Thoughts on culture, education, and having been a Canadian in the US

Earlier today, I dropped by the office of a colleague and was telling her how wonderfully the students in my current online class on Margaret Atwood are performing. Each student, and many of them are not English majors, is posting extensively on a daily basis and the level of the analysis that each of them is producing exceeds what I typically get out of students in the face-to-face learning environment. The question that immediately springs to mind, of course, is “What am I doing wrong in the classroom?” I joked to my colleague that maybe I should just set it up so that all of my classes start meeting online and that we get together in a “real” classroom once every week or two to have some less formal discussions about the books.

Tonight, just as I’m about to sit down and read the 27 new posts from my students today — I got smart today and only asked a single discussion question so that I didn’t get 76 new posts like I did yesterday! — I came across this intriguing article by Ron Bleed in the new issue of the Educause Review.

Bleed’s vision of “Twenty-First-Century Hybrid Courses” is exactly what I was talking about! I started to imagine what might happen if I told my students and department that I would be only meeting with my classes in person once every week or two. When Holly Parker introduced me at the blogging workshop yesterday, she jokingly referred to me as the “troublemaker” who came into the CTL one day and asked when UVM was going to start supporting blogging on campus. This might be one of the things I want to save doing until I have tenure, if I’m lucky enough to publish enough before I perish.

Of course, I come by this honestly. When my dad was teaching a communications class for the U of A‘s Faculty of Agriculture and Forestry in the early 1990s, he had his very large class meet twice a week and do the third class of the week as an online lecture and discussion. I think that’s the farmer in him, perhaps. They’re always the first people to figure out the most effective ways to do things. Of course, growing up on the Saskatchewan prairie might make it a bit easier to see the forest for the the trees.

Here’s a bit of what Ron Bleed has to say. LOTS to think about here:

If we in higher education are to be student-centered, we must overcome college and university traditions and move toward a course-schedule redesign that gives greater time flexibility from the student’s viewpoint. The Agrarian Age concept of a nine-month school year consisting of two semesters is not the most effective way to deliver instruction in the nonagrarian twenty-first century. Likewise, the Industrial Age paradigm of fixed-seat-time courses moving through an assembly line of specific curriculum requirements, creating uniformity for the sake of common accreditation measurements and mass production, presents serious obstacles for many of today’s students.

Research I conducted shows that replacing some of the fixed seat-time with technology-delivered content and having physical spaces for socialization lead to improved learning, higher completion rates by students, lower costs to both the student and the institution, and greater convenience for students who are not “captured” on a campus. A 2004 Maricopa Community College analysis of the course-completion rates of our students shows that the course schedule is a significant factor in student retention/attrition rates. Because our students are not “captured,” the type of course scheduling they experience affects their completion rate. The type of course with the lowest successful completion rate was the traditional, daytime, full-semester course with multiple fixed seat times per week. As Diana Oblinger stated before a U.S. Senate subcommittee in 2004: “One of the best ways of ensuring that students succeed is to remove the barriers to their success. For many, the greatest barrier is the fixed time schedule of a traditional course.”3

A strategy to overcome this barrier to student success is creating hybrid or blended courses. I consider a hybrid or blended course to be one in which a chunk of on-campus classroom time has been replaced by technology-delivered instruction. The advantages of the classroom learning and online learning are combined and the disadvantages of each are minimized.

Ron Bleed “The IT Leader as Alchemist: Finding the True Gold”

EDUCAUSE REVIEW | January/February 2006, Volume 41, Number 1:

I just came back from an excellent workshop where many of us at UVM working in the areas of International Studies and other fields discussed the internationalization of UVM. Our focus was on how we could make UVM more connected to the rest of the world and the world more connected to UVM. What we envision must go much beyond simply sending students out on study abroad trips and should focus more on having students graduate with more of a global consciousness. Of course, one of the ways we can do this is by making more concerted efforts to have them study other cultures and languages (a certain country to the North of us immediately springs to mind).

Most of us were caught a bit off guard by this week’s move from the White House to promote the study of foreign languages in schools and universities. It seems on the surface to align itself perfectly with what were talking about this afternoon. Then, I caught this posting on Laila Lalami’s fabulous Moorish Girl blog. She sums it up far better than I can.

Wow–we’re actually going to teach kids here about other languages?!! What a great way to tell them about the rest of the world. But I should have known better. Because the goal isn’t to teach kids another language, but rather:

So the goal of learning the language isn’t to learn something about a different culture, but merely to communicate well enough with the rest of the world to convince them to get on with the program already.



Sigh. Just when you think that guy might finally have a bright idea….

