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In the Comments
You have to learn to let go. The idea that books, magazines, databases or any form of information source can and should be kept for perpetuity is laughable. Items in a library need to be weeded and space is the major reason why. I know all of you want to keep your precious books, and I do to. But who’s going to pay for it, you?... — the other me
Library Protesters to Ohio State U.: Digital's OK, but Save Our Books!
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David Wiley: The Parable of the Inventor and the Trucker | Comment [21]
Introducing Guest Blogger David Wiley | Comment [1]
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July 1, 2009
David Wiley: The Parable of the Inventor and the Trucker
Here’s the first post from this month’s guest blogger, David Wiley.
Summer is a time to take a step back and review campus policies while fewer students are on campus. As you do, please consider this parable of the inventor and the trucker.
Once upon a time there was a brilliant inventor. Day and night she dreamed and schemed, until one sunny day she had a “Eureka!” moment. She sketched out the design of a breakthrough product, and worked and reworked it by showing it to friends and getting their feedback.
When she was satisfied that the design was ready to take to production, she began contacting venture-capital organizations and banks. It was a long, painful process, but finally she acquired the money she needed to put her ideas into motion.
Money in hand she began searching for employees – production specialists, designers, marketing experts, and others. Finding the right people for the enterprise proved more difficult than finding the money to start the enterprise, but at last she succeeded in hiring the right people.
They all set to work. It was alternately glorious and tedious, fulfilling and demoralizing. There were false starts and breakthroughs; there was tension and laughter; there were tears of frustration and tears of joy. They persevered through it all, and at length the day arrived when they had a product ready to ship.
Relieved and ecstatic, the inventor began contacting shipping companies. But she could not believe what she heard. The truckers would deliver her goods, but only subject to the most unbelievable conditions:
- The inventor had to sign all the intellectual-property rights to her product over to the truckers.
- The truckers would keep all the profits from sales of the inventor’s product.
- The shipping deal had to be both exclusive and perpetual, never subject to review or cancellation.
Every shipping company she contacted gave the same response. Dejected, but unwilling to see the fruits of all her labor go to waste, she eventually relented and signed a contract with one of the companies.
This parable is, of course, a story about a researcher and her interactions with academic-journal publishers. While the scenario is all too familiar to us as academics, the parable hopefully sheds some light on the way academic publishing works. As a faculty member, I am expected to:
- Come up with original ideas for useful research.
- Find grants or other financing with which to conduct the research.
- Identify and hire graduate students and other professionals to help conduct the research.
- Participate in actually conducting the research.
- Determine what the results of the research mean for my field and for society.
- Write up the results of the research in a clear and communicative manner.
- Surrender all my rights to the written results of my research to a publisher who will sell my work and make a huge profit by so doing.
And when I say a “huge profit,” let me provide a concrete example. Reed Elsevier reported profits over $800-million from its Elsevier publishing division in 2008. Not over $800-million in total revenue – over $800-million in profit.
How does a company make such an incredible amount of money? By persuading you and I to do their work as volunteers. We not only write the articles they publish, but we also volunteer our time to review the papers they publish. And then, inexplicably, our universities pay publishers exorbitant subscription fees so that we can regain access to the results of our own research, writing, and peer-review efforts.
Unfortunately, this lunacy is the water in which all academic fish swim, making it sometimes difficult to recognize. There was a time in the past when publishers held a monopoly on distribution and academics had no method of disseminating their work that did not involve giving away their rights and interest in their own work. The Internet has changed the status quo, however, and each of us now has equal access to a means of distribution exponentially more powerful and affordable than the paper-based distribution of yesteryear.
Since we faculty already write and review the articles, and we have direct access to the most efficient distribution system in the history of humanity, why are we still handing over billions of dollars of increasingly scarce resources to journal publishers? You will find that the answers to this question have nothing to do with the creation and dissemination of knowledge or the economics of those activities.
I believe that colleges should take some time this summer to consider how they might shake up the old publishing system and encourage free open access to their professors’ research articles. Institutions like MIT, Harvard, Stanford, and most recently the University of Kansas have made great strides in improving the dissemination of their faculty’s research output while simultaneously helping faculty members reclaim their interests in their own work by adopting “open access” policies. Perhaps it’s time for your university to consider an open-access policy, too. —David Wiley
Posted on Wednesday July 1, 2009 | Permalink | Comment [21]Introducing Guest Blogger David Wiley
 David Wiley |
Welcome to our new guest blogger, David Wiley, who we’ve featured in past articles for his innovative experiments in open education.
Mr. Wiley is an associate professor of instructional psychology and technology at Brigham Young University, where he studies open education and walks the talk by doing open teaching of his BYU courses. He’s also tinkering with new open textbook models as “chief openness officer” of Flat World Knowledge and as a member of the board of the Open High School of Utah. This month Mr. Wiley will be sharing some ideas here on Wired Campus. Thanks for joining us, David.
