What I Learned Today

I read Douglas Rushkoff’s book, Program or Be Programmed with a mixture of fascination and criticism. I didn’t agree with every argument (e.g., that computer networks have no notion of time; many internet protocols use timestamps to ensure reliable communication), but each chapter gave me something to wrestle with mentally, and the book as a whole made me see various aspects of my life (interacting with technology) in a new light. Rushkoff’s thesis takes a historical view of how new technology penetrates society gradually, and those who develop the ability to manipulate and create, rather than just to use and consume, are the ones in control. Arguing from examples based on the development of writing, print, and electronic media, he notes that for us today, it’s the ability to program that gives us control over the new technological world, and that (somewhat chillingly) willful or accidental ignorance about the motives of Those Who Program may cause you to execute their Program without even knowing it.

This great, short video lets Rushkoff summarize his points in two minutes flat:

I am already a “programmer,” in that I have programming skills, but even so I consume most of what’s on the net as a user, rather than getting out there and being actively involved myself. Programming is what I do at work. On the other hand, I’ll never forget the thrill I experienced when I first contributed to an Open Source project. My art, my creation, uploaded into the ether after building on, complementing, and extending the work of complete strangers! And who knew where others might take it! It was like Free Love, but in C.

But after reading his book, I couldn’t help but think a while about what built-in biases about how various technologies work are shaping my own thoughts, habits, and ability to create.

This point, however, is the tenth of his 10 commandments. The earlier ones have value too; it never hurts to get another reminder of the value of not always being “on”/”connected,” and of being present in the here and the now.

I’ve been experimenting with some of the new massively multiplayer online course offerings from Coursera. In the spring, I took Cryptography, and I am now taking Fantasy and Science Fiction: The Human Mind, Our Modern World. These courses are offered for free, for anyone who wants to take them. I’ve been curious about the (eventual) business model, since there will have to be some way to recoup the investment in web site architecture and content. The lectures do seem to be “record once, replay forever”, but it’s still a big effort to do up front.

One way they’ve kept the ongoing costs reasonable, though, is by offloading one of the biggest time consumers in traditional education: grading. The Cryptography course was conducted in an entirely auto-grading mode. The homeworks each week were a series of multiple-choice or fill-in-the-blank questions. The feedback was actually quite good from these exercises — if you got something wrong, there might be a clue as to where to look, and if you got it right, there was usually an explanation, which you could learn from if you’d just gotten lucky with your choice. Further, you could attempt each homework 4 times, a process designed to encourage “mastery” (progressive learning). I know what you’re thinking. Four tries on a multiple-choice test should basically ensure you get 100%, since you could explore all possible options. Not so! They’ve made the process more sophisticated, producing a new mixture of answers for each question each time you attempt it. You really do have to think through the problems each time. I approve.

The F&SF class is different. Our assignments consist of 300-word essays, which can’t be auto-graded (with any real reliability). First I must note that I found WRITING a 300-word essay to be particularly challenging. How can you say anything of substance in 300 words? How can you call out something of interest in a 400-page book using only 300 words? But, as in haiku, the limitations of the medium are themselves a spur to inspiration. So then, how to grade them? Coursera has adopted a peer grading strategy, in which you are assigned to grade a random set of your classmates’ essays, and your essay correspondingly is sent to a random set of peers to be graded. In this class, we’re required to grade four peers, but allowed to grade more. The grading itself is very coarse: you assign one score for Form (grammar, organization, etc.) and one for Content. Each can be given a score of 1 (poor), 2 (average), or 3 (exceptional). You are also required to provide some text feedback.

So far, I found the grades I received from my peers to be fair, but I don’t think I’ve learned much from them. Most of the feedback was compliments, with a few rather surface-level critiques, rather than the kind of feedback you’d get from a professor or TA. But one reason for this is the bizarre organization of this particular class. You are required to do the reading, write an essay blind (on no suggested topic, simply something that “will enrich the reading of an intelligent, attentive fellow student”), and only THEN are you permitted to view the professor’s videos with his analysis of the readings. Perhaps this is intended to reduce “bias” from the instructor, but ultimately all it does is set you up to be evaluated tabula rasa (with respect to the course content), so I don’t see how the assessment has anything to do with what you have learned. These should be pre-tests rather than the sum of the grade. With the current scheme, the lectures themselves unfortunately become less of a priority, because by the time they’re available, you should already be moving on to read and plan an essay on the next reading. That’s a shame, because Dr. Rabkin is clearly a thoughtful and knowledgeable source. I’ve found most of his lectures to be interesting and thought-provoking (even though I disagree violently with some of his analysis of Grimm’s Fairy Tales! Ugh!). So, two weeks in, I’m not very enamored of this kind of peer grading. I hope Coursera continues to experiment with new strategies.

You can check out Coursera’s statement of pedagogy in which they explain their design choices and include references to some external work on their efficacy. It’s mostly reasonable arguments. I’m on board with the mastery learning comment, for example. However, I found the argument for peer grading to be weaker. The main motivation (never articulated) has got to be the challenge of providing feedback for thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of students, which is a scaling issue. Instead they cite research on the benefits of peer review, which are valid, but I think never intended to be the SOLE source of feedback for students, and the strengths of crowd-sourcing, which depends on large numbers for reliability, which four random grades from others in the class don’t provide. I’m not asserting that this is an invalid method of instruction, but I’m not convinced by the evidence they’ve offered.

