Sondheim for students

Although I think all four people who read this blog also read Chris Uggen, I'm passing along a rather funny video link he provided today.

In the annals of bad marketing

I recieved an email this evening from United Airlines

We'd like to remind you that time is running out on the invitation to join Ameniti^®, United's exclusive travel club that was designed especially for you – the frequent traveler who expects world-class service and appreciates excellent value.

It appears for the small sum of $300 a year, I can:

1. Bring a companion for free (everytime I purchase an unrestricted full fare ticket).
2. Get double miles
3. Get 25,000 miles just for signing up.

Of course this does nothing for someone like me who:

1. Never purchases unrestricted full fare tickets.
   
2. Has thus far been unable to fruitfully redeem the miles already accumulated (I have something like 75,000 miles banked at Northwest and have been denied every time I've wanted to upgrade to first class, or tried to use the miles for a round-trip domestic ticket.
3. Have little reason to fly United Airlines.

Other than that, I suppose this is an appropriate marketing ploy.

...everybody is for it, except maybe the students

So says James Renfield in a short essay on the Discussion Class (hat tip to Rex at Savage Minds). Renfield writes that while he is in favor of discussion-oriented teaching methods, he finds himself using them less.

one of my students said that he found the previous two classes very helpful. When he said, "You took control," I replied, "You mean I was lecturing." The student who happened to be standing next to him said, "Oh, that's what that's called."

I have a similar reaction to the lecture / discussion continuum. In graduate school, I was convinced that lecture is an evil tool of indoctrination and domination. I became convinced (somewhat self-righteously, which was the currency of my grad program) that learning should be discursive, multivocal, and nuanced. We were into giving everyone voice. However, now that I'm doing this stuff for a full time gig, I'm starting to recognize that a discussion, in order to be productive, needs to be anchored to some kind of authoritative structure.

Renfield references this fear of authority (or in his words, hierarchy) in pedagogy. This distrust of hierarchy is something to be celebrated:

One of the great discoveries of postclassical civilization is that every soul is valuable; everyone has something to say; everyone deserves to be heard. We talk about this when we talk about learning from our students. This is one of the things we teachers say, always with a tone of self-satisfaction.

But free-wheeling ungrounded discussions seem to fail the learning objective. I recall sitting in a discussion-oriented course taught by a colleague where students were offering opinions left and right. Many of these opinions reflected a fundamental ignorance of broader context and specific social dynamics. Sure, as the instructor, I tried to raise these issues discursively; but when all opinions have equal weight, few took my points for what they were: explicit corrections, not suggestions.

Renfield contrasts the free-wheeling, let a thousand flowers bloom discussions with the hole in the board method (characterized by Ben Stein in Ferris Bueller's Day Off). This is discussion in name only... the instructor knows what the right answer is and asks the class to fill in the blank. I used this format today...

me: does anyone know what form of crime is the most costly in terms of property loss?

student1: Burglary?

me: nope, not Burglary

student 2: Arson?

me: nope, something much more benign

student 3: White Collar Crime?

me: we're getting warmer, but that form of crime typically is restricted to elites...

And so it went on for a few minutes before someone finally hit upon occupational theft. This can be an effective way to keep a class engaged; but I find it often backfires as I ask vague, poorly worded questions and students tire of the "guess what Colyer is thinking" game.

We typically see lecture contrasted with discussion. Some argue that there is a disconnect between the learner and the instructor... that lecture is mechanical. Renfeild counters this argument by pointing to one of his favorite teachers, who made exclusive use of the lecture method.

He had extraordinary classes in which he improvised his lectures and was so interactive with the students that they felt part of the process the whole time. At the end of ninety minutes, I'd be astonished to realize that nobody had said a word except Henry. He was learning from his students what it was he could get them to understand, or what he could get away with.

This is the kind of lecturer I aspire to be. I mostly teach large (80 to 100 student) sections of Criminology and Criminal Justice. In the past, particularly in Criminology, I lectured mechanically. I outlined lists and the students copied them down. There was very little dynamic going on. This semester, I'm making a real effort to lecture by pursuing a question. Undoubtedly, I'm going to keep using the Ben Stein hole in the board method... but I will try to be flexible in letting the question emerge as the class moves forward.

I'm glad I found Renfield's essay. His website also includes several other short essays about pedagogy in the University. I'm going to do some more browsing before preparing my next class.