Posted on Wednesday July 1, 2009 | Permalink | Comment [1]June 26, 2009
Northwestern U. Publishes Rare Photos of East Africa Online
Northwestern University has put online more than 7,000 rare photographs of East Africa that document the European colonization of the area from 1860 through 1960.
The images made available to the public today in the Humphrey Winterton Collection of East African Photographs were purchased by the university in 2002 for an undisclosed price.
David L. Easterbrook, curator of the university’s Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies, said the collection contains photographs and postcards showing how Europeans used the landscape for commercial purposes, as well as images made by anthropologists that focuse on the daily lives of East Africans. The combination helps document how European colonization changed the area, as well as what existed before the Europeans arrived.
The visual record “adds to a written record,” Mr. Easterbrook said. The pictures “give us an opportunity to look at Africa in a different time.”
While several libraries have smaller galleries that include photographs of East Africa during this period, Mr. Easterbrook said Northwestern’s is the first large collection available online. The image-search feature on the Web site is extensive, tagging both dates and keywords. The Institute of Museum and Library Services helped cover the cost of digitizing the photographs.
The Web site was designed to be used by students as young as age 5. It has links to other resources as well as lesson plans and assignments for students at all levels. —Marc Beja
Posted on Friday June 26, 2009 | Permalink | Comment [1]Promoting 'Netiquette' in the Classroom
In today’s college classroom, it seems that more students have laptops than don’t. In many lecture halls, professors see several of their students typing away all class long. But some professors have to wonder: how many of them are taking notes, and how many of them are checking Facebook.
To help professors keep students concentrated on class work, several colleges have offered guidelines and suggestions for curbing misuse of computers in class and setting “netiquette” standards, like turning off the computer’s volume before class begins. Other college guides give tips on ways professors can use technology better in their class, as long as they comply with copyright laws.
The University of Wisconsin suggests professors implement a “no laptop time” when “laptop users must close their lids.” An online guide also says professors may want to create a policy in the event a student breaks the established laptop rules.
In past years, several law schools have banned all laptop use in class in an effort to guarantee students aren’t surfing the Internet during lectures.
Northern Michigan University’s guide, “Suggestions for Addressing Computer Use in the Classroom,” lists sample policies either limiting or prohibiting computer use that can be printed in a professor’s syllabus, and offers philosophical rationales for imposing the rules. “Laptop misuse is today’s version of having a ‘dirty’ magazine hidden in the pages of the textbook,” the guide says. “It is the student’s responsibility to use the laptops responsibly.”
The University of Dayton’s guide doesn’t dwell as much on student misuse of laptops during class time, but it offers ways professors can use computers to enhance learning strategies. — Marc Beja
Posted on Friday June 26, 2009 | Permalink | Comment [32]June 25, 2009
Should Definitions of Cheating Change in the Age of Texting?
Over at The Chronicle’s Brainstorm blogs, Mark Bauerlein raised some interesting questions this week about students’ views of cheating.
Mr. Bauerlein, a professor of English at Emory University, points to a new survey showing that about half of students have used their cellphones or other technology to cheat, and that many students do not consider their behavior to be cheating.
He suggests that they may have a point. “Don’t we see here a prime example not of the decay of personal integrity but instead the healthy spread of ‘participatory culture’?” Mr. Bauerlein wrote. “In the digital age, intelligence is a collective thing, the individual now not a repository of knowledge but a dynamic component of it. We have entered a new realm, and if the definition of knowledge has changed, then so must the definition of cheating. Right?”
Posted on Thursday June 25, 2009 | Permalink | Comment [55]Need to Learn Medicine? There's an App for That
The number of colleges offering applications for their students’ iPhones seems to grow every day. Campus maps, class schedules, and bus routes are some common ones. Now the Medical College of Georgia is pushing apps into new territory: health science education.
Starting today, student with iPhones or iPod Touches can download a calculator that will let budding opticians or ophthalmologists determine intermediate and near vision prescriptions as well as the proper lens curvatures of glasses or contacts. Students can also get an app that determines proper cholesterol levels, another that lists medical abbreviations, and a device called the Medmath Medical Calculator — which churns through 135 common medical calculations, such as cardiac output, Apgar score, and the Abbreviated Mental Test score.
The medical college worked with Terriblyclever Design, a software company founded by Stanford University students that has been rolling out apps for educational institutions. —Josh Fischman
Posted on Thursday June 25, 2009 | Permalink | Comment [3]June 24, 2009
Colleges Offer Online Help on Copyright Law for Instructors
As instructors prepare for the fall semester, colleges are trying to make sure their teachers aren’t breaking any copyright laws in their lectures.
