A New Military Insurgency..PowerPoint!

A fascinating article was published in the April 27th edition of the New York Times entitled "We Have Met the Enemy and He is PowerPoint." The article describes the use (or misuse) of PowerPoint in the military. The image above was on the front page of the paper and was a slide in a PowerPoint presentation by Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal in a briefing in Kabul (Summer 2009). This image is being used as an example of the current abuse of PowerPoint in the military. Some notable comments and quotations from the article expand on the criticism of PowerPoint :

"PowerPoint makes us stupid"
“Some problems in the world are not bullet-izable”
"...the program stifles discussion, critical thinking and thoughtful decision-making"
“hypnotizing chickens"

This NYT piece mirrors articles and blog posts I have read about the use of PowerPoint in education. However, some comments on the article (in the web version) provide a rebuttal to the criticisms of PowerPoint. A portion of a notable comment is provided below. Please click COMMENTS below to give us your thoughts on this article or PowerPoint.

Comment on NYT article (April 27, 2010):
"PowerPoint is just a technology. It is the misapplication of that technology that is at the heart of the problem these military commanders are concerned about. But I'll go further and say the problem is cultural. No one wants to spend the time reading or writing technical papers that discuss the details beyond the depth that PowerPoint allows. In schools and in business people have been conditioned to look for the bullet points. Whether it's medical students learning to diagnose pneumonia or NASA managers trying to address a problem with the space shuttle, no one wants to listen to more than the bullet points. They ignore the connections between lines that form the context of the analysis and ultimately the solution."

Will You Be My Course Hero?

Course Hero is a relatively new academic social-networking site. This is an electronic repository for course notes, homework assignments, lab reports and examinations for many disciplines. Students from approximately 3,500 colleges and universities have posted material to the site. For a fee, or so many uploads to the site, students can download the electronic resources. According to the web site, 93% of the members of Course Hero report that the site helped them maintain or increase their GPA. One section of the site suggests that using its resources will allow a student to work less and receive better grades. One of the marketing slogans for the site is JOIN (course hero)-ACCESS (best resources)-ACE (your classes).

A recent article in Chemical and Engineering News outlined some frustrations by faculty members and raised the issue of copyright infringement. In the article, Eric S. Slater, manager of copyright permissions and licensing at the American Chemical Society, had the following comments:

"Anything that a professor creates for his class--lecture notes or PowerPoint presentations--is copyrighted."

"Students might think they're doing a service by uploading to Course Hero, but it almost seems to me that they are aiding and abetting Course Hero in copyright infringement."

A little searching reveals that notes and examinations from Murray State University are on this site. The availability of sites such as Course Hero raise a number of issues in higher education that must be addressed. You will be my hero if you click comments and give us your thoughts on this subject!

The Khan Academy: A Game Changer?

According to its web site, The Khan Academy "is a not-for-profit organization with the mission of providing a high quality education to anyone, anywhere." The driving force behind this academy is Salman (Sal) Khan (see clip above). According to his bio, Sal has BS and MS degrees in electrical engineering and computer science, a BS degree in mathematics and a MBA from Harvard Business School. More recently, he was senior research analyst at a Bay Area investment fund. Sal has generated over a thousand instructional videos (available on YouTube) in areas such as mathematics, biology, chemistry, physics, economics, and various areas of finance. The vision of the academy outlines its goal of providing high-quality instruction that can be delivered online (and offline) and at the pace of individual students.

I have watched several of the chemistry videos and generally found them to be of high quality and engaging. Many of the videos at the Academy web site are appropriate for college-level classes and raise important questions about how these videos (or similar videos found on the web) should or could be used in our courses. I invite you, if possible, to view a few videos in your discipline, or a related discipline, and consider the questions below. If you have any comments, please click the link below and give us your thoughts.


1. What are your thoughts on having these types of instructional videos available on YouTube? Can they make an impact on K-12 or higher education?

2. Is there a place for these videos in your courses at Murray State?

3. Should we be thinking about how to design our courses around the availability of these and other quality instructional materials available on the web?

Daniel Pink on Motivation

On his Technology and Learning Blog, Joshua Kim recently had a post about grade inflation and the possibility that grades are a discouraging force in terms of student creativity and originality. In this post, he mentions a TED talk by Daniel Pink on the science of motivation (see presentation above). This is a truly interesting talk about motivation and the apparent mismatch between what scientists have discovered about motivation and current business practices. I invite you to watch Pink's TED presentation and think about how this topic might apply to higher education.

