The Devil's Brew of Poverty Relief

The fifth in a series of 10-minute videos about the adventures and frustrations of an ordinary (but rather hirsute) General Practitioner. In this one, Dr Hairy is advised to try a bit of straight talking with one of his patients - with hilarious results! The first of three parts.

To view it on my site, go to http://www.edwardpicot.com/drhairy/franktalking1.mov ; or you can see it on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifwCH31cRCw ; or it should be on DVblog (http://dvblog.org) in the next couple of weeks.

- Edward Picot
http://edwardpicot.com - personal website
http://hyperex.co.uk - The Hyperliterature Exchange

From the Chronicle,

In a survey of 375 randomly selected students at Abilene Christian University, those who were more active on the social network were likelier to return for their sophomore year. On average, returning sophomores had 27 more friends and 59 more wall posts than did students who didn't return.

So all that time in class that student are using Facebook, well, that's increasing the likelihood that they will stay at our university? Maybe we need to have Facebook time in class for freshmen :-)

I've been thinking a lot about David Porter's post, Nowhere Near Critical Mass, and OER sustainability. David makes a strong point,

. . . my belief was that it would take actual teachers, instructors and students who could demonstrate success in an OER context to bring consolidation and sustainability to the goals of the open movement. Further, it seemed that little real effort was occurring on the inclusion or promotion of teachers and teaching, and that OpenEd conferences continued to be conversations within an insular community of theorists and advocates – not the stuff of implementation, nor a demonstration of broad impact.

I don't want to try to speak about OER in general, but when it comes to open textbook production, I agree with David. For the open textbook movement to become successful, it needs to go outside the innovators who began it, the activists who are part of the community. Regular teachers will need to be involved, and open textbook adoption and publishing will have to become a common element of an academic and teaching life.

The problem is that the OER community so far only has a successful ideal, that freely available textbook resources would be a great thing, but not a successful publishing model that works well for most teachers who might want to be authors. I agree, and I would imagine a majority of teachers would agree as well with the ultimate goal of providing universally free educational materials. But that's not enough. Teachers have many other important initiatives competing for their attention, with more than enough regular work to keep them busy. If OER wants teachers to create open textbook materials, there must be more than intrinsic rewards. Other than paying teachers (I'm purposely avoiding commercial models that involve payment), the way to do it is to make open textbook production valued in tenure and promotion.

So far, most open textbook production is a form of vanity publishing. If tenure and promotion committees don't value that in scholarship, why would they for textbook writing that would be judged less valuable, even in a fair critique? Moreover, publishing to the web in an online repository or on a wiki creates further complications because of the genres. The field of composition has discussed extensively how difficult it is for scholars to get credit for the digital media work that they do (for an early discussion of this, see Krause's Where Do I List This on My CV? Considering the Values of Self-Published Web Sites). While technology and digital publishing specialists who are building careers around such innovation can may successfully argue for open textbook publishing of this type, the average teacher is likely ill-equipped and unwilling to take the risk that the work they do will count for nothing.

Now one model that solves these problems is what we are doing at Writing Spaces: Readings on Writing. WS is an edited collection of peer-reviewed essays written by teachers for students. Teachers submit a proposal, some are selected for full manuscript development and given some developmental feedback, those are reviewed by two members of our editorial board who offer extensive feedback, then once (if) accepted, a chapter goes into copy editing where editors and the author work together on producing the polished, finished product. The volume is published as a book, and PDF versions are available online for free download under CC licenses.

The advantage? An edited collection that is a peer-reviewed book is a recognizable genre to tenure and promotion committees. Teachers know how to argue for this and only need to make the case that writing for student audiences is of value. In many non-research one institutions, it could count as a publication credit. Plus, I would also note that peer review in process of development improves the quality of the finished text. These post-publication reviews of open textbook materials on the web that some projects are doing are great "book reviews" to help teachers in adoption, but they don't influence the quality of the final project. Peer review as part of production is an important part of open source, and it should be part of open textbook publication, too. This is why of the many open textbook projects on the web, I believe that Wikibooks and similar wiki commons-based-peer-production projects are likely to result in better quality textbook materials. Only the problem with them is getting recognizable credit for an author's contribution that a tenure and review committee can see, not to mention the negative ethos of the wiki genre in academia.

I don't believe that WS's model is the only one, but I do believe the OER community has to take a serious look at how to create production models that teachers can participate in and easily receive credit for at their institutions. I will also follow up this post at a later date with some more of the benefits of the WS publication model.

I just read that Craigslist has, at least temporarily, suspended its highly profitable adult services postings. Now users trying to access those links will find a censored notification. Unfortunately for Craigslist's founders, that is precisely the part of the site that was drawing a huge amount of revenue. While I'm certainly not opposed to this action, it is hard to fight the impression that it's one more step towards fencing in the wild wild web.

I'd thought I'd throw out some characteristics of my son's generation rather than wait for ten years or so to see how they represent themselves in a Pew and American Life study. He's almost eleven years old. His is the generation that was born into Web 2.0 and other advanced digital technology. I know this isn't true for all kids his age (and it may be more true for boys--I don't know), but it's fun to imagine:

1. Many of them would rather take videos than still pictures.
2. They either have themselves, or have a friend close in age, who has put up a video on YouTube.
3. They either have themselves, or have a friend close in age, who has been in a YouTube video.
4. They have their own computer, or at least one that is shared with siblings and not the adults in the family.
5. They share websites and videos they find on the Internet.
6. They have email accounts and send and receive email on occassion.
7. They have played an MMORPG designed for kids along with other kids in their school. My son and friends at school, boys and girls alike, play Wizard 101.
8. They have mobile phones and have sent and/or received text messages.
9. Some are used to watching television and/or movies without commerical interruptions, and they will prefer the use of a DVD, Blueray, DVR, Tivo, or Netflix on demand to avoid commercials.
10. They have more than one game system, at least a DS and a console unit.
11. Cable television is not their sole, primary form of digital entertainment. Video games and the Internet have a strong, competing role for their attrention.
12. Mp3 players are the primary music listening device that they own.
13. Radio is something they listen to in the car when there are no CDs, the DS is not with them, and they forgot the mp3 player. It's the electronic media of last resort.
14. Superheroes are something one sees in movies or cartoon series, not in comics (my son is the exception; he reads Marvel comics).
15. Fantasy and science fiction--in video and in print--are often their primary genre of choice.
16. The boys read video game reviews on the Internet and in magazines and discuss them with the enthusiasm adult males read sports and talk about sports.
17. Thanks to Rock Band and Guitar Hero, the music their parents--and even younger grandparents--grew up with can be "cool" to like and to listen to.