I Was on Holiday in Crete - Specifically on 15Th September, I Was in Paleohora and Spent

Surveys for Wednesday 15 September 2010

Uid 11

I was on holiday in Crete - specifically on 15th September, I was in Paleohora and spent most of the day on a sandy beach.

Uid 12

I am writing this diary on the 16th as I was out all day yesterday and missed doing the survey. I spent the day at a conference and masterclass on coaching and leadership, which involved around 8 hours travelling for 5.5 hours at the conference – perhaps not the best ratio. This may not seem on the surface to have much to do with teaching either but the reason I went was that we are working on developing coaching as an approach to student support and wanted particularly to hear the two keynotes: David Megginson and Jenny Rogers, both of whom have written some fascinating stuff about coaching.

The keynotes did not disappoint – though I found myself getting frustrated with the first as he spent a lot of time getting views from the audience which meant he had to skip his case study almost completely! Interesting that although I would full support interaction in presentations, my frustration came from that – the fact that in doing that he had sacrificed the opportunity to tell us about the meat of the work he had been doing. Second keynote was much less interactive but a very helpful reminder and challenge on some of the myths that we perpetuate about coaching – and already I have found myself referencing it several times in conversations with colleagues today and in a staff development session we were running this morning on coaching for learning. Need to spend more time working out the implications of what she said for our work.

Interestingly a recurrent question at the conference was whether coaching could be used to support students in their learning and academics in developing their teaching – both areas we are focusing on but which seems not yet to have hit the radar of the coaching community as such. Encouraging in that we know there is interest out there – more to do on promoting what we are doing!

On the train on the way down I had an hour or so reviewing with the colleague I was travelling with over our progress so far on the project and where we needed to set our priorities in the second half of the project. Very productive exercise both in highlighting the progress we have made (more than I thought) and the areas that still need work. We basically just reviewed core sections of the project plan but in the process surfaced issues and areas for development and things we had overlooked. Probably should do this more often. Far more useful than looking at it on my own.

Uid 13

I'm not teaching any regular classes this semester, but am advising three students. Two are my own, and one I've inherited from a faculty member on leave this year. So my diary is about my interactions with them, as a graduate teacher.

L.N. is doing really well. She's doing a qualitative thesis, where she's collected a TON of data, and is working backwards through it. She knows her bottomline, and is trying to show now how the end result occurred. She's not making as much progress as I'd like, but she's distracted by her GRA responsibilities. (Her dissertation and Graduate Research Assistantship overlap by about 80%.)

M.H. is getting ready to propose. Our meetings are mostly about helping him get his story straight and speaking to his audience. We not only discuss the research story, but also how Faculty Member X would respond, and how Potential Future Employer Y would think about things. Framing a dissertation is a challenging proposition.

C.G. is my inherited student. She has a draft of most chapters, so she's in good shape to end this semester. What I find is challenging, though, is making sure that SHE'S clear on her story. I find myself reviewing her chapters then asking her, "What does this have to do with your title, your thesis, your research questions?" Usually, the chapter *does* relate, but she's not doing a good job of drawing the connecting lines. My advisor used to say that the challenge of the dissertation was staying on-message for 100-200 pages.

Uid 14

6:00am Awakened by screaming baby. Lovely spouse handled it. Tried to sleep for a while.

6:30am Out of bed, to the computer to process email, read and “liked” Mark Guzdial’s blog post in Google Reader, on the topic of test banks.

7:30am Read Jesse Heines’ post on SIGCSE mailing list re: philosophy of technology. Looked at my unviersity’s philosophy department’s offerings, noticed Philosophy of Science, emailed chair for more info.

7:55am Arrived on campus. Looked over to-do list, started some menial paperwork.

8:00am Service curriculum committee meeting. Discussed security minor, what other programs require our service courses, potential revisions to these courses, implications of staffing and budgets on these changes.

9:00am Office hours start.

9:10am Processed email; deleted unwanted messages from both AAUP and ACM’s junk mail filter

9:10am Started paperwork to request funding from Student Curricular Activities Fund to support three students who are coming to regional conference for programming competition.

30 minutes meeting with contract faculty to discuss assessment of service courses w.r.t. the new core curriculum. Also discussed other philosophy of teaching issues, rubrics, grading, and clickers.

9:45am Typed and distributed the minutes from the morning’s meeting.

9:55am Finished travel funding paperwork, started revising syllabi based on assessment needs and compliance with CS2008 and ABET accreditation criteria (we are not accredited but seek to be at last accreditable).