Albany, Airlines, Amtrak, and Annoyances

I'm planning on traveling to Albany this fall for a symposium on the future of death penalty research. My friend Janet has graciously offered to let me crash at her house (big scarry dog not withstanding).

According to Mapquest, the drive from Morgantown to Albany is roughly 8 hours. While not a horrible drive, that's more time than I want to spend in the car for a work-related thing. So, I started pricing out alternative options.

Flying

I was pleasantly surprised. I can buy a plane ticket for less than $300. Though this will involve driving to Pittsburgh (70 minutes), hopping a puddle-jumper to Dulles, and then flying a big plane to Albany. The last time I checked into airfare for this trip, a ticket couldn't be had for less than $400. I'll have to strongly consider it.

However, with the new airport security hassles... one must be at the airport ungodly early. With the connection and layover, the flight will take nearly 4 hours. Getting to the airport 2 hours early bumps us up to 6 hours and then the 70 mile drive to Pittsburgh during rush hour bumps us up to more than 7 hours. Alternatives are looking attractive.

Amtrak

Well if its going to take me several hours regardless of my transportation, I figured I'd check out the train. For $180, I can board a train in Pittsburgh at 7:00 a.m. and arrive in New York City at 5:00 p.m., then wait 2 hours for a northbound train to Albany. I think I'll drive.

Rock your socks off

I just discovered that the greatest rock-n-roll band in the world is making a movie.

Hail the D.

How far we've come

I was reading old newspapers yesterday in the Archives and came across the following announcement in the January 9, 1947 edition of the Logan (WV) Banner.

The P.T.A. is screening an entertaining and informative film this Saturday: How to get the most out of your refridgerator.

I wish that film were available in the archives.

Music for procrastination

I'm in a singer-songwriter groove right now. One of the best places to purchase this genre of music is Paste Music. Paste publishes a magazine that includes a free CD sampler in every issue. It was through that magazine that I discovered Ric Hordinski's amazing ambient guitar work. The Paste Music store makes available a handful of free Mp3s from its catalog. Over the weekend I discovered a new artist (well, new to me): Jonathan Rundman.

One of the free Mp3 titled My Apology was from Rundman's concept album Sound Theology. (Mp3 should be available through that link). Rundman oddly reminds me of chaste, male, Liz Phair. There are imperfections in his voice that work with the music and he takes chances lyrically. In this song, he is making his confession.

i'm sorry for being so cynical
but i'm surrounded by bigots and fools
who say your love is a heavenly paycheck
and faith is all about rules
but i'm guilty of going the opposite way
in the things i do and i say
when i carelessly discount my freedom
and i sit here cheapening grace

Check it out.

Boy I wish this were true.

Bill Mallonee sings:

why is joy something i must steal
starving skeletons looking for a meal
out in the graveyard the church bells peal
earth has no sorrow heaven can't heal

I didn't do nothing illegal or anything like that,

So says former Auburn University tailback and alleged sociology student Carnell Williams. Last week the New York Times published a story suggesting that professor Thomas Petee provided independent study instruction to 18 football players in the 2004-2005 academic year. Collectively, these athletes earned a 3.31 GPA in Petee's classes but only a 2.14 in their other classes.

I first learned about the story from Jeremy who wrote:

the open secret that I didn't appreciate when I got into this business is that, at many (most? Virtually all?) places, sociology counts on lazy, lost, last-resort-looking and otherwise low-achieving students as an important source of revenue--which isn't to say we don't strive hard to lure bright students as well, as long as they aren't too politically conservative--and that's a kind of systematic bargain that in the aggregate makes abuse and publicized incidents like this every once in awhile inevitable.

As for Cadillac not doing "nothing" wrong... well, er, Mr. Williams, I can only presume that Petee did not grade your grammar. As for grade manipulation and football eligibility, I can only sigh. When I was at Syracuse, I remember a fellow graduate student complaining about athletic department pressure (I have no way of verifying that she was pressured; but I also have no reason to disbelieve her story). I can honestly say that I've never been pressured by an athletic department to boost an athlete's grade; and I believe I give every student the grade their work deserves.

I'm becoming convinced that big-time athletics should not commingle with academics. I say this as a football fanatic. As my wife will testify, from September until January, I spend every Saturday glued to my television watching college football. I played college football (NAIA, Division II). In fact, I wouldn't have gotten into college without football. I was admitted to college on academic probation thanks to the football team's lobbying. I was a poor student in High School with a lackluster SAT. It was in football that I first realized that I wasn't dumb. It's an incredibly complex game involving coordination of 11 people running full speed and reacting to 11 other people also moving at full speed. You can't be an idiot and play college football. In short, football has been very, very, good to me (that is, if we discount the 5 knee operations).

