!anaj ,em s’taht

In other words: I am grading mini-treatments that students of mine have written (really the absolute final assignment for me on this job!). If anybody has a suggestion for an interpretation of one of the following passages: They’re more than welcome!

Ralph looks crestfallen to the floor. His right hand does angle forming to his hip. His left moves through his hair. His head shaking, not knowing if he should cry or laugh. The cell rings. Suzie goes to the table and assumes the call.

While I am in the process of writing the very last evaluations of work students have submitted in the semester, I begin to realize how wonderful a world without these students is going to be. Most of them are ok, of course, some are even wonderful, but there is always a certain amount of people who are dragging the whole course down. And, quite annoyingly, they are the ones who get the most attention, thanks to an evaluation system that doesn’t discriminate between differing qualities of feedback.

I did the last course evaluation on Tuesday, in which students got the opportunity to fill a form and cover another page with their ranting about the course. If they are mature enough, this can be a very fruitful exercise, but if they’re not, they will just write down that the course was boring and a waste of time and hand it back to you with the attitude ‘I was bored - you deal with it!’.

It’s quite amazing: They really write ‘boring’ - and one might wonder where they get this idea from. It’s not only because course evaluations weren’t actually done when I was a student - it’s because a label of this would never ever have come to my mind. I don’t think I have ever been bored in any course or seminar. Even if I was not particularly interested in a subject (but I get easily drawn into ANY subject), I was still able to see that it is a matter of my own commitment whether or not I got something out of it. But things seem to be different in a world that celebrates consumerism.

So on Tuesday, at least half of the students in one group of the digital story telling course wrote that ‘the digital story part was boring’. And the funniest part is yet to come - they truly think that this is the tutor’s problem, that the tutor should simply offer something ‘more interesting’, and that they would be able to learn if the topic was interesting (and pardon me, we are talking about a digital story telling course here, not about grammar revision - they couldn’t recognize it had something to ). And they can neither be bothered by the fact that others probably learned something or created good story - those others must be nerds or the teacher’s pet.

Just allow for a moment to examine the underlying concept of learning here: They obviously seem to believe that a person from a certain age (probably puberty) is endowed with a certain set of interests, and that these interests are going to define and limit what the person is going to be able to learn in the future. Absolutely incredible - I suppose it would be pointless to tell them something about the joys I had felt when translating middle-Dutch prayers into a German, an activity for which I developed a predilection when I was 22, without hitherto having shown any interests in that area. The boring-sayers wouldn’t understand that. They would simply assume that I must have been born an odd person, and not that one can learn from anything and anyone if one manages to maintain an open mind and an open heart

Just a note on the side: This was also the group in which many students submitted stories which didn’t draw on the rules of story telling we had worked on together (in short: there was neither a particular change, nor did the ‘main character’ learn anything) and which, admittedly, were not particularly interesting. After having watched their own, mostly plot-less and message-free stories, and after I asked them to re-examine their idea of good story telling, someone said: “The most important thing is that a story must be funny.” Those around him nodded. They couldn’t further define what their idea of ‘funny’ was, and clearly didn’t see the problem with their definition. But it was clear to them that most of these stories were not funny, and that digital story telling as taught by me, as a consequence, must be boring.

I’m normally trying to make a student see the construction of their own verdict, even if the verdict is as debased as their ‘boring’ verdict. But meanwhile I am sooo fed up with trying to make them think that, for the first time ever, I said that ‘boring’ was not a qualified statement, and that it would be up to them to make an effort to get the most out of a course and to really learn something. I can’t remember all I said, probably something about their responsibility for their own learning, but I could go on about this forever. It as a relief to see my view supported by my colleague (with whom I had done the course) who said that the course had actually been about _them_ - their stories, their CVS - implying (though not saying explicitly) that _they_ were actually boring if they thought the course was boring. I couldn’t agree more

It also seems as if this ‘boring’ feedback is heard particularly often by students of media design - sometime is think this is the flip-side of offering content-based English course: that some of them become unable to see what they have learned on the level of language and communication.

