Privacy, Security: Pick One

The tradeoff between privacy and security is once again making headlines. In case you’ve been hibernating, allow me to summarize this story which pits our personal privacy, nay our very freedom, against the security needs of the government of the United States of America.

The way I understand the situation is that all of this NSA (National Security Agency) phone tapping and Internet snooping started with the Bush administration shortly after 9/11 and has continued to the present Obama administration. The government claims that it is not an infringement of your fourth amendment protection against “unreasonable search” because it does not use the use the actual data (your phone conversations and internet communications), instead it captures just the “metadata”.

What, you may ask, is “metadata”? It’s data which describes the original data or information about the information in the call or email and might better better be called “meta-information:” It usually includes the date and time the information was transmitted or, if it was a phone call, the calling number and the number you called as well. So although, your phone conversation or email or visit to that racy website is accessible to the government computers, they are not examined unless a “national security” flag is raised. And what, you may continue to ask,is a  “national security” flag? An example of that might be the phone number or email address matched the phone number of someone on a terrorist list. Then, and only then (according to the government) do the wheels of justice engage. The NSA contacts a  FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) Court  for permission to access the actual data (in our example, the audio of the phone call r) to follow up this lead and begin an investigation. However, critics of the FISA Court claim that it is merely a “rubber stamp” and too easily grants requests to snoop.

The technology that allows all of our phone, Internet and financial transactions to be tracked by the government is called “Big Data” by the Information Technology community. In simple terms Big Data is a shorthand phrase denoting the (computer programs and hardware that can search very large databases such as phone calls, credit card and other banking transactions to expose patterns and connections that would otherwise be impossible for humans to do by themselves..  

Timothy B. Lee, in his article for the June 16 Washington Post, “The High Cost of Encryption” quotes computer scientist J. Alex Halderman, “Security is rarely free. There are trade-offs between convenience and usability and security.”  By convenience and usability he means that most everyone uses the encryption offered by their email provider which only protects the transmission on the way from your computer to the main server where the emails are decrypted and stored and thus accessible by the provider and also by the NSA. While there exist encryption apps that keep your message encrypted from your end to the other end, they are not convenient to use and difficult for the providers to implement so most users have opted for convenience over tighter security.

In the same edition of the Washington Post is the article, “How PRISM (a clandestine national security electronic surveillance program) could destroy the tech giants” by Farhad Manjoo who raises another important point. Manjoo claims that many have adopted the attitude, “Hey, I’m not doing anything wrong, so I don’t really care if the NSA is reading my email...” But, he continues that is no reason for us not to demand a fuller accounting of what data the government is gathering on us. That way, at least, we’ll be better able to make an informed decision as to whether the tradeoff between privacy and security is really worth it. As he says, “It’s perfectly fine for us to decide that we’re OK with this invasion of privacy...But we can’t decide if the trade-off is worth it if it’s all secret.”

The President seems to want to start a conversation about the tradeoffs between privacy and security and our senator across the lake, Patrick Leahey, Chair of the Judiciary Committee is pushing legislation to condense, clarify and curtail the reach of government into our freedoms.

That’s a good start.

The Changing Face of Education Part 3

June 9, 2013

In Part 1, what a MOOC was and compared it to a prototype that I implemented in the 70s to see if we had made any educational progress over the past half-century. Don’t laugh, it took 25 years for the overhead projector to move from the bowling alley to the classroom.

In Part 2, I compared present-day MOOCs to present-day classroom environment and concluded that although current MOOCs have downsides (what doesn’t?), they will probably be addressed and solved and they will be the wave of the future.

In Part 3, this column, I want to wrap up the discussion and address some pedagogical and political issues associated with MOOCs:

They don’t yet solve the classic problem of pedagogy: Every discipline requires mastery in two areas: theory and practice. We need both because they strengthen each other: practice helps you better understand the theory and a better grasp of the theory makes you a better practitioner. But which aspect should be taught first? The pedagogical model I grew up with was always: present the theory with a lecture and give the practice as homework and while this worked fine with me I know that it failed miserably with many of my peers.

In graduate school I was lucky enough to be taught by a professor who used a minor modification to great benefit for me: he always ended a lecture with a brief introduction to the next topic, then for homework we were to read the text’s explanation and practice with some homework problems. In the following lecture he would answer any questions we had on the theory that he and the text had previously covered as well answer any questions we had on the homework assignment. Years later I realized that his solution to the “theory before practice or vice-versa” problem was to make it  into an A-B-A process where A stands for theory and B for practice.

There are also B-A-B theories where the students begin by trying to discover the theory for themselves by attempting to solve problems which fit under that theory (as you might expect, this can be very effective and/or very frustrating). A wag friend once told me, “In theory there is no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there is.”  So how does all of this mumbo-jumbo relate to a MOOC?

