Computers and Human Reason – PRGM COMHR 1
Associated Term: Summer 2005
CRN: 40041
Status: **Web Registered** on May 22, 2005
Assigned Instructor: Ab Van Etten
Grade Mode: Credit/No Credit
Credits: 8.000
Level: Undergraduate
Campus: Olympia
According to the instructor, this covers stuff like Javascript, ASP, DOM, XML, and database design — all stuff I should know for my web development work but never picked up. That alone makes it worth it in my view.
I’ve had the chance during the last few weeks as the quarter winds down to think about my own philosophy behind teaching. This stems out of both my work as a writing tutor in the College’s Writing Center and as a lab aide for Logo programming with the Designing Languages and Algebra to Algorithms programs this quarter.
I’ve always had a deep appreciation for teaching, which has deepened since I started working in tutoring positions, and deepened even more as a lab aide. As a lab aide, the strategies are basically exactly the same as they are when tutoring — lead the student to the answer for whatever question they’re asking. However, the process requires more breaks from that strategy: if a student doesn’t understand something, lab aides are expected to clue them in a bit with a nudge in the right direction, which usually means giving them some portion of the answer.
I’ve found that, as a lab aide, it’s very easy to understand what the lab is asking for, and it’s also easy to know the answer to the lab (so long as you’ve done the appropriate preparation beforehand), but it’s very hard to convey what the lab is about, much less convey the answers, to students. Thus, I’ve really been struggling this quarter with coming up with good ways to explain and relate concepts back to work that they’ve already done.
I found this especially true while in the lab last Thursday. The lab itself had to do with fractals — specifically, the Koch Snowflake (also known as the Koch Curve). The process of creating the fractal is very easy — using a standard triangle, “kink out” each side in order to create a level two Snowflake. Then, to create a level three Snowflake, use all the sides in a level two snowflake and “kink” those out. The Wikipedia entry has a graphic that shows the progression quite nicely. This is basically just the same idea applied over and over. It can be applied recursively (though that’s not really a great solution), but it’s actually better to implement it recursively for levels three and up. For levels two and one, it’s better to have a separate procedure to draw them, since the logic is so different.
Relatively straightforward, but very hard to explain when you’re not supposed to give students the answers.
While the strategies are really quite similar, the result is quite different — as a writing tutor, the final result of any session with me isn’t necessarily an answer, unless the student brings in a very specific question. Most often, in addition to an answer, students get an idea of what needs to be done next in order to allow their writing to grow. Not so as a lab aide — the process stops once the student gets the answer. They can certainly move on to other projects, and we, as aides, will help them find the answer for that project, but there is no sense of programming as a process. Which is ironic — programming is a process, but that process isn’t as obvious as it is in writing.
My philosophy as a tutor has always been that writing, as a process, needs to be nurtured and recognized. Academic writing may be perceived as boring, but it sets students up with an important life skill if taken advantage of properly: the art of written communication. My job as a writing tutor is to help inspire and install that art, and to help students realize that the process is ongoing. You can’t stop after a single draft (though there are exceptions to this); one has to keep going. With programming, the process very definitely stops — once the program’s written and it runs, at least in an academic environment, you’re done with it and probably won’t touch it again.
It’s true that that’s not true in the software world at large, but for the purposes of my lab aide work, it’s good enough.
Business and Society – PRGM BUSSO 01
Associated Term: Fall 2005
CRN: 10141
Status: **Web Registered** on May 17, 2005
Assigned Instructor: Cynthia C. Kennedy
Grade Mode: Credit/No Credit
Credits: 16.000
Level: Undergraduate
Campus: Olympia
Possibly temporary registration, possibly permanent. We’ll see.
I’ve decided that I’m going to enroll in Business and Society: Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is while my application for Student Originated Software: Designing and Implementing Real-World Systems (SOS) is processed. That way, if I decided not to take SOS, I’m enrolled for something that actually works for me.
I submitted my application for SOS to the program faculty — it’ll take a week or two to hear about whether it’s accepted or not.
My registration time ticket is tomorrow (May 17) at noon. I’ll post the results.
On April 16, I had the opportunity to attend the Pacific Northwest Writing Centers Association Conference as part of the delegation from Evergreen. I thought I’d post my notes and thoughts here, though they probably won’t mean much to very many people.
Getting There: The conference was at the University of Washington – Bothell campus, which put me about 20 minutes from home and in an area that I’m quite familiar with. The trip up was uneventful, though we left at 6:30 in the morning and ended up hydroplaning half the way there due to heavy rains.
Keynote: After the Center, Then What? Writing Centers and the New Work Order
The keynote speaker for the conference was Nancy Grimm from Michigan Technological University. In it, she discussed how writing centers prepare peer tutors for their future placement in the workforce, and talked a lot about how the modern workspace mirrors the work done in writing centers nationwide. She discussed the old order versus the new order, in reference to two different approaches to management and the distribution of knowledge. The old order was when knowledge was centered amongst a particular group of people high up in the management hierarchy. The new order, on the other hand, is modern times, when knowledge has been distributed amongst employees, and when the addition or loss of an employee can drastically affect the knowledge base that a company has. Writing centers help tutors develop the capacity for ethical thinking, as well as developing an awareness surrounding their relationships to other people. She also discusses how writing center allows the development of knowledge management skills crucial within the new order, which involves literacy and the language used within writing center work: accessing information and crossing boundaries, for instance. She closed by giving a list of five things that any writing center director should do in order to maximize ethical thinking in the workplace:
None of these five points are exact quotes, but what I understood them to be. This was an excellent start for the conference, as it injected everyone with a lot of energy.
Concurrent Session A: The Ripple Effect
The first session I attended was a facilitated discussion about how to create a welcoming atmosphere for writing centers that allows both the tutor and the client to be comfortable in that environment. This was quite an interesting discussion, as I got to listen to a range of different ways that writing centers have created a welcoming environment for extremely diverse populations. There were five discussion questions, which we skipped between as appropriate. Below are my notes on each question:
Some of this was stuff I hadn’t considered, though the majority of the attendees seemed to work in centers with a much higher percentage of international students attending than Evergreen’s.
Concurrent Session B: Crossing the Line
This was essentially an ethics workshop. It presented a series of exercises used by Highline Community College to discuss and break down barriers around the ethical considerations of being a tutor. This is something that was extremely interesting to watch, since everyone had four choices after watching a short skit demonstrating a particular ethical dilemma:
The range of responses when asked why people picked their positions was very enlightening to me, and I’ve begun to notice when I do some of the things discussed in this workshop. For me personally, this was very interesting, and I may end up taking it to Evergreen’s Center Director and pitching it for inclusion in one of the staff retreats.
Concurrent Session C: Communicating with Faculty: Exploring Conference Summaries
This was a presentation on research done at Seattle University surrounding the use of conference summaries in tutoring. Essentially, the Writing Center there decided that they wanted to be able to provide some sort of feedback to faculty regarding a student’s progress in a session. A form would be completed at the end of each session and, if the student consented, that form would then be sent to the faculty for whichever class that student came in for. Some interesting results here, namely that most people declined to have that information sent to faculty and that it added a considerable burden on tutors to complete and maintain the paperwork after each session. Evergreen does something like this in response forms, but they’re used for internal tutor evaluations only. After the presentation of the research, we had a short discussion session to clarify any questions we had about the research and to give suggestions on how to improve the system.
This gave me a few ideas, on the off chance that Evergreen’s Writing Center decides to do any revamping of their attendance system in the near future.
Concurrent Session D: Conflict and Compromise: The Question of Required Tutoring
This was a presentation by Evergreen’s own Bo Kinney on whether or not centers should require students to attend sessions. This isn’t one that I can easily summarize, as I don’t have any real notes for it, but suffice it to say that it added a few interesting elements to our own internal debate surrounding required tutoring.
After all the sessions, we had a post-Conference wrap-up, which allowed various groups to give their impression of the day. I found the whole thing to be very educational, though I didn’t take the opportunity to network at all, which I kind of regret — that would have been a very useful endeavor. From my understanding, though, other members of Evergreen’s delegation networked quite well, so we’ll see how those connections add in to our work as a Writing Center.
I’m kind of thinking about possibly taking some Summer courses at Evergreen again this year, though I’m leery of being able to do so and hold down a full-time job. Currently under consideration:
Obviously, most of these are writing courses. The grammar course looks cool, but it also runs during the evenings, which might make it an interesting course to take transporation-wise. It’s only for one session, though — not even the whole quarter. The first session runs from June 20 – July 24, the second session from July 25 to August 27.
I’ve been feeling sort of frustrated lately. I suppose this is mostly because I’m taking a fifth year at Evergreen (and further enjoying the status of super senior-dom) — it feels like my work over the last four years has been unfocused. Perhaps I am falling into the trap of feeling like I should have a major in a school that doesn’t in any way support majors. There’s nothing technically wrong with having skipped around in disciplines and studied so many different things; such is the essence of a liberal arts college, and, indeed, the essence of a liberal arts degree.
Yet still, it feels as if I should be able to point at my degree and be able to say that I earned something specific. Currently, my résumé suggests that I am graduating with a Bachelor of Arts with a focus on Writing — my transcript and my credits seem to back this up, but it seems a flimsy argument at the moment because I have yet to write my summative evaluation, the document which will, once and for all, settle what my Evergreen education allowed me to learn. Perhaps this is what’s bugging me — I can’t be sure because it’s hard for me to translate it into words.
Just to give an idea of the range of the work I’ve done:
I guess I’m waiting for inspiration, and it’s not working out too well.
I’m not actually taking a program next quarter — instead, I’m taking an eight-credit independent contract. I decided not to take a full-time 16-credit load in order to allow myself a bit more flexibility in my schedule and the ability to take on a 19-hour work schedule without worrying about balancing it with a long class schedule.
The contract is entitled Inkslingers: Creative Writing and is actually what’s called a cluster contract with six other people also doing independent work in creative writing. Cluster contracts basically mean that there is some group work, but that it isn’t the primary component of the contract itself. I’ve posted a PDF version of the contract minus some crucial details needed for registration, but the text is the same as the version being submitted to Registration and Records and the Dean’s Office.
I am working once again in the Writing Center next quarter for what is currently a limited number of hours — nine out of a possible nineteen per week. The other ten hours are going towards a programming aide position for Algebra to Algorithms and Designing Languages, taught by Brian Walter and Judy Cushing, respectively. Both of these faculty are excellent , and I’ve worked with them both in the past. I’m hoping that I get to grade some assignments instead of being just a lab aide, but we’ll find out what happens — the first lab meeting is on the 31st at 8AM, and Brian told me to just show up and details would be sorted out from there.
It’s looking to be a slightly more relaxing quarter than it usually is, but, again, that’s intentional — we’ll see how relaxing it really ends up being.
I was recently offered a position as a programming lab aide for both Algebra to Algorithms and Designing Languages next quarter, but there’s a slight problem — one, I don’t know the details for this, so I don’t even know if I’m eligible, and two, the group contract I’m working on for next quarter seems to like the idea of meeting at the same time that this paid position would require me to be there.
I’ve requested some clarification from a few people, but I’ll so be all over that position if I can do it.
This is the article that I just submitted this afternoon for publication in this week’s issue of the Cooper Point Journal. I’m not certain whether it will get published or not based on the response from the Journal’s editorial staff, but they said they would make every effort to give me some space in the issue. Here’s hoping.
Dispelling Enrollment Growth Myths
Peter Ellis
There are a number of misconceptions amongst the student body regarding the work of the Enrollment Growth DTF. I would like to take this opportunity to address some of the more glaring ones.
First: the myth that this college has a choice to grow or not grow. In fact, with the construction of Seminar II, the College accepted the condition set upon it by the state Legislature that the population of the College would expand to 5,000 students by the 2014-15 academic year. This growth will not be all at once, for fear of diluting the student population and core values of the College, in addition to putting undue stress on College support offices. Rather, this growth will be spread out across the next ten years.
Second: all growth does not have to (and likely will not) take place solely on the Olympia campus. Concerns regarding the utilization of space across all campuses are fully justified, though the impact of these proposals on space utilization is currently unknown. Several proposals exist to expand the offerings of Tribal and Tacoma programs, as well as expanding the base of Evening/Weekend studies, though the bulk of the proposals focus on expanding Olympia campus offerings.
Third: that this proposed growth lies outside of Evergreen’s usual growth rate. Over the past 20 years, the College has grown an average of 90 FTE per year. FTE stands for Full Time Equivalency, and is the measure by which the State Legislature mandates growth. An undergraduate FTE is actually slightly less than Evergreen’s full-time credit load – 15 credits rather than 16. Graduates, however, have an FTE of 10 credits. One of these FTEs represents a single student taking a full-time credit load. If we apply this rate of growth over the next ten years, the College will reach 5,000 students by the 2014-15 academic year. The role of this DTF is to shape that 90-student-per-year growth in ways consistent with the College’s core values while still providing a workable budget to the College administration.
I realize that this is not a comprehensive list of misconceptions present amongst the student body. The DTF is fully aware that the level of student involvement in its process needs to be addressed. I will be working with the new student representative on the DTF, Rachel Williams, in order to increase the number of opportunities that students have to provide input into the process. As always, however, such opportunities are dependent upon students wanting to be involved in this process. By all means, don’t wait for the DTF to hold conversations with students – have your own conversations. Kick around ideas, express your concerns, then contact me – I want to know what you think.
Peter Ellis serves as a student representative on the Enrollment Growth DTF and Enrollment Coordination Committee.