Archives: Events
Academic Year 2002-2003 |
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The EOTU Working Group met 18 times during the 2002-03 academic year under sponsorship of the UIUC Center for Advanced Study. Broadly, we explored ways of thinking about the university as an object of study, and more specifically as an object of ethnographic investigation. Further, we devoted sessions to thinking about how to execute EOTU as a working project at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In conjunction with the EOTU Working Group Meetings, in fall 2002 our visitors from off-campus participated in a lecture series, The Future of the University: Knowledge, Networks, Pedagogy. We emerged from our 2002-03 activities with an understanding of our approach to the university—as a composite of prose, numerical, visual, and network narratives—and with a plan for the 2003-04 pilot phase of EOTU. Our meetings are open to the public and additionally we look forward to welcoming new members to the group. OVERVIEW OF SESSIONS
SESSION DETAILS The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign: History and Constructs Presenter Reading Solberg, Winton U. 1968. The University of Illinois, 1867-1894: An Intellectual and Cultural History. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Passim. Solberg, Winton U. 2000. The University of Illinois, 1894-1904: The Shaping of the University. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. Passim. Discussion Fascinating were the diverse responses to the Znaniecki reading. While some readers thought that Znaniecki was describing prevailing ideologies or images of the university/student, other readers took him to be documenting the actual life of the university/student. Disagreements on the nature of his project aside, something of a consensus emerged that students are indeed agents in the making of their university lives and learning—and have been historically as well, although their opportunities for agency have developed over time. This said, there was a diversity of opinion expressed as to whether the individual-focused, elitist, and faculty-centered ideology that Znaniecki describes for the 1940s has salience for thinking about the University of Illinois today. Professor Solberg, author of many works on the history of UIUC, offered a short lecture, giving us a window on the struggles of the University of Illinois to become a “great” University. University Narratives Presenter Reading Gabelnick, Faith. 2002. Leading Institutional Transformation: The Architecture of Change. Gabelnick, Faith, Jean MacGregor, Roberta S. Matthews, and Barbara Leigh Smith. 1990. Learning Community Foundations. In Idem. Learning Communities: Creating Connections Among Students, Faculty, and Disciplines. New Directions for Teaching and Learning 41. pp. 5-18 (and Table 1, pp. 32-7). Discussion Faith’s interest in the ways in which university buildings and spaces reveal narratives (e.g., signature buildings) sparked a lively discussion on our diverse spatial lives at this University (from the Hall of Presidents to the quirks of the English Building). In addition to her path-breaking work as a university president, Dr. Gabelnick is an expert on learning communities. We discussed some of her writings on learning communities so as to think about the future of EOTU as a particular campus-wide learning community. University Numbers Presenters Browsing Division of Management Information Campus Organizational Chart Campus Profile Student Enrollment Reports Course Information System The Association for Institutional Research, Code of Ethics (From Marilyn Murphy) University Office of Academic Policy Analysis University Office of Academic Policy Analysis Databook Reading Ewell, Peter T. 2002. An Emerging Scholarship: A Brief History of Assessment. In Building a Scholarship of Assessment. T.W. Banta and Associates, eds. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Pp. 3-25. Shadish et al. 1991. “Good Theory for Social Program Evaluation” in Foundations of Program Evaluation: Theories of Practice. Homework 2. What percent of Urbana freshmen in the entering class of 1993 graduated within 4 years? 3. What is the student/faculty ratio at Urbana? (Please define “student” and “faculty.”) Discussion Assessing the University Presenter Reading Discussion 1. If you looked at any of the examples of public web presentations in the Urban Universities Portfolio Project (http://www.imir.iupui.edu/portfolio/), what role do numbers play in the stories these institutions are trying to tell? How (and how well) do you think the expanded verbal, visual, graphic, and interactive nature of the web as a medium enhances the ability to build and communicate an institutional narrative? 2. What considerations should influence the weights assigned to different variables in order to find the best institutional “match” for the U of I? What variables would you like to have seen included in this list (even though there may or may not be national measures for any of these)? Browse the NCHEMS Comparison Group Selection Service (www.nchems.org). When you browse here you will see that this service allows universities to select a peer group (for running data comparison)—click on “comparison group selection service” at “information services.” 3. If you visited the National Center for Public Policy in Higher Education website (www.highereducation.org) to check out the state-by-state “report card” (Measuring Up 2000), what reactions do you have to the “report card” approach as a way to induce policymakers to think about the right questions in higher education? Can you detect specific value positions (or biases) behind the indicators selected and how they are calculated? 