Many MOOCs have adopted a hybrid approach. This pedagogy has the student first acquire the theory online through video lectures and other resources such as online books. Next the students meet in online chat rooms as well as live lab sessions where they are helped by teaching assistants and by each other as well to solve the assigned problems on the current topic. This is a variant of the current hot pedagogy in education, the “flipped classroom” where the lecture is delivered outside of the classroom (over the Internet) and the “homework” is done communally with guidance by the instructor(s) during class meeting times.

With regard to the politics, there is a very interesting article, “Who Owns the MOOCs?” by Ry Rivard, March 19, 2013 on the Inside Higher Education website (http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/03/19/u-california-faculty-union-says-moocs-undermine-professors-intellectual-property) which examines not only the intellectual property issues involved when a university faculty member relinquishes their ownership of course materials they have developed to a for-profit MOOC provider like Coursera, it also raises the issue of a Union contract renegotiation. While University administration may claim that the faculty member voluntarily gives up their intellectual property rights, the union argues that this is a broader issue and affects the livelihood of all faculty. In fact, I remember an advisor on my doctoral committee who had grave doubts about my designing a Computer Managed Instructional system which could then be used by administration to let faculty go.

On a lighter note, the Inside Higher Education website  has an entry by Ted Fiske, Feb 12, 2013,   which suggests new college songs for those institutions using MOOCs.

(http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2013/02/12/call-new-college-songs-era-moocs)

Here’s the one from Cornell:

“Far above Cayuga’s waters with its waves of blue,

Stand our noble M-O-O-Cs, glorious to view.

Massive Open Online Courses, loud their praises tell.

Hail O dig’tal Alma Mater, now called e-Cornell.”

Sources:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/05/opinion/Brooks-The-Practical-University.html?hp&_r=0

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/businessdesk/2013/04/the-plusses-and-pitfalls-of-te.html

Scout Report: March 22, 2013 -- Volume 19, Number 12

Colleges Assess Cost of Free Online-Only Courses

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/19/education/colleges-assess-cost-of-free-online-only-courses.html?ref=technology&_r=0

The Professors Who Make the MOOCs

http://chronicle.com/article/The-Professors-Behind-the-MOOC/137905/#id=overview

Google Will Fund Cornell MOOC

http://www.cornellsun.com/section/news/content/2013/03/05/google-will-fund-cornell-mooc

California’s Move Toward MOOCs Sends Shock Waves, but Key Questions Remain Unanswered

http://chronicle.com/article/California-Considers-a-Bold/137903/

UW-Madison to offer free public online courses starting in fall

http://www.jsonline.com/news/education/uwmadison-to-offer-free-public-online-courses-starting-in-fall-198rsr2-192186161.html

Who Owns a MOOC?

http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2013/03/19/u-california-faculty-union-says-moocs-undermine-professors-intellectual-property

The new wave of technology-based education has now gone one step further: colleges and universities, large and small, are develop! ing prog rams to offer massive open online courses (MOOCs). The ensuing debate over how these courses can alter the future of higher education is ramping up: while more institutions are signing on to pioneer MOOCs, there is controversy over whether credits should be applicable to degree paths, as well as over proposed legislation that forces institutions to accept MOOC credits. Companies such as Coursera, edX, and Udacity are already offering MOOCs for college credit, while universities such as Cornell and the University of Wisconsin-Madison have plans to consider this option in the near future. Many interested parties have been wondering whether MOOCs will bridge the education gap, or simply become another roadblock to the coveted college degree. [MP]

The first link will take users to a New York Times profile on how colleges are responding to this new development. The second link is an article from the Chronicle of Higher Education that decodes the hype behind MOOCs and the professors who are leading the way in creating them. The third link is an announcement from the Cornell Sun about its new venture with Google to create MOOCs at the prestigious institution. The fourth article, from the Chronicle, covers the recent debate in California over SB 520, a proposal to use MOOCs outside of the state higher-education system for credits in the system. The fifth link goes to a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article on the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s plans to offer MOOCs .

The Changing Face of Education, Part 2

The Changing Face of Education, Part 2

May 12, 2013

In the previous column, I discussed some of my reactions to the arrival of the MOOC (Massive Open Online Course ) into the world of Education. Initially I was interested in comparing online courses of yesteryear with this new entry and particularly in comparing ACCOLADE (A pretty good online computer-managed instruction system that I designed and implemented in the early 70s) with them. Like many comparisons in real life, there were tradeoffs --- pros and cons on each side of the ledger --- but I had to give the edge to the MOOCs. In this column I want to examine the next and more important question: What are some of the Pros and Cons of using a MOOC vs the traditional classroom?

Pros:

• In theory, a MOOC allows Mastery learning. Unlike a conventional course where the learning period is fixed (usually one semester or 15 weeks) and the grades vary between E (failure) and A (Excellence), Mastery Learning has only two outcomes: Mastery of the subject or Not Yet