Yet, from where I sit now, college football seems to be a distraction. Not just for the athletes but for non-athletes too. ESPN is coming to town on Thursday September 14th for a 7:30 p.m. game vs. Maryland. I teach a Criminology class from 4:00 to 5:15 on Thursday evenings. Starting at around noon on that day the University will begin closing parking lots and preparing for the 60,000 people coming to campus. The traffic gridlock will start right around the time my class begins. At least one student will plead with me to cancel class on "gameday". I'll refuse and teach the 20 or so students (my enrollment is 100) who consider their classes more important than getting a good seat at the ball game. Last winter, a student actually criticized me on my evaluations for having class on the day of the Backyard Brawl basketball matchup between WVU and Pitt. I was criticized for doing my job!

I wish there was a way out of this cognitive dissonance. I will continue to watch college football and basketball. I will continue to hold class on the night of big nationally televised athletic contests. [Indeed, I'll probably go home after teaching the empty room and watch the game on ESPN]. But I do wish that we could figure out our priorities.

ASA Registration Fees

Is it just me, or did ASA significantly raise their registration fees for the annual meeting? The last time I went to ASA (as a registrant) the fee's were less than $50 for students. This year, students pay $65 and "Regular" members pay $165. I hope we get a decent tote bag this year for 135 clams.

Tragedy at Taylor

Taylor University, my alma mater (class of 1994) is in the news. Five students were killed in an accident on April 6th. A tractor trailer crossed the median of I-69 just miles from the Upland, Indiana campus. Earlier this week, we learned that two of these students were misidentified. I can't begin to imagine how awful this must be for both families. In one case, a family's hopes have been crushed; not only must they go through the grieving process, but they also have invested an incredible amount of emotional energy and worry wishing for the recovery of their loved one. In the other case, a family who thought they had burred their loved one, is told their daughter has been alive all this time.

I don't typically comment on these things. My heart goes out to all the families involved as well as the broader Taylor community. I also feel for the Marion County coroner, an elected official who lacks a medical background. He's become the scapegoat in this tragedy; with some asking why there was no forensic identification efforts. It appears to me that this misidentification is the product of multiple factors, which can not be reduced to one person or one official. This case illustrates how institutional linkages (public safety, medical, university public relations, and media among others) can function like a child's game of telephone.

Don't feed the men

I'm accompanying a collegue who teaches an inside out course at a State prison nearby. The course involves several inside students (who are incarcerated) and several outside students who are entrolled in this senior level seminar. I'll probably have more to post about this at a later date.

On the first night of class, the outside students were taken on a tour of the facility. For many of us (myself included) this was a first experience inside the walls of a prison. The most uncomfortable dimension of the tour for me was the recognition that these men have no privacy. We walked through housing units where these men live their lives without asking them if they minded. They were gawked at (some gawked right back) and scrutinized.

As we left one of the housing units, I heard one man shout out: "Don't feed the men".

Stata vs. SPSS, act 1

My colleagues here often ask me why I don't like to use SPSS*. I have a hard time explaining to them why I use Stata**, a package not widely used at this institution and not supported by our statistical support people. Fortunately for me, sociologist and short-fiction blogger Jeremy Freese concisely articulates what I've been unable to explain:

At first I worked with SPSS, which I found bewildering because it seemed designed to encourage users to do things in cumbersome and self-defeating way. Then, one bright day, I discovered Stata 5, and after like a forty-some-hour manuals-and-keyboarding-binge, all was bliss.

My experience is similar. I learned a number of neat SPSS programming tricks at ICPSR where I worked with one of the smartest people I've ever met. However, the more SPSS code that I wrote, the more frustrated I got with the packages limitation. As Jeremy writes, it forces you to do things in a cumbersome, repetitive way. SPSS doesn't do arrays well; it's loops are clunky; and the processing is slow. My mentor at ICPSR showed me how to use a powerful text-editor to eliminate some of the tedium in writing tedious code. But, I was convinced there must be more! I found SAS to be a better tool for these sorts of tasks. However, the learning curve on SAS was way too steep. I invested about the same amount of time trying to pick up SAS and Stata. The difference: at the end of these couple of days, I could use Stata to accomplish necessary tasks. As for SAS, I had to keep asking people for help.