What a nice surprise today to walk into a packed blogging workshop here at UVM’s Center for Teaching and Learning. It wasn’t that long ago that few people other than Steve Cavrak had done anything at all with blogging. Now, we have faculty, students, and staff creating blogs and looking at ways to use them in their work. Very cool to see.

I had the opportunity to speak to the group a bit about how I use blogs for my courses and in my own work and directed them to the links I posted in May, the last time I spoke to one of these workshops. It’s great to see blogs really starting to take off here. With the addition of Richard Parent to our department and my colleagues like Andrew Barnaby and Lisa Schnell starting to blog, I can really see blogs a regular part of many English courses as well.

I have a million things ready to blog about, but I just had to put this up first. My pal and guru of technology and weirdness Steve Cavrak sent me this link to The Calamari Wrestler.

I don’t know what I liked best, the guy in the calamari suit or the review of the movie that reads: “The Calamari Wrestler took me by surprise. This movie is a lot of fun and turned out to be a nice monster mash/love story wrestling film that should appeal to anyone intrigued by such a concept. It’s a well made film and finds a nice way to blend humor, action, and a decent storyline. Check this one out.”

Here are a few links to some of the articles, podcasts, and software I referred to in a talk I gave today on podcasting as part of the Center for Teaching and Learning’s new Colleague Teas series.

Podcasting how-to:

Podcasting DIY is a great new podcast that is part of Canada’s new Rabble Podcast Network.

Audacity

Garageband

iPod + iTalk

What people are up to around the continent:

Here’s a great conversation with Middlebury College’s Barbara Ganley about her use of podcasting and blogging in her teaching. This is part of a regular podcast series called EdTechTalk. Recently Ganley posted a really interesting entry on her blog about Podcasting as Part of the Learning Process

Stanford podcasting

Mabry

Chronicle article on podcasting

My English 005 class

Click here for the complete list of Arts and Sciences Distribution Requirements

Here’s a link to the course listings from the Registrar’s website

Spring enrollment listings

Registration for fall classes begins for seniors on November 15th, and over the days to follow for everybody else. Make sure to check the UVM Registration schedule to see when you may begin registering for Spring classes.

I’m setting aside a couple of days over the next week to meet with you to review your choice of courses for the spring semester. You can find the list of spring 2006 courses from the Department of English online at the department’s website. On that same page, you will also find the list of courses that fill the A, B, C, D, and senior seminar requirements. It’s also worth checking the spring course listings from Continuing Education

Here are the available time slots I have for next week. Please e-mail me right away and book an appointment. I’ll fill in the taken spots on this form as I hear from you on a first-come, first-served basis.

N.B. If you’ve seen me before, please try to bring with you any past advising checklists I’ve done for you. That will save us a considerable amount of time when trying to figure out which courses or how many credits you still need to take.

Tuesday, November 8:

9:00: Caitlin Collins

9:30: Danny Turgeon

9:45: Jesse Rentz

10:00: Lain Kunin

10:30: Julie Bilodeau

11:00: Rudy K.

11:30: Lucy

13:00: Laura Pedro

13:30: Marty Kreider

14:00: Mike Ceragno

14:30: Samantha Lopez-Rose

15:00: Leah Mansback

Thursday, November 10

9:00: Finn McCoy

9:30:

10:00: Kelly Simon

10:30: Jessica Randall

11:00: Zack Infante

11:30: Chris Cohen

12:00: Sarah Souza

12:30: Lauren Foley

13:00: Will Bowen

13:30: John Landry

14:00: Molly Kienzler

Friday, November 11
13:30: Caroline Cooper

Tuesday, November 15 (N.B. advising hours to be held at CTL, 303 Bailey/Howe)

13:30: Mike MacDonald

14:00: Charlie Whistler

14:30:

Wednesday, November 16:

1: 15: Emily V.

1:30: Ali S.

3:30: Katherine Fenlon

4:00:

Thursday, November 17

10:00:

10:30: Taylor

11:00: Charlie W.

11:30:

12:00: (office hours are at Center for Teaching and Learning 303 Bailey/Howe Library)

12:30: Alysa Procida (office hours are at Center for Teaching and Learning 303 Bailey/Howe Library)

13:00: (office hours are at Center for Teaching and Learning 303 Bailey/Howe Library)

13:30: (office hours are at Center for Teaching and Learning 303 Bailey/Howe Library)

14:00: (office hours are at Center for Teaching and Learning 303 Bailey/Howe Library)

A couple of other things. If you’re looking to get into a course that usually fills up (English 086, or Shakespeare for instance), I’d suggest e-mailing the instructor ASAP to ask if they will enable you to register early for that course or to ask that you be put on a waiting list for the class.