In any case, and even if it is just a few folks in every semester who are just particularly lazy and particularly loudly tooting their horn: I am so relieved not to have to deal with any more passive learners in the future, no more with people who think that courses and lecturers are there to entertain them. Good-bye, wasteland of the degree mill - I cannot WAIT to move on to something else!

I just got the best course evaluation ever today from one of the two groups with whom I am doing (did) the Creative Writing for Film course. They even said that this was the best course in the whole semester - and they had courses in interactive design with flash, game theory, leadership and management, media technology and navigation design. Victory at last So good to finally hear that - after all that pointless criticism from the degree administration that I am asking too much from the students, that the students want to produce commercials when I am asking them to reflect on themselves, that I am being too personal in my feedback. I am the fucking ONLY lecturer who gives them feedback, which is probably why they can’t deal with it - and today’s group even said that it was good to receive feedback. Pheew. So thank you, 19th of June, that was really kind of you.

One of the things I’ll miss once I have left this place will be my creative Writing class… It is an amphibian type of class anyway: Officially a course in English as a Second Language, but as such a content-based course, I sought to marry the CLIL approach (Content and Language Integrated Learning) with the best of PBL (Problem-Based Learning) this time, and that in course titel Creative Writing for Film. While the PBL in particular puzzled the students in the beginning (it always does), I can see now that it did really contribute to creating an atmosphere in which students take responsibility for their learning (I sound so much like a teacher Instead of half of the students dozing off, they are all proactively engaging in discussions now, even in the one group that had a difficult start because one of the members blocked the PBL approach by ridiculing it (students have to appoint a moderator and a scribe, which they hate, and the tutor is supposed to shut up in the crucial first lessons, which most tutors hate, too). Using the aim of writing a good plot synopsis as a vehicle today, they even seemed to appreciate the grammar revision I did with them today (which was the second in two years). Next week I am going to have individual meetings with them to discuss and improve their story concepts - and that’s definitely something that I enjoy and that I am going to miss…

I’ve been a regular to the blogosphere since August 2006, and a regular blogger (one post per day, except when I am on vacation) for four months. This practice has fundamentally changed the boundaries of what I used to consider private and public. Things like using an IUD, for instance, I don’t think I would have wrote about on my first website, around 1998, over at tripod. (Btw, they used to call themselves “one of the leading personal publishing communities on the Web”, but have now hopped on the blog bus as well.) As I’ve probably written somewhere before, using a diary did never make much sense to me in the past - it just didn’t appeal to me to write something that isn’t addressed to someone. But who’s the address of blogging? Some individuals of course, both real life and blogosphere friends, although not immediately. Not in these same way as in writing (an email or letter) directly to them. The public? In a way. But with a difference. It’s as if blogging is also a way of getting reconciled with the world, with the things you’re doing, the problems you’re confronting. I suspect that this type of ‘public’ operates very much in a super-ego fashion - it would be worthwhile to examine this closer, but that’s actually not the topic I wanted to write about today.

Occasion for this intro is that I am going to use this blog today to write about a personal conflict I had with someone. This is definitely another step towards the blurring of the public and the private, or maybe even an attempt of making my concern heard by the super-ego that can accept or dismiss my request (following my half-baked theory above).

What is peculiar about this conflict is that, in our own minds, we both are right. It is an illustration of the great degree of subjectivity to which our perception of a situation is subjected. It explains why wars get started: both parties being trapped in their own little constructions of their world.

[...EDIT...]

I’ve changed my mind meanwhile. I am not going to write about this on the blog, at least not in the detailed way that I wanted to. It might be better, if you think of the death threats that some female bloggers are receiving these days. I’ve wondered in the past how Lenina’s ‘BF’ might respond to her posts about him, or his friends, which are not always favourable, but maybe he doesn’t know the address. Anyhow, explicit communication about this might only make the situation worse, as the person might read this blog and get offended (not a blogger….).