In working through these courses, I’ve already gotten ideas for how I would experiment creatively with this new teaching medium. Watching slides is boring. Watching a talking head is boring. I love, however, the occasional pauses that require you to answer a question (pop quiz!) to proceed. It’s great for capturing attention that may have been wandering. The Cryptography class made good use of these. The F&SF class doesn’t use them at all. If I were teaching, I’d also bring in props or direct students to relevant websites or otherwise increase the level of activity and interactivity as much as possible. Right now, the only interaction in the F&SF course is through the essays (anonymized) and the discussion forums (which no one can keep up with). I’d like to foster more interaction with the professor, without inundating that person. I think well crafted video lectures can improve on this front.

It never occurred to me to wonder where Motorola got its name. Recently, I heard this fascinating tidbit and followed up — it appears to be true!

From Motorola’s own timeline:

In 1930 Galvin Manufacturing Corporation introduced the Motorola radio, one of the first commercially successful car radios. Company founder Paul V. Galvin created the brand name Motorola for the car radio — linking “motor” (for motorcar) with “ola” (which implied sound). Thus the Motorola brand meant sound in motion.

Today, Motorola’s cell (mobile) phones give a whole new meaning to “sound in motion.”

There was a time before the Internet—and it wasn’t that long ago. Consider excerpts of this 1984 article from the Whole Earth Catalog, titled “Telecommunicating”:

Someday everybody will communicate by computer, according to an emerging army of dreamers.
[…]
Less expensive than national networks are local bulletin boards […] To give an example of the bulletin boards’ power; David Hughes of Colorado Springs entered onto his computer bulletin board the text of a pernicious city council bill outlawing professional work at home. Instead of tracking the bill down at City Hall, residents could dial in at their convenience and read the bill at home. Within a week, Hughes had gathered enough angry readers to storm the next city council meeting and influence council members to defeat the measure.
[…]
Programs are finally emerging that treat telecommunicating as a human activity instead of a technical obstacle course.

So much so that we don’t even use the term “telecommunicating” at all. We’re just communicating.

NPR’s Science Friday broadcast an episode in 1993 called “The Future of the Internet” that is well worth the listen. The episode itself made history by being broadcast on the Internet, instead of just by radio. Today, the topics and the way they are covered sound so… quaint. Compuserve! WAIS?

The opinions being expressed are enthusiastic, sometimes prescient, and other times (from today’s perspective) naive. “I found a complete archive of jokes on the Internet in under an hour!” “The magic number is 64,000 bits per second.”

Ira: “Let’s make it clear to everyone listening that you’re not on a telephone, are you?”
Caller Tom: “No, I’m sitting in front of a workstation, with a microphone…”

I did like the discussion of “information anxiety” (they had that back then too? ;) ) over the “glut” of information available (from the 420 different databases WAIS was indexing. Oh, my word.).

“One of the things we’re doing is learning how to ignore information, and that’s one of the most important things the Internet will let you do. […] You want your machine to be working for you … finding the right stuff. There’s just way too much out there already. So going and filtering through, searching, finding just the issues that you care about — your machine is starting to know a lot about you. It knows what you like, what you don’t like, what you’ve read, what you didn’t read.”

I wish we could say we’ve solved that problem now! Even with RSS feeds, collaborative filtering, and various learning systems, I still feel inundated by all there is to read, and without a good solution for sorting and prioritizing it. Email alone…!

Distance learning has great potential to reach a wide array of students, or just to cut down on commuting. Four years ago, I took a class on remote sensing through USC’s Distance Education Network as part of my Master’s degree work in geology. While I was delighted to not have to drive down into L.A. that semester, and I enjoyed being able to eat dinner or knit while viewing the lectures, I did feel that the experience lacked something — real-time engagement with the professor and other students.

But technology and pedagogy have been adapting and improving over time. I recently watched a recording of an open house for the San Jose State University’s School of Library and Information Science. Their entire program is offered through distance learning, even for local students; there are no physical classrooms. As a result, if the Open House is any sample, the professors have developed excellent ways to conduct an online class meeting that involves and engages students beyond passively listening to a lecture. Contrary to my initial reservations, I came away impressed by the use of technology and the clear commitment to a quality experience. There were interactive quizzes, discussion of the results, and a live chat window. I think I was most impressed by the presenter’s comfort with the online environment; she noticed and responded to every comment made in the chat window, seamlessly blending those topics into the flow of her presentation.

SJSU’s program involves ~2500 students (again, all online), with a 25-30 student enrollment limit in each class (interesting given that it’s offered online!). The required introductory course has a peer mentoring component. Students have the option of getting course credit for in-person internships with their local libraries. At the culmination of the degree, students can choose to assemble an ePortfolio demonstrating 15 core competencies or a research thesis. Recent theses cover a fascinating range of topics, including:

• The impact of Hurricane Katrina on Gulf Coast libraries and their disaster planning
• Historical archaeologists’ utilization of archives: an exploratory study
• The rise of Mormon cultural history and the changing status of the archive
• Libraries in American German prisoner of war camps during World War II

The course offerings broadly address issues of how to organize, catalog, access, and share information. There are classes on how “interview” patrons (to zero in on what they’re really looking for), the library’s role in intellectual freedom, archives and preservation, and the history of books and libraries.

I noticed a few interesting differences in word use from what I’m used to. “Research”, in the library context, refers to the process of looking up a desired piece of information, rather than developing new algorithms and conducting experiments. “Implementation” means to install or put something in place, not to write code.

Here stands revealed another world of new ideas and information to learn. And with distance learning, it’s made super easy! Hmm…