Going Paperless in the Classroom

I’ve gone almost completely paperless in my classes, as well. But I’ve gone back to providing hard copies of assignment details. So many students were not printing the handouts and then asking questions that the handouts answer… I’ve seen a dramatic decrease in this type of question since handing out hard copies again.

I have started requiring students to submit assignments in PDF. I kept getting files in all sorts of formats, and, although I can convert files, it slowed down my grading process and they weren’t learning anything new. A remarkable number of them have to learn how to create a PDF file, so I am able to teach them a new skill and streamline my grading in one fell swoop.

My favorite paperless move? Exams. I use videos to ask questions about speech delivery and my CMS grades all of my multiple choice questions, provides me item analysis reports, and prevents all sorts of paper-laden issues in securing my exams.

I agree with wingsandfins that student reluctance or inability to print out material hampers the push for a paperless classroom. I wonder how you’ve tried convincing or requiring students to use a digital device in classroom (other than for texting of course) and what luck you’ve had on that front.

Also, I was intrigued by aeonelpis’ requirement that assignments be turned in as PDF files. I love the idea of teaching the fundamental skill of PDF creation. But I wonder how what process you use to mark up those papers. Annotation is certainly possible with Acrobat and with several third-party readers but it is usually quite clunky. I’ve been using a combination of Word and Autohotkey, a task and keystroke automation program in order to markup papers. I detailed that process just a few weeks ago over at DIY Ivory Tower (http://tiny.cc/electronic_paper_grading). I’d love to hear how others grade papers electronically.

You might find these posts (and their ensuing comments) helpful: “How Do You Organize and Annotate PDFs? (Reader Response Roundup),” by Ryan Cordell (May 25, 2010) and “Using Text-Expansion Software to Respond to Student Writing,” by me (September 23, 2010).

I know this specifically was geared toward reading, but I’m curious what folks are doing about note taking in class. Are students bring a device to view materials, but then scratching notes on a notepad (which in my mind fails at the goal)? Does the digital device category extend past laptops w/ keyboards? Has anyone tried to create content (in this example, notes) on ios/android tablets (either via the keyboards or handwriting recognition)?

It seems to me that there are a couple of thoughts or phases in going paperless. The thought that it’s offshoring the burden and printing expense from the institution to the student. The second phase might be where all content can be viewed without printing. The third phase being where content is viewed, interacted with, and created without printing. I’m curious about that proverbial last mile adoption.

This is a recurring problem: students not printing out the readings to bring in to class (or otherwise bringing them in on an e/i-device). I’m not so sure, however, that students are actually not doing the reading with anymore than they used to, with paper copies. The only difference now is that it’s more transparent.

One practical solution is to teach students how to print multiple pages per sheet of paper (if the problem is the cost of printing).

Take that! This is really one thing that I get enraged with. If it was my daughter you killed, this man will definitely not reach his prison cell.

A couple of months ago the Federal Department of Education offered their annual “Federal Student Aid” Conference for 7000 somewhat willing participants in a large “casino complex” in fabulous Las Vegas.  Apparently Vegas has clung to the notion that smoking is essential to gaming/depositing of one’s money, and despite the best air filtration systems the venue saw fit to utilize, the second hand smoke was epic throughout the 5 day meeting.  Fascinating to see hundreds of those thousands of attendees in respiratory distress, at a training event designed to keep the wheels of higher education funding rolling forward.  Keeping out of the gaming rooms themselves did nothing to clear the air.

jimeddy

I don’t think Vegas has “clung to the notion that smoking is essential to gaming” so much as the gambling industry has clung to it.  You’ve gotta live there a few years before you can begin to grasp just how much control the gambling industry holds when it comes to politics in Nevada.  Especially in Vegas, which is generally ignored by the rest of the state.  What the casinos want, they get.  So when it came time to outlaw smoking in public spaces in 2006 or 07 (I don’t remember exactly when it happened), the casinos got a pass.  Mind you, when we (I lived there then) voted to ban smoking in most public spaces, even some restaurants took the initiatives to court as they were unwilling to comply.  Totally different culture there.