The City University of New York’s Baruch College recently released an interactive guide to using multimedia in courses.
Baruch’s online guide begins with background information on copyrighted material, presented by a computer-animated middle-age man. Instructors can then click through the system’s “Copyright Metro,” which gives step-by-step verbal and written instructions on determining what materials can be used in courses legally. There are three “metro lines” that can be taken, depending on if the instructor plans to use the material in class or online, or if they have copyright-holder permission to use the material – which gets you a ride on the “express train” to the final stop, which says you can use the material.
Baruch is not alone in trying to prevent legal problems for itself or its professors. Among other institutions, Reed College has a traditional Web page that offers advice about using materials, with links to information from other college Web sites. The University of Maryland University College also has a site that has information for students and professors who want to legally use copyrighted material in classes and on the Internet. —Marc Beja
Posted on Wednesday June 24, 2009 | Permalink | Comment [4]June 12, 2009
Will WolframAlpha Improve Teaching or Assist Cheating?
A new Web site called WolframAlpha not only solves complex math problems, but also can spell out the steps leading to those solutions. For professors, it reopens a debate that started back with the first handheld calculators.
See the full story in today’s online edition of The Chronicle. Do you see the site as a help or a hindrance for your teaching?
Posted on Friday June 12, 2009 | Permalink | Comment [4]June 4, 2009
18th-Century Literature Gets a Makeover on the Web
Eighteenth-century literature was limited to one medium – but modern research of the period no longer has to be.
Digital Defoe, an online, interactive, peer-reviewed journal, launched earlier this week to share scholarly research from the period, which until now has been largely confined to print journals and newsletters.
The site was created by the Defoe Society, an international group that studies the work of Daniel Defoe, an 18th-century English writer most famous for his story of Robinson Crusoe, a man shipwrecked on an island. Defoe is considered by some to be the founder of the English novel.
The first issue of the journal, published Monday, is titled “Defoe 2.0,” to reflect “the ways in which digital journals and even Defoe’s own work inhabits an uncanny liminal space between material and virtual realms,” Katherine Ellison and Holly Faith Nelson, the journal’s co-editors, wrote in the introduction.
Both Mrs. Ellison, an assistant professor of English at Illinois State University, and Ms. Nelson, an associate professor of English at Trinity Western University, saw a need to create a central resource to share research about Defoe and his 18th-century contemporaries. And since Defoe himself helped popularize new several print forms, like the novel and the pamphlet, Mrs. Ellison said it made sense for the society itself to explore video and audio on the Internet.
“Some 18th-century scholars are doing the most interesting online work, but nothing is really bringing everything together,” Mrs. Ellison said. “I wanted to be able to bring together more voices, to be able to showcase some really great student works with what some of the experts in the field are doing.”
The first issue includes several pieces of research and commentary, as well as a foray into multimedia: a piece by Christopher Flynn, an associate professor at St. Edwards University, titled “Defoe’s Review: Textual Editing and New Media,” which he presented through a narrated timeline that includes video and pictures.
Mrs. Ellison said she and other professors across the country could use the site to interest more students in 18th-century literature. Though some people in her field have resisted using online publications or multimedia, she said, she thinks it can move research, and interest, forward.
“I’ve heard scholars at conferences who say we’re not ready for that yet, print is still the way to go,” Mrs. Ellison said. But “some research can be better shared through video, or audio, or with pictures. I want to show people this is a multifaceted field.” —Erica R. Hendry
Posted on Thursday June 4, 2009 | Permalink | Comment [2]June 1, 2009
Students Prefer Real Classroom to Virtual World
College students were given the chance to ditch a traditional classroom for an online virtual world. Fourteen out of fifteen declined.
When Catheryn Cheal, assistant vice president of e-learning and instructional support at Oakland University, was designing a course on learning in virtual worlds, she thought the best way to research the topic would be to immerse her class into one such world. Her thought was that the “motivating factors identified in games, such as challenge, curiosity, control, and identity presentation” would help the course along.
The result: a course taught by using Second Life, an online environment.
While the interactive style could be fun, Ms. Cheal’s students worried they were having too much fun.
In her recently published study, “Student Perceptions of a Course Taught in Second Life,” Ms. Cheal wrote that the 15 undergraduate students enrolled in the course raised concerns that too much “play” in the assignments inhibited learning. The students also cited problems with the program’s slow speed and with challenges acclimating to virtual life.
Although Ms. Cheal admits that the sample size was small, she warns others to be careful when designing new courses that may use a similar approach.
“While there is potential for interactive and engaging education in virtual worlds, those possibilities may be negated if students feel lost with a difficult interface and hardware problems or if students characterize the virtual world as a venue for play incompatible with learning,” she wrote. —Marc Beja
Posted on Monday June 1, 2009 | Permalink | Comment [37]