* Leaving alone for a moment the fact that technically I'm an ethnographer and mutter my way through most regression tables.

** We also will leave aside the incredible price differential between these programs. Stata has an affordable price-point for student's or others with an academic affiliation. SAS and Stata seem to be pricing themselves to outfits with deep pockets.

The unbearable likeness of facebook

A student that I taught at my previous institution encouraged me to get a facebook account. To humor her I did. But after a colleague complained that her students were getting other students to sign them in* via facebook, I decided to troll through the WVU facebook stuff.

I come away from this experience with one word of advice:

If you seek a career in law enforcement, you probably should not post a picture of yourself hitting a bong on a public website.

Call me old fashioned... But jeez.


* It's tough to take attendance when you have 140 students in a classroom. Those who decide to take attendance often use a sign-in sheet. Given the ease by which unscrupulous students can have others forge their name, I've given up on that practice.

Wild and wonderful

Wild and wonderful
Originally uploaded by samhdaman.

In 1977, Kai Erikson published Everything in its path, a study of how a man made flood destroyed several communities along Buffalo Creek in Logan County, West Virginia. I am starting a small follow-up study and went to Logan County last weekend. I checked into my hotel on Thursday and found this towel waiting for me. There are some parts of West Virginia which are a bit different, I guess.

Evidence that I'm not well traveled

Several bloggers have been posting their Visited States maps. Here's mine:



create your own visited states map

You can also do a world map; but in my case it would just show North America, so why bother?

Peter Berger on the state of Sociology

I just returned from an enjoyable 3 days at the Eastern Sociological Society's annual meeting. One session, a conversation with Peter Berger, gave me a lot too chew on. Berger's style of sociology attracted me to the discipline. Two books in particular sparked my imagination in a way that nothing else did: Invitation to Sociology & The Sacred Canopy.

Robert Wuthnow, another sociologist for whom I have great respect led the discussion. The first question pertained to Berger's most famous book (written with Thomas Luckmann), The Social Construction of Reality. There, Berger & Luckmann demonstrated that what we take for reality is filtered through socially situated interpretations. Wuthnow asked Berger if he is attracted to the contemporary constructivist branch of social theory, which if taken to the extreme, allows for equality of all competing interpretations. Berger responded that he's uncomfortable with such a free ranging relativism. The original body of theory never embraced relativism; it simply tried to show how human beings construct meaning within relatively confined social spaces. These meanings do not negate the objective realities which trigger them. [During the Q & A period, a debate about objectivity developed].

Wuthnow asked Berger if he thought there were any points where our discipline took a wrong turn. Berger replied that two come to mind:

1. The 1950s brought on the Lazarsfeldian style of quantitative analysis which emphasizes variables and measurement. As these methods gained hegemony, they limited knowledge to that which is produced statistically.
   
2. In the late 1960s, the cultural revolution led to an infusion of ideology into sociology. The social scientist came to be an agent of movements; rather than a scholar who comments on them.

He continued to pursue this theme of objectivity.

Be wary of any initiatives in sociology where the answer is pre-set by the way the question was raised.

I think Berger's assessment is quite accurate. When asked what we should be doing about this, he suggested sociologists should select the big complex problems for study (inequality, latent effects of pluralism, etc), but they should also stick to being sociologists (rather than movement coordinators or activists). His view is not that we shouldn't study politically contested issues, but only that we allow our positionality to dictate our findings.

Night classess

... are miserable.

There must be someone who is good at managing a 3-hour, one-shot class. If you (dear reader) know of strategies for making a 3-hour course work, feel free to let me know what it is.

Shhhhh, don't tell Michelle

In an article titled Sex and the Single Scientist members of the U.S. House of Representatives pontificated on the difficulty of promoting science:

Rep. Vernon J. Ehlers, a Michigan Republican, noted that “pretty girls don’t date nerds.”

I must be an outlier. I'm people tell me I'm a nerd and my wife (who is very pretty) dated me.

*shrug*

Google, Phil Donahue, and the Born Criminal

University of Minnesota Sociologist & Criminologist Christopher Uggen recently blogged about using short video clips to augment lectures. One resource mentioned in that post is Google Video. This is the new service offered by Google serving up video streams of varying lengths on all sorts of things.

Since I'm teaching today about the foundations of positivist criminology and its linkages to Eugenics, I thought I'd see what a search for "Born Criminal" would turn up in the google search engine.

I think either the Google folks need to tweak their algorithm, or there's more to Phil Donahue than meets the eye! .