation is that anything that gets people to read more is a good thing. But are people really reading more now? What are they reading?  Oprah Winfrey's book club has certainly spurred the US reading circles but her last entry, Charles Dickens' classics Great Expectations and A Tale of Two Cities wasn't a success. http://www.csmonitor.com/Books/chapter-and-verse/2010/1220/Oprah-s-book-club-picks-falling-short  It seem that the "Oprah Effect" hasn't really worked with the classics.
I would love to hear your opinions.

The Shadow Scholar

The Chronicle of Education had an interesting interview/article (November 12, 2010) on the sale of academic papers by a "Shadow Scholar".  This process seems to be widespread (and profitable) for those who have writing abilities and worthwhile to the hoards of students needing a paper. Or a draft, thesis statement, or revision.  They interviewed a "shadow scholar" to better understand this phenomenon which probably has been under scrutinized by those of us in academia. An area of concern for me personally was that he occasionally had parents order papers from him because "failing is not an option" for their students. In other words, success did not equate learning. Success was having something to turn into the professor.  This article should be taken seriously but there were some areas of humor. I especially liked his quote that students were "communicating in haiku, each  less decipherable than the one before it".

http://chronicle.com/article/The-Shadow-Scholar/125329/ 

The "Shadow Scholar" participated in a Live Chat on November 17, 2010 and the transcript is available at http://people.stu.ca/~hunt/temp/livechat.htm.  In essence, the "Shadow Scholar" is saying that grades are "killing" students and we should be looking at other ways to effectively encourage actual learning instead of encouraging to make a good grade.    Let me know what you think.

A colleague passed on an interesting YouTube video about using Twitter in the Classroom at the University of Texas at Dallas.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WPVWDkF7U8&feature=player_embedded  Here at the University of South Carolina I know that foreign language faculty (Dr. Lara Ducate and Dr. Lomicka-Anderson) have used it in past in their German and French classes respectively.  Is anyone else using it?