4. In Accountability and Assessment in a Second Decade, I described some shifts in the underlying relationship between higher education and wider social/public policy that (at least I think) still hold true. How do you think such external forces influence the internal culture of a major university (or, more particularly, the U of I)? Do administrators effectively filter them out or do certain aspects of the way you do your daily work as faculty and staff change because of them? What about the embedded values implied by such notions as increasing student “consumerism” (e.g., U.S. News) or increasing “corporatism” (e.g., “pay for performance”)? Are they merely ripples in the English or Chemistry departments—or in residence life, for that matter—or do they help shape the culture? University Networks: IKNOW (Inquiring Knowledge Networks on the Web) Presenters Discussion Organizing the University Presenter Reading Lohmann, Susanne. 2002. Herding Cats, Moving Cemeteries, and Hauling Academic Trunks: Why Change Comes Hard to the University. Working Paper. Discussion Lohmann is particularly interested in how participants in university life gather information about one another. For example, how does a chancellor come to know whether a dean truly espouses the institutional values to which the chancellor subscribes? And knowing that information is being gathered about them, how do deans handle information to make themselves “look good”? Lohmann argued that key here is the avoidance of controversy: she illustrated her point by describing a dean’s handling of a student academic integrity case. Rules of academic integrity—a core institutional value—must be respected, but conflict that would precipitate undue publicity must be avoided. Lohmann believes that this sort of balancing act ultimately leads to ossification in institutions like universities. Change, she says, is difficult to come by. And yet, Lohmann suggests, institutions must surely change to preserve themselves. On this point, she offered the example of a highly selective liberal arts institution at which it annually costs $60,000 to deliver a student’s education. The “sticker price” for this education is $30,000, of which the typical student pays $10,000. Without change based on wide circulation of this financial analysis, such an institution will not survive, and the values it intends to inculcate in students will be lost. Performance and the University Presenter Reading Stark, David. 2001. Ambiguous Assets for Uncertain Environments: Heterarchy in Postsocialist Firms. P. DiMaggio, ed. The Twenty-First-Century Firm: Changing Economic Organization in International Perspective. Princeton: Princeton University Press. 69-104. Stark, David. 2003. For a Sociology of Worth. Working Paper. Discussion The Inquiry Page and Web-Based Learning Communities Presenter Reading Lunsford, Karen J., and Bertram C. Bruce. 2001. Collaboratories: Working Together on the Web. Reading Online http://www.readingonline.org/electronic/JAAL/9-01_Column/index.html Discussion Working Session: EOTU Web-Based Learning/Archiving Template Discussion 1. There was considerable discussion of the focus or function of the site/environment. Would it be primarily for pedagogy? for presentation of materials in the present? for archiving for future use? Related here is the question of audience: who is our intended audience? 2. How will we define the subject (i.e., The University of Illinois) of the ethnography (i.e., what counts as ethnography of UIUC or how do we think about borders, virtually, materially etc.)? Related here is another query: who are legitimate contributors to this ethnography (i.e., what constitutes membership)? 3. How directive or structured should the reporting format be (this recalled our discussion of the Inquiry Page)? 4. What sort of a tool kit or cook book might we want to provide for use by participants? 5. How much scaffolding (i.e., information, examples) would we want to provide? 6. What mechanisms for feedback and evaluation will we include? 7. We discussed the sorts of materials that might find their way to this space from research results to primary textual material to video. 8. We discussed the idea of an inquiry trail (referring to the intellectual, geographical, and personal inquiry path of participants—the many choices entailed) and how this might be featured. In this vein we discussed how to incorporate information on participants. 9. We discussed several desirable features of the Inquiry Page, among them the ability to add to or “spin off” from existing sites, and the ability to designate sites as “under construction” or “ready for public use,” etc. 10. We discussed challenges for the case of collaborative (multi-authored) work. Student Writing and Writing Studies Presenters Browsing Reading Durst, Russel K. 1999. Collision Course: Conflict, Negotiation, and Learning in College Composition. Urbana: NCTE. Herrington, Anne J., and Marcia Curtis. 2000. Persons in Process: Four Stories of Writing and Personal Development in College. Urbana: NCTE. Discussion 1. Writing Studies is perhaps the strongest arm of politically invigorated ethnography on/at the University (Jody gave us a fascinating tour of an ethnographic project she uses in her teaching, “A History of ‘This’ Space”; Paul introduced us to his research on how writing happens and to the pedagogical implications of this processual understanding of writing. 