10:30am Responded to student emails about JHM project (25 students in 300-level course working via Scrum to collaborate on one big project, which project was designed last Spring and Summer), specifically about communication across student teams of which there are four.

10:55-11:05am Talked to sysadmin about a request the JHM students sent him regarding lab machines and departmental servers. Discussed how I was intentionally making the students owners of the project, so they have to solve the problems, rather than asking me to do these thigns (though I did /a ton/ of work setting up the experience over the Summer). Main problem is that students are not being clear enough in what the problems are, and we concur that giving a good bug report is actually hard. I add that I think students tend towards ambiguity because specificity leads to accountability, and students (people?) like to avoid that. We decide that I will talk to the students a bit about professional communication and the need for specificity in such situations. I consider doing this during the afternoon’s meeting but decide against spending time on that, since it’s a “pure” project-based course, and I opt to talk to students when I have the chance or send a message through the mailing list.

11:12am Emailed colleagues from other departments about getting lunch, since I didn’t have time to pack mine.

11:12-11:22 Emailed JHM students about problems with the Sprint 2 backlogs. Include instructions on what needs to be fixed, point out that I also sent instructions over the weekend that were either unread or misunderstood.

11:45ish Revised syllabus for a Web programming course.

11:54am Called hotel to change my travel plans for upcoming conference. Staying one less day than originally planned.

11:57am Started designing a 1-credit “social and professional issues” course, again with an eye towards satisfying CS2008 and ABET. The syllabus, once finished, references CS2008 explicitly and cherry-picks from the learning objectives of the SP knowledge domain.

12:20pm No word from colleagues, so I go home for lunch.

1:00pm At home, check email on smartphone, see that an alumna posted a link to my blog post about being frustrated with students’ tardiness and specific individuals’ rude behaviors in class.

1:10ish Back on campus, read the link shared by the alumna on my blog.

1:15 Open google reader, check out Alan Kay’s guest post on Guzdial’s blog, a retort of assumptions in Moti’s ACM article. Much love for Kay.

1:25 Watched Zero Punctuation review of Mafia II. Contemplated sandbox vs story in games briefly.

1:55 Just before class, a student tells me that his unit has finally released the campus map application for Android. It was released for iTunes ages ago and has been in development for Android since start of Summer. I download it and check it out, razz him a bit about HCI since he took my HCI class. It’s actually pretty good, though with some bad design decisions that he was forced by others (non-Android folks) to include.

2:00-2:55. Class. This is the project-oriented course. I sit quietly at the front of the room while teams have their daily stand-ups, then they take some time to fix their backlogs in accordance with my email from earlier. I stay in the room, about 50% of the time answering questions, for 20 mins or so, then head up to the lab, where many students have relocated. Talk to students here and help them with their tasks for about 90% of the time I’m in there.

3:00-3:20. Review 1-credit Social and Professional Issues course design with the chair. He has some recommendations but generally likes it.

3:20-3:30. Sysadmin comes back up to ask what I know about mindmapping software. I tell him that I prefer paper mindmapping and, generally, have loved mindmapping since reading Pragmatic Thinking and Learning by Andy Hunt. Recommend book to him, send him the link, briefly discuss how I’m younger than he thought I was --- made me a little self-conscious. He always very deliberately calls me “Dr. MyNameHere”, but I think of him as more of a friend than anything. I appreciate the formality in one sense, but it is also weird in another. But I digress.

3:30-3:45. Students show up to demonstrate their task from the JHM project. It’s quite good, and they put a little humor in that gave us a good laugh.

3:45-3:53. Discussed with our contract faculty member who manages our dual-degree program with China. He fills me in on some of the things going on there. I used to do his job before this semester. He’s doing it much better since he actually has the administrative release time to do it, and an understanding of Chinese culture and language that I lack.

4:00. Responded affirmatively to a request from the VP of Technology to be on a task force on the future of higher education. It was sent only to me, so I don’t know who else was invited. The mission for the task force is basically impossible: full SWOT analysis of all the pressures on my institution w.r.t. teaching and a vision of what education will look like in ten years. The administration’s plan --- according to the mission statement --- is that this will lead into the next strategic plan in 2013.

4:00 Came home. Talked to family. Played some games on the computer, processed some emails, bought a hard drive from newegg, felt really guilty about not being able to think of something good for my spouse’s birthday. Current plan: take some time off during the day tomorrow to bike downtown and get something at the fancy kitchen shop or some pottery at the art shop. I can get a good espresso while I’m downtown, and I can bring my laptop to do some work offcampus where no one can find me. Today had even more interruptions than a usual day, I think... but I’m not sure since I don’t log all this every day.