If you’re looking for a Category D class for the spring, I’ll be teaching a night class for Continuing Education. The course, taught on Tuesday nights, is English 182: Recent Fiction by Indigenous Writers from Canada, Australia, and New Zealand/Aotearoa. Over the “Winter Session” I’ll also be teaching a one-credit online course on Margaret Atwood. That runs over the first two weeks of January and it’s a great way to pick up an extra credit without having to set your foot on campus.

I look forward to seeing you soon!

12:15 pm

Well, here’s an interesting way to spend a morning AND an afternoon. Early this morning, my entire “Intro to Canadian Culture” seminar, 3 students from my Can Lit class, and several others left Burlington. All was going according to plan until we hit THE CANADIAN BORDER….

Now, let me start by saying that for me, up until this very moment, crossing into Canada has always been accompanied by a sigh of relief, sense of finally being home where I will not have to worry about anything. Canada Customs has always been friendly, or at least friendly compared with the people who greet me when I’m returning across the US border. Today, though, our bus was targeted for a random search and, without going into detail, the Canadian border guards discovered minute traces of something that one should never carry across the border.

That was over two hours ago, and as I write this we are still at the border…. We’ve finally reached a point where every one of the 25 people on the bus is going to be thoroughly searched. Once that’s done with the dogs will arrive to search the bus itself. Needless to say our entire itinerary for today is due for a serious revision. Everyone on the bus is starving, frustrated, and getting a bit grumpy. BUT, to the credit of the students (and my colleagues), we are all making the best of things.

1:00 PM

What a terrible introduction to Canada, though! For most of my students, this is their first time across the border. You can only imagine that this will be THE story that everybody remembers out this trip — me included!

Not that this is any fault of the border guards, although their approach is clearly disproportionate to the nature of the offense. My student did not bring anything with him, but simply failed to think that there may still be residue which could suggest that there might be more…. somewhere else. It’s clear that one of their main objectives is to deter anyone from ever dreaming of bringing anything with them across the border.

The customs officials have locked the bathroom on the bus and for anyone to use the facilities the driver has to go to the Customs office to request that an officer come to the bus to escort a student in to the washroom in their office. Needless to say, anytime someone has to go, it takes one of the customs officers to look after them rather than continuing to search people on the bus. This could take hours still….

They are searching everyone, going through every item in each bag, every pocket of every item of clothing… how long this will take, I have no idea. We’re now at about three hours and there’s no end in sight….

3:24

We’re now back on the road to Ottawa after a short break for lunch. We were removed from the bus shortly after my last entry and all moved to a separate building where we stood in a line so that the dog could check us all for any indication of drugs. From there, we were all kept off the bus until the dog finally finished going over every square inch of the bus. The whole ordeal took us four hours and 15 minutes.

While we were waiting to be let back on the bus, one of my students told me that this was the first time he’d ever experienced feeling like his rights had been taken away from him. Me too, almost. The only other time I’ve had a similar feeling was when I was refused entry to the US in 2003 when I was on my way to Burlington to shop for a house. In that case, the US border guard had no legitimate reason to give me a hard time — he was simply in a bad mood and decided that he didn’t like me. And so, he refused to allow me into the country and told me that I’d better not try crossing into the US at any other point. When Senator Patrick Leahy’s office intervened on my behalf later that night, I was finally allowed into the US but was made to sign an entry card that stated I would stay in the US for no more than five days. When returning to Canada at the end of that trip, I first had to report to the border to prove that I was leaving the US. In both cases, it was entirely unsettling to feel that someone else could have complete control of my freedom until such a point that they decided they were done with me. Feeling something like that even for a short time reminds one of how lucky we are to be in countries where people only rarely find themselves in such a situation.

You can see from this great speech by Frank McKenna why Canadians are so happy to have the guy as our current ambassador to the US. In just a few months on the job, he has made more of an impression in the US than the last several ambassadors combined. You can also see why many Canadians think he would be a great Prime Minister. Is that too much to hope for?

In my classes this week we’ve been talking a lot about nationalism and how national identities are constructed and perpetuated via the education system.

As an example, I mentioned to them how surprised and disconcerted I was this past weekend when my five-year old proudly Canadian daughter suddenly began reciting perfectly the American Pledge of Allegiance. As soon as I heard that, I promptly began teaching her the words to O Canada. 🙂

Perhaps, though, I should really be teaching her this version of the Pledge, courtesy of Matt Groening’s comic Life in Hell:

I plead alignment to the flakes of the untitled snakes of a merry cow. And to the Republicans, for which they scam, one nacho, underpants, with licorice and jugs of wine for owls.