I stand by my statement that the debased version of “critical thinking” that prevails on campus is more and more our society’s chief source of anti-intellectualism.  Saying so does not oblige me to trace every other ill in higher education to the same source.  Mr. Lazere, though he apparently prides himself on his logical prowess and likes to accuse those he disagrees with of  committing various fallacies, has created an odd one of his own.  

Readers of Innovations have had lots of opportunities to judge whether the generalizations that sometimes appear in my writing are “unsupportable.”  Despite the limitations of this short essay format, I work hard  to cite evidence directly and to link to relevant sources.  Some readers disagree with various points, find the evidence unpersuasive, and say so, but this doesn’t make the points “unsupportable.”  Inevitably, some of these things are (on both sides) matters of opinion in which a writer offers his synthesis of the facts, intended to point to their broader meaning.  Such statements have be grounded in evidence but are interpretive in character.  

 Mr. Lazere himself makes such statements frequently, as when he writes above that he agrees with me on a point as he imagines “most other academic leftists do.”  Where is his evidence that he is an academic leftist?  Where is his evidence that “most other academic leftists” share his opinion?  It is, of course, silly to ask such questions because his point is perfectly clear and not to be taken as the kind of generalization that requires phalanxes of additional fact.  

I get the sense, however, of a double standard in this gentleman’s comments:  If he disagrees with something, he is strict constructionist, puffed up with the conceit that he owns the rules of discourse. On the other hand, if he agrees with something, we can all all relax and enjoy the ride of unsupported assertion.  I’m glad to have his comments as a handy guide to exactly what  ”intellectually irresponsibility” really looks like.   

Peter Wood

Dr. Weiss:  The assertion that something is ” the defining issue” is necessarily a political judgment.  For every person who believes that “inequality” is the defining issue of our time, one could easily find another who believes it is something else, including a substantial number who believe it is “property rights.”  Likewise, your view that “property rights are surely a subset if equality” is just as surely disputable.  There are many who believe that equality in the absence of secure  property rights is a utopian illusion.

I am not arguing in the article that property rights or other particular aspects of civic participation should be “the defining issue” or that a civics curriculum should be silent on inequality (pace the silly assertion above by Chuck Kleinhans).  I am arguing, to the contrary, that a decent civics curriculum would eschew political advocacy in favor of teaching students the essentials of the subject itself.  This would necessarily include acquainting students with the controversies–but not just one side from one point of view. 

A civics curriculum that is focused unrelentingly on nothing but the left’s political agenda is not really a civics curriculum.  It is just propaganda, and many students, recognizing it as such, will proceed to tune it out.

Peter Wood

… a few observations.

Appendix D of _A Crucible Moment_ suggests a broader range of viewpoints than Peter Wood purports; the actual participants of the national roundtables confirm the suggestion.

The principal charge of the task force, as I understand it, was to explore “civic learning and democratic engagement,” ideas whose exchange vitriolic partisanship persistently hinders. Devising ways to help diverse American populations learn about and communicate civilly with each other and those abroad was a major goal of the task force. Hence, repeat—unlike Wood, I did not count how many—references to diversity, transformation _et cetera_ should not surprise anyone who reads the report. Likewise, in a continually globalizing society, the idea that college or university students should study or prepare only for national citizenship—what Wood refers to as “life in the nation as it now exists”—seems shortsighted.

Regarding the speech that President Barack Obama delivered in Kansas 6 December 2011, it is doubtful that the president actually meant “‘the’ [emphasis added] defining issue.” _A_ defining issue probably was his intent. (Incidentally, the entire speech can be found at http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2011/12/06/remarks-president-economy-osawatomie-kansas; the link which Wood provides takes one to a 9 December 2011 article in _Bloomberg Businessweek_.) President Obama’s actual words, along with others that he has spoken over the years, add weight to the probability. Noting and, moreover, examining specifics is an important part of the scholar’s task, but one should not be superfluous. Would, for example, my noting that the Obama administration does not technically own an education department be a fair examination of Wood’s entire commentary?