Taking Risks in the Classroom

For a couple of years, I have been involved in a peer review of teaching program in my department. I am sure we could debate the pros and cons of such a program, but it has allowed me to reflect more on the evolution of my own teaching. While observing a probationary faculty member's class a few days ago, I began to think about how my own teaching has changed over the years. Besides using more technology, I try to take more risks in the classroom these days (insert your favorite risk-taking quote here). Over the years, I have become much more willing to try new teaching methods and implement unique ways to start class.

I was recently prescribed Tamiflu and decided to put the drug information sheet (that came with the prescription) in my biochemistry course file. I only really glanced at this information sheet, but it was clear there was information on this sheet concerning drug resistance. A few days later in my Biochemistry course, we were discussing the H1N1virus, Tamiflu and drug resistance. In the middle of class, I remembered that I had placed the Tamiflu information sheet in my notes, which most likely contained interesting and relevant information. Several years ago, I would have looked at that information sheet after class and included some of the information in the next class period. However, that day I walked over to my notes and pulled out that relatively unfamiliar information sheet and used it during class. In some ways, I felt like I was about to walk a tightrope when I pulled that sheet from my notes. It was a bit of a risk because I really did not know what drug resistance information was included on the sheet and I might not be able to effectively incorporate this information into the class discussion.

I would like to hear your thoughts on taking risks in the classroom or in online courses. Please click COMMENT below to give us your thoughts.

Top Ten Teaching Mistakes

The 2009 Teaching and Technology Forum recently concluded and it was an excellent opportunity to reflect on effective teaching practices centered around the theme of Connect-Engage-Empower. By contrast, a colleague recently sent me a link to a post at the Tomorrow's Professor Blog about the top ten teaching mistakes (written by Richard M. Felder). I am not sure if my friend was trying to send me a message or hoping I would share this post with the university community. In any event, I invite you to read the post linked below and provide your comments and thoughts on the list.

Top Ten Teaching Mistakes Post:
http://tomprofblog.mit.edu/2009/09/02/370/


Mistake #10. When you ask a question in class, immediately call for volunteers.
Mistake #9. Call on students cold.
Mistake #8. Turn classes into PowerPoint shows.
Mistake #7. Fail to provide variety in instruction.
Mistake #6. Have students work in groups with no individual accountability.
Mistake #5. Fail to establish relevance.
Mistake #4. Give tests that are too long.
Mistake #3: Get stuck in a rut.
Mistake #2. Teach without clear learning objectives.
Mistake #1. Disrespect students.

Reflections on Remediation: What Can (and Should) Be Done?

The following is a guest blog post by Dr. James Clinger in the Department of Government, Law and International Affairs.

In recent years, American institutions of higher education have increasingly taken on the task of admitting students to college who, by some standards, are not prepared to do college-level work in one or more basic subjects. Such students are often guided to developmental (a.k.a., remedial) courses that are intended to prepare them to do college level work. As pressure to admit, retain, and graduate more and more students is exerted upon colleges and universities, the proportion of the total student body in need of developmental classes is likely to increase.

Many faculty members are not very comfortable with this trend. Some would say that students who are not ready for college work should not be admitted at all. Others would say that students in need of extra coursework to prepare them for college should not be admitted to a four year institution, but should begin at a community college before transferring. Still others would like universities to do more remediation than is presently done. A recently presented conference paper by Paco Martorell and Isaac McFarlin dealing with the effects of remedial education courses in mathematics may inform this debate to some extent. A story about the paper, the paper's abstract, and an earlier draft of the full-text of the paper can be found below.

Education Week Story

Martorell and McFarlin paper


Questions for Murray State Faculty/Staff:

As a matter of policy, should Murray State or other four-year institutions admit large numbers of students in need of remediation?

Would the students be better served if they attended community colleges before transferring to Murray State or some other college or university?

If we don't admit them, will we be meeting the goals that the Council on Postsecondary Education has set for us? If we do admit them, how can we prepare them for college-level work?

Some evidence indicates that remedial classes are not always effective in reaching desired objectives. Are there some forms of delivering remedial education that have been proven effective?

Is there something that we could do differently to make developmental classes enhance learning, as well as improve rates of retention and graduation?


If you have any thoughts on the questions above, please click COMMENTS below. These are important questions that will impact the future of Murray State and the quality of education we can provide.