Although it would be a story worthwhile sharing, featuring dissent arising from using diverging terminology from different disciplines, misunderstanding and mistrust originating from wrong assumptions about the workings of technology, a clash of gendered behaviour, and a mutual pushing the buttons of each other’s inferiority complexes (I don’t know exactly which buttons exactly I pushed, but I know which of mine were activated: Never say something to a TEFL person that would make it appear as though you thought TEFL folk weren’t proper academics. They already think they are not, and being a TEFL person alone gives most of them a sense of failure. Most of them have turned to teaching English because it was their last exit to a regular income. More about the inferior complexes of TEFL people to be found at the English droid’s page.)

A brief excerpt of the actualized gendered behaviour (also suggesting that the argument arose via email):

masculine: “You are wrong. That’s my view. And I don’t believe you. I am not going to respond to anything you write about this from now on.”
feminine: keeping up the the communication via email nonetheless, trying to substantiate that she was falsely accused, animating the other side to respond…

This example of masculine behaviour, btw, reminds me of the character of the patriarch played by Amitabh Bachchan in Kabhi Khushi Kabhie Gham (already mentioned a couple of times on this blog). The patriarch rejects his adoptive son for marrying the wrong woman and declares him a persona non grata. Talking about him is no longer condoned. Numerous attempts are made (mainly by women or characters with feminine connotations) to animate him to rekindle the communication about and with the son. But all attempts are brutishly silenced by the patriarch:

“I’ve said it. That’s it. Bas.“

I think this post should end on a positive note nonetheless. There’s nothing better for that than a sequence from a Bollywood movie. I’ll pick one from the end of KKKG, when everybody is reunited in wedding and happiness, and the patriarch appeased.

God, I love this movie. I’m not normally a fan of Hritik Roshan, but I just love his little tongue in cheek dance in the first part of this scene.

Just returning from class today - in every bunch of students there are one or two that isolate themselves from the rest. I am probably more sensitive and pick this vibe more easily up than others, probably because I used to ooze this sense of isolation too when I was teenager/young adult. I used to be the loneliest person in a crowd - and looking back at those days, I can see that I was the one who built those walls and obstacles around myself, and that the others were merely respecting the signposts that I had put up myself.

Nevertheless, it’s always heartrending for me to see that happen in a group of students. There is one in our group of incoming (i.e. exchange) students who does this very same thing - there are two more students of his nationality in the group, but one of them is quite a loudmouth, so not exactly the kind of person that the silent ones are likely to enjoy in their company. I suppose it is not a big surprise that the ones that isolate themselves are often the more intellectual and sensitive ones. I’ve always wondered what I could do in order to help them, but I guess there is nothing one can do, except seeing to it that they are well integrated, and also that they get to show their talent, of which they often have many or a very special one. And they have many strengths which they might not be able to see - they are self-contained, sensitive to all sorts of intellectual input and critical, autonomous thinkers. Oh, and I have never found one of those making fun of education (or teachers in the way that intellectuality is often mocked by the less gifted ones (and society at large, let’s not forget that).

But coming out of their snail shell is nothing that you can force them to do - I would not have been able to do that back then, because one is only able to do that once one has become strong enough to deal with the world without this type of protection. Nevertheless, whenever I see this happen, I would so much like to show these individuals that they are special, and that there is no need for isolating themselves.

With regard to an exchange semester: That changed a lot for me ten years ago too. Just getting out of the context I was in, and exploring and expressing myself in a different language did most of the trick. I know that I could have gotten much more out my year abroad had I been more daring in social terms, but there is nothing one could have done at that moment. I just hope that the exchange semester is going to be a good experience for this guy and maybe that he stops keeping himself out of the way of everyone - and also hope that our local students do a better effort at integrating the exchange students than they have done so far (the ones that always did the best job at that are, unfortunately, abroad themselves at the moment).