2. The history of writing pedagogy at the UIUC is a wonderful window on large historical and political currents. Peter introduced us to the economics and politics of pre-college testing to sort students into writing classes and we discussed students’ awareness of the racial and economic contours of this sorting. Gail reviewed the 1990-present history of Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) and the Writers’ Workshop; and Steve pushed this history further back to the era when the Writers’ Workshop was an arm of the EOP program. Steve also talked about the EOP program more broadly as it reveals the history of race at UIUC. Writing Studies—as presented by this crew—offers so much to this project. We can, for example, think about what it might mean for students to become ethnographers of their own learning, and to indeed have them document their learning. We can also think about the nature of the writing that will be inspired by this university ethnography project. Finally, we were struck that writing pedagogy is a set or practices and structures that all students meet at the university; here we can think about how to guide students in the larger project of thinking institutionally (i.e., contextually, historically, etc.) about pedagogical forms and practices that impact upon their lives. The Protection of Human Subjects Presenter Reading Discussion 1. Professor Ed has been supervising student internships in his department for the past three years. Interns work full-time, off-campus in real work settings directly related to their major while receiving course credit. They are supervised on-site by an employee of that organization in addition to receiving University supervision. As part of the University requirements, Ed asks each intern to complete and submit a journal of their internship experiences. A portion of the journal is unstructured where students may write about anything they choose. At other times, Ed asks the students to reflect upon specific aspects of their internship (e.g., initial adjustment, organizational climate, interpersonal interactions with peers and supervisors, work expectations, etc). Students submit their journals electronically each month for feedback. At the end of the internship, the local supervisor submits a performance evaluation. Ed submits a S/U grade for the student based on his evaluation of the journal and the local performance evaluation. Ed believes that the journals (he has collected over 100 in the past three years) are an excellent data source for documenting the process of “becoming a professional” in his field. He would like to analyze the journals for prominent themes and trends, selecting quotes to illustrate major issues. This would likely involve disaggregating data by gender, type of internship, and other demographic variables. He would also like to look for relationships between students’ perceptions of their internship and local supervisors’ evaluations. Ed thinks this information would make a contribution to professional education in his field. It could also be used within his department to improve the quality of the program. What are the human subjects research issues in this case? How would you advise Ed to proceed? 2. Professor Ann is studying the relationship between eating habits and body image. She and her research assistants plan to observe people eating in public places such as restaurants, food courts, sporting events, public swimming pools, etc. and engage them in conversations about what they eat and how they feel about the way they look. They are also interested in taking candid photographs of the people they observe for use in publications and presentations. They do not plan to ask for the names of any subjects in their data collection. What are the human subjects research issues in this case? How would you advise Ann to proceed? 3. Professor Ken is conducting a large survey study on the spending patterns of people in the 18 to 21 year age group. In order to maximize his return rate, he plans to conduct a lottery in which one of the respondents will receive $10,000. What are the human subjects research issues in this case? How would you advise Ed to proceed? In that session, and throughout the 2002-03 activities, it became very clear that EOTU poses considerable human subjects and intellectual property challenges. Aspiring to an on-line archive, EOTU needs thus to pay attention simultaneously to the rights of both the objects (i.e., informants) of student ethnographic research and to those of the student researchers as well. Fall Semester Wrap-Up Discussion The University and the Community Presenters Browsing Center for the Health Professions, University of California at San Francisco, Community Campus Partnerships for Health U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of University Partnerships University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Partnership Illinois Discussion Archiving Student Life and Culture Presenter Reading Discussion Institutional Memory Presenters Lanny Arvan, Assistant CIO, CITES Office of Educational Technology, and Associate Professor, Economics (http://www.cba.uiuc.edu/faculty/arvan.html) Reading Johnson, Richard K. “Institutional Repositories: Partnering with Faculty to Enhance Scholarly Communication.” D-Lib Magazine (November 2002); Volume 8 Number 11; ISSN 1082-9873. http://www.dlib.org/dlib/november02/johnson/11johnson.html Browsing Eprints.org Site:(Southampton University, England)—self-archiving and open archives—describes the open source eprints software, links to implementers and services world-wide; emphasis on open access and digital archiving methods to preserve refereed published research (URL: http://www.eprints.org/) The eScholarship Repository, sponsored by the California Digital Library of the University of California, offers faculty in the social sciences and humanities a central location for depositing scholarship. The repository provides persistent access to the items deposited and makes them easily discoverable. (URL: http://escholarship.cdlib.org/repositories.html—based on the BePress [Berkeley Electronic Press] software) MIT DSpace archive—open source software developed jointly by MIT and Hewlett-Packard for archiving institutional research output. (URL: https://hpds1.mit.edu/index.jsp) Ohio State University’s Knowledge Bank—publications, informal communications about initial research questions and data, classroom presentations, preprints, technical reports, formal publications Discussion In contrast to discipline-specific repositories and subject-oriented or thematic digital libraries, institutional repositories capture the original research and other intellectual property generated by an institution’s constituent population active in many fields. Defined in this way, institutional repositories represent an historical and tangible embodiment of the intellectual life and output of an institution. And, to the extent that institutional affiliation itself serves as the primary qualitative filter, this repository becomes a significant indicator of the institution’s academic quality. Beth then encouraged us to consider these questions: 1. What are institutional repositories? 2. What is the notion of a durable digital archive? 3. Are all institutional repositories durable digital archives by definition? 4. What is the difference between making institutional output accessible (i.e. better organized so that it can be found and used) and archiving it? 5. What is the impact of organizational mission on the definition of an institutional repository, and how does that differ according to institution? 6. Are faculty more closely aligned over the long term with their discipline, with their institution(s) or some of both? 7. How is an institution’s cultural life and history captured in an institutional archive? 8. Where do educational resources (student research, informal communications, course syllabi, group projects) fit in the institutional repository model? We agreed that the decisions and plans that comprise institutional repositories offer a remarkable window on the identity and values of an institution and its constituents. Quite simply, we agreed that decisions about what to include and about who should be the arbiters of what to include speak volumes about systems of value. Follow-up Reading An Ethnographic Tool-kit Presenters Readings Balshem, Martha. 1993. Cancer in the Community: Class and Medical Authority. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian). 54-64. Bourdieu et al., eds. 1999. The Weight of the World: Social Suffering in Contemporary Society. Stanford: Stanford University Press. 610-615. Foley, Douglas. 1990. Learning Capitalist Culture: Deep in the Heart of Tejas. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 63-69. Manalansan, Martin F. IV. 2003. Migrancy, Modernity, Mobility: Quotidian Struggles and Queer Diasporic Intimacy. Manuscript. In the interests of creating a web-based ethnographic toolkit for EOTU participants, we discussed several short selections that reveal different ethnographic techniques including interviews, focus groups, and spatial and body analysis. EOTU undergraduate interns, discussed their in-progress web-based discussion of field research, a discussion that was edited for inclusion on this site. [Link] Another Look at University Narratives: The University as Work-Place Presenters Browsing American Association of University Professors Discussion Documenting Student Learning: A National Perspective Presenter Browsing The AAHE’s more than 9,000 members include faculty, administrators, and students from across the spectrum of postsecondary education. Representatives from foundations, government, accrediting bodies, business, and the media also number among AAHE’s membership. The association supports major initiatives on assessment, faculty roles and rewards, service-learning, and teaching. Barbara helped us better understand how the Ethnography of the University fits within national trends toward making teaching and learning at research universities more visible, developing meaningful assessments of teaching and learning, and strengthening ties between universities and the communities they serve. We began with a set of simple question: 1. What do we know about learning that supports the kind of ethnography we want to do? 3. What strategies and tactics do we or could we employ to make this campus a learning environment where new learners (students) are as valued as experienced learners (faculty members)? Our discussion broadened to include more complex questions: 1. What questions are universities asking about teaching and learning that they haven't asked before? What questions appear to be specific to public research institutions like UIUC? 2. As these questions are discussed and answered, what initiatives for curricular and pedagogical change are emerging? What initiatives seem to be forming at a grass-roots level, and which are being sponsored (by foundations, by professional societies, by the federal government, etc.) at a national level? 3. To what extent are these questions, answers, and initiatives shaped by calls for assessment and accountability from outside universities? 4. To what extent are these questions, answers, and initiatives shaped by new knowledge emerging in the academic disciplines? 5. Regarding all of the previous questions: What narratives about universities appear to be in play these days—publicly and in higher ed policy circles? What stories are stakeholders and observers telling about universities that motivate and justify their contributions to current debates about higher education, and, more to the point, to critiques of the undergraduate curriculum? 6. How can teachers and students work together to understand the narratives that organize the universities—especially public research universities like UIUC? Where is work like EOTU already being done across the humanities and humanistic social science curriculum? Given its current aspirations, what new directions should EOTU contemplate? 7. The archival dimension of EOTU promises to create a rich record of students’ experience of/at a research university. How might this record be used in institutional efforts to assess the effectiveness of undergraduate teaching and learning?
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