5:00-5:20 or so. Type up this day log from the notes in my pocket notebook.

Some good down time.

Around 9:15, processed email and set up two appointments as requested by students

Around 9:45, did my nightly Ignatian examen and considered my own behavior with students as well as with colleagues in the committee meeting.

Uid 17

Daily Activity Log

Wednesday 15 September 2010

BACKGROUND

On the assumption that someone will be reading these diaries longitudinally, let me set a little bit of context. I teach at a newer campus of a large, multi-campus public research university. My campus has about 25,000 students. Our computer science unit has about 65 faculty including five non-permanent teaching faculty (two of whom are half-time) and two permanent teaching faculty, of which I am one. At my university, permanent teaching faculty have full faculty rights: We vote on everything, including the promotion cases of full professors; on attaining senior status, we're paid at the same rate as (at least the lowest-paid) full professors; we serve on Faculty Senate committees, both on campus and systemwide.

Most of the teaching in my 30-year career has been at the introductory level, for majors and non-majors, but I also teach upper-level courses (in programming languages, HCI, and technical writing), train teaching assistants (in a graduate-level course), and occasionally teach a graduate course in my somewhat esoteric interdisciplinary specialty area. As time has passed, I've been more and more involved in administration. I currently serve as vice chair for student affairs in my division of our computer science unit; those duties include leading some orientations, advising the occasional student (to supplement our professional advising staff and PhD students' individual graduate advisors), conducting the annual graduate student review, coordinating applications for extramural fellowships, assisting with forming the teaching assignments (for faculty and TAs), and coordinating curriculum changes, especially at the undergraduate level. I am also just beginning a year-long term as chair of the universitywide Faculty Senate committee on educational policy. This committee provides faculty input into university governance, which will be particularly important this year as our university deals with severe continuing budget shortfalls and considers proposals for various potentially radical changes in how the university operates.

This term I am teaching one 60-student section of one version of CS 1, a seminar for new graduate teaching assistants (which will probably have 20 students in it), and, with a colleague, an orientation seminar for students new to the university (which may only have 15-20 students; it's optional).

I live at some distance from my campus, so I telecommute when possible and I rely on my carpool so I don't have to be behind the wheel for the hour-long commute more than about once a week.

WEDNESDAY 15 SEPTEMBER 2010

I read some Email in the morning (see below) and go off to the dentist for a check-up.

TODAY'S MAIN PROJECT

My term starts next week, so I'm preparing for my classes. This term I'm teaching a variant of CS 1 to about 60 students. I've decided to use a different, new textbook, which requires that I rearrange all my assignments and the order of topics on my syllabus. The latter is my main project for the day, and it's complicated by the fact that my teaching is unscripted (by PowerPoint or otherwise); I react to students' questions, I do live coding in class, I try to be spontaneously engaging. This makes formulating a lecture schedule in advance more difficult, because I don't really have a precise record of what I covered day by day in the past (even though I know pretty precisely what I covered over the whole course) and I don't really know in advance how long it will take to cover a given topic this time (especially since different topics have different levels of coverage in the new textbook than they did in the old).

In any case, I made a start on this today. I gathered the previous syllabus, my lecture notes for the old text, my synopses of the code I wrote in class last time, and the table of contents of the new text, and started trying to boil down each class day into a handful of words.

E-MAIL EXCHANGES

A large portion of most days is devoted to interacting with my colleagues (and my students), often by electronic mail. Email is one of my favorite modes of communication, striking what's for me an excellent balance between rapid response and the ability to formulate and consider that response. I keep my Email reader open most of the time, and except for bursts of very focused activity, I check my Email frequently and, where possible, I respond quickly. I recognize that this is contrary to conventional productivity advice, and that I'd probably get more done if I just checked my mail twice a day (or even just hourly). But usually responding to Email is easier than the serious work I'd otherwise be doing, so it makes a welcome break.

Over the course of the day, I read or responded to messages on the following substantive topics. (I also get a ton of spam, since I don't use filters because I don't trust them not to delete legitimate messages from people I've never corresponded with before, especially students. But I find it very easy to dispose of the spam quickly.)

-- The colleague with whom I'm teaching the new student orientation sent a message to the associate dean comparing our first-year courses to the first-year courses at his previous institution. He typed the wrong course number at one point in the message, which made the associate dean think my colleague was teaching the wrong things in his courses. I thought the typo was obviously a typo; I wrote to the associate dean to explain this and to reassure him that my colleague is scrupulous about which topics belong in which courses (which the associate dean should have known). I think it's important both to defend my colleague and to educate my associate dean.