“Civics Lessons” ostensibly proposes that expanding civics curricula to include more aspects of American pluralism is a bad undertaking. If curricula should follow a traditional line—which, based on his late 1700s through 1932 reference, I infer to mean before the transformative events of the middle twentieth century—then who and what should be included and excluded in the “new[est] civics” studies? (Recently, several state officials and certain conservative partisans have offered some items.) Likewise, in which manner should what is taught _be_ taught?

College professors who instruct humanities, liberal arts, social science, and related courses do just that: _profess_. That is, they analyze and challenge ideas, and, among other activities, spur analytic and critical thought among students. Hence, from time to time, a professor will make a statement that runs counter to a student’s beliefs. Why, I ask, is this occurrence troublesome? Higher education _should_ facilitate thinking in new manners, forging relationships with diverse groups of people, and so on. What is more, before the late twentieth century, truly dissimilar scholarly points of view about what Wood calls civics could be found in a relatively small number of commonly used textbooks, and were spoken from the mouths of a slightly higher number of college and university professors. No matter how advocatory, limited, skewed, or outright wrong in some instances the textbooks and professors were, their presentations were deemed acceptable to many groups who now complain about liberal political indoctrination, correctness, and so forth.

Let me make plain a few facts. Politically and socially conservative points of view—Wood does not present any genuinely moderate view in the commentary—will never be removed from civics or allied courses. Irrespective of what some persons argue, the academy is not composed largely of social or political liberals. Publishing houses seek profits; therefore, their textbooks have been, are, and undoubtedly will remain in the mainstream. Many professors seek job security, usually in the form tenure, so they do not communicate their most extreme beliefs. Innumerable historians, for example, marginalize or avoid altogether some religious lessons on account of possible repercussions for offending certain students, their guardians, administrators, or other important parties. Such activities are particularly widespread at public colleges and universities.

Sociopolitical conservatives have no reason to worry about being left out of civics lessons, which does not seem to be the primary aim of “Civic Lessons” anyhow. The critique, rather, appears to be a veiled _ad hominem_ attack against President Obama or perhaps Barack Obama himself, whom Wood names five times by the way.

Excellent response. Wood always seems to speak from a command mode, perhaps an outcome of his many years in academic administration rather than the give and take of the classroom or collegial discussion.  Thus he speaks of “tradition” but it’s always one that never manages to accept or include what that past Golden Age obviously (from today’s perspective) excluded.

Given his studied ignoring of so many currently discussed matters in the public sphere, I often wonder what his actual daily behavior is like.  He scoffs at human influence on global warming.  He finds sustainability actions and policies a massive left wing plot against freedom.  What then in his own actions?  Does he drive a gas guzzling SUV just because he can afford it?  Does he insist on plastic bags over bringing his own re-usable ones or paper ones at retail stores?  Does he disregard paper/plastic/garbage distinctions on trash containers?

I never get a sense from anything he writes that he thinks like a classroom teacher.  It’s hard to imagine very many students finding him approachable, unless they were looking for a conservative ideological fix.  What would he say to a student who wanted to write a paper on income inequality?  ”Sorry, that’s not a legitimate issue”?  Or marriage equality? “Sorry, that’s not a problem”?  Or the development of Martin Luther King’s thinking on civic issues and religious faith? “Sorry, he’s not part of the pre-1932 canon”?

Actually, since about September 2011, Wood seems to have become less hard edge in his rhetorical style, more personal, even melancholic and near-elegiac.  But he doesn’t (yet? hope so) seem to be able to balance the personal with the political and open to a more generous view of a society in change.

Chuck Kleinhans