Today for a less topical and more personal post. So now I’ve met the “new semester”, i.e. the students who are actually in their second semester, but whom I hadn’t met yet. It’s always nice to deal with the “fresh students”, i.e. the ones who haven’t been disillusioned yet Also, it seems to be a rather lively bunch this year, with the proficiency in English being probably even a bit higher in average than normally. And the degree program is slowly beginning to come into swing. This university adopted the Bachelor/Master system three years ago, which is fairly early for an Austrian university, and of course it took a while until the nuts and bolts were worked out. But worse than the actual curriculum problems were the fights and panicked attempts to save the situation that arose around it. Partly justified fights, partly political fights to draw away the attention from other issues and to increase one’s power, false and justified accusations, etc. etc.

The worst of alle probably was that all parties instrumentalized the students to some extent: often unknowingly of course. Some thought that it would be the best to listen to and take serious each and every complaint that came from a students. The long term result of that was that no one really knew whether we were really in a crisis or whether the lazy students had simply become the opinion leaders. Also the students became frustrated - no wonder, if the institution itself doesn’t seem to believe in itself, how can you assume that you have made the right choice studying here? How are you supposed to understand that the value of your studies depends upon what you make of it more than on anything else? Of course there is a difference between Harvard and Pemberton College - just as there is a difference between a Harvard and a Pemberton candidate.

But with every new semester, this seems to slightly get out of the school’s system. Seeing that this is indeed the case is a comforting thought. In that sense it was a good day today - although I also got an email from a student today who wanted to know whether the mark he or she got was the final one: “as you can guess i’m not really satisfied :-)” The student got a B. Do they really expect me to respond to that? Tsk. (I didn’t respond, asking whether she wasn’t satisfied if she got a B; I’m simply too harmony-oriented

Daily Lent (Day 14): One thing about Lent that I might keep up is having just plain bread during the day, i.e. while I work. I taught from 9:50 to 1 today, then had to hurry to a meeting, leave the meating early to get to my next class at 2 and then finished teaching at 3.30. All I had to eat this far were two plain breadrolls, but I must say the I feel really good. Better than I would have felt if I had had a Leberkässemmel, a truly Austrian/Southern Germany delicacy which goes for just 1.50 at the cafeteria
Call it the Hamburger of the Alps, but rumours has it that it consist of 70% fat (and 15% pig poo;-). Ha! Urban myths uncovered, according to Wikipedia, there are ‘only’ 26g of fat contained in 100g of Leberkäs, and 2000 kilojoule (about 480 calories) in one Leberkässemmel (which sounds ok, actually… only that there are absolutely no vitamins in Leberkäs One way or another - I am happy to give up Leberkäs for Lent, but I would NEVER give it up for ever!

Ha! I am actually sitting in a classroom right now and my students are working on their syllabus scanning task. They never ever read the syllabus properly (nor listen to me when I explain it) and in the end, when they have to fill out the evaluation forms, they tick “Disagree” for the item “The aim of the course was clearly explained at the beginning”. Hence the syllabus scanning task - even if they tick “Disagree”, I know for sure that they are wrong Teachers are such nitpickers, aren’t they? Seeing yourself develop a teacher personality can be really painful at times.

Daily Lent (10): Yesterday wasn’t a good Lent day. I had fish and rice for lunch and later had coffee and it seems as if the two didn’t go together well. I was too sick to eat anything else for the rest of the day, and I had to stop with my yoga practice halfway because I felt so nauseous that I had to throw up Had to force myself to eat something thereafter and found that plain bread was the best. Still felt dizzy this morning.

I’ve just realized with a mild shock that February is almost over. No wonder with its measly 28 days. Bad news is that my teaching starts again in a week from now, while I assumed it to start in two weeks! There goes my weekend On top of that, I am planning to revise my Creative Writing Course to integrate Problem-Based Learning element (for the input sessions) and to teach a course on Digital Story Telling for the first time. Oh no! Helluva lot of work waiting for me that needs to be done in too little time - and we only just finished the grades for last semester!

My temporary absentmindedness almost caused my Lent plan to break down! I prepared rice with pepper and garlic in my rice cooker. Because it comes out very hot (and to add some taste) I wanted to pour Balsamico bianco (white vinegar) over the dish - and instead grabbed the bottle of concentrated pear-mint juice! I shoved one bite into my mouth before I realized my mistake… and there went my carefully prepared meal

But I swear I didn’t swallow!

Surprise! At the end of the day, I manage to crank out another post, as I, even more surprisingly, managed to crank out a paper before the day ended.

It’s a proposal for the Microlearning conference in Innsbruck this summer. An old school mate pointed me to it, and its going to be nice to attend the conference with him. Provided they accept us.

The last conference (no surprise) was fairly male and age-dominated, even if they managed to push the lady on the left into the frame a couple of times.

Anyhow, here is the abstract of my proposal:

The Dark Side of the Force:
The Issue of Microplagiarism in Microlearning

Based on the analysis of authentic examples of plagiarism in student assignments, this article proposes the term ‘microplagiarism’ to describe a new kind of plagiarism which uses relatively short sections of arbitrary sources and combines them to form a bigger, seemingly unified text. The authors examine to which extent learning through plagiarizing may be an effective strategy in some areas of language learning and discuss the difficulties in separating microlearning from microplagiarism. The current gap between the digital and the academic sphere and their methods of circulating and continuing knowledge is identified as a cause for the increase of plagiarism. While the hope is expressed that the Semantic Web will take care of this issue, it is suggested for the time being to minimize the risk by setting students tasks that don’t encourage plagiarism.

A friend sent me a link to the Scholar ship which - pun intended - is indeed a ship, a cruise liner, packed with scholars, students and teaching staff alike. The Scholar ship will depart in September 2007 from Piraeus (Greece) and, via Lisbon, Panama City, Papeete, Suva, Sydney, Shanghai and Okinawa, will arrive in Kobe, Japan, three months later.

But it’s not just a seacruise, it’s a university set afloat, offering undergraduate and graduate courses in Business & Management, Communication & Advertising, International Political Science & History, Conflict, Peace and War Studies, Cultural Studies, Social Anthropology, Sustainable Development, Art History, Fine Arts, Literature and Performing Arts - TO NAME JUST A FEW…. check out their study programme.

The second trip, starting in January 2008, begins in Kobe and goes back to Piraeus, this time via Cape Town and Buenos Aires. They’re still looking for students ($ 20,000 for one trip) and have just announced that they’re giving away 50 scholar ships (meaning that you pay only half the price). Also, they’re looking for ESL (English as a Second Language) staff… Am I tempted? Hmm, I guess I would go nuts if I were trapped on board a ship for three months, above all as a teacher, meaning approachable for all…. but the thought of seeing all those places is rather neat…

Day I-don’t-wanna-know of my grading spree and I’ve meanwhile fully realized that there is no fighting back of plagiarism no more. At a rough guess, 30 - 50% of the assignments I’ve read so far are plagiarized (from mildly to heavily), and I went to great lengths in proving that they are (and no, we do not have any of those gorgeous software programmes that automatically detect plagiarized documents which “they” promised us a while ago). I’ve come to think now that the sole benefit of my effort might be that the students in question are going to refrain from stealing intellectual property in the future - but that’s probably just wishful thinking.

One of them first copied the Wikipedia article on one of the films she wanted to review and then began rephrasing and changing sentence structures throughout (while keeping to the general structure and content of the copied article). Of course that doesn’t change much about the nature of her actions: It’s still someone else’s work that she pretends to be her own.

I suppose she was unaware of that. Incrrrredible.

EDIT: I like my blog better with pictures, hence you’ll have to put up with me posting arb pictures every now and again.

I’ve eventually started reading and marking film reviews - and after four only, I already have sufficient material to make my point about microplagiarism. How nice - and how exasperating

Outside it’s still looking dim and unlikely to change over the next days. Still no snow below 1300 meters.If we had some snow, at least the light would be brighter. Cannot wait to get out of this fog hole. Normally, in the early days of January, the Fön wind comes up to chase away the snow and clouds for a couple of days. But what if there’s never been any? Hard to say.

And I feel a cold coming up. I need something to cheer me up today.

Will Cute Overload be able to do the trick?

Nah, I don’t like canines anyway. Ugly mug.

My holiday is now officially over - I’ve spent the day printing and filing student papers (and taking care of other arb administrational duties such as tending the course description software manually after it has overwritten half of my courses - buggy system, this). They had to write a film review which was due today. It’s half past four now and only half of the film reviews have trickled in. That after the deadline has been extended by ten days. Tsk.

That’s the first thing to worry about student papers: Is everybody going to submit their work in time? Are they able to take this responsibiliy for themselves?

The second thing to worry about is: Is it going to be their own work?

Plagiarism is ever increasing these days - in particular in English, as fewer and fewer students see the point of composing their own pieces if it’s already spelled out somewhere on the internet. I tried to circumvent the worst by asking them to compare two films (as comparative film reviews are not as numerous on the web as single ones) - and it seems as if the majority of them came up with rather interesting choices (judging from the pairings of films only, I haven’t actually read them yet). If they take interest in the topic, that’s one rule of thumb, then they are less likely to just copy from somewhere else. If you take pride in your own thoughts, you are not going to adorn yourself with borrowed plumes. So let’s hope for the best.

The most difficult task for me, however, is going to be to identify microplagiarism. I’m actually planning to write a paper about this - tiny bits and pieces, phrase to sentence long, which are incorporated into the overall writing. This raises the question of authorship. Authorship apparently cannot be claimed for idioms (e.g. adorn yourself with borrowed plumes which I’ve just looked up), but begins somewhere beyond the lexical. Yet it apparently extends to dictionary entries (i.e. excluding language dictionaries) - and Wikipedia is the resource my students use most these days.

I use Wikipedia too, and frequently, but would not dare to openly consult it for an article. The article I wrote a while ago was already somewhere on the edge - I had mainly consulted internet resources, as most of the European Union documents these days are circulated via the web. But of course no infringement of authorship is possible if you reference properly - normally, but references in a film review would be a bit odd, wouldn’t they? And I had explicitly asked the students to adopt a journalist’s style, rather than an academic’s style.

Another film review just came in. Let’s hope they all submit in time - I am less than keen on failing anyone. Some students, however, seem to think one is constantly after them - truth is, all lecturers hate failing students. If we get angry, that’s only because of the inconvenient extra work this means to us Setting up an additional exam, appointing a committee, having the feeling of ruining someone’s future. That last bit in particular.

Today I “wrapped up” the third semester course - the film reviews which students have to write are still due, but no more teaching will take place. The third semester started earlier and many courses were blocked to give students an opportunity to begin their exchange semester earlier. In Austria, the winter semester normally commences in October and ends in the final days of January; summer semester begins in March and ends in June. In most non-German-speaking countries, however, semesters or trimesters start in January.

The blocked courses were occasionally a bit tedious (180 minute classes can hardly be anything else, both for students and me), but at least I also get the benefit of not having to teach this semester in January

Tomorrow are the final three seminars for me before my holidays begin on Friday. Can’t wait! On Saturday evening we’ll be in Vienna (Wien is German name) the capital of Austria and only city that has reasonable metropolitan dimensions in Austria. Although I have never been there, I have secretly already fallen in love with Vienna (and am secretly cherishing the idea of moving to Vienna one day - it’s 2.2 million people vs. 40,000 in the Dornbirn area!).

Who’d have been surprised at the results of this Googlefight?

Truth is, I really would have expected Dornbirn (”Thorny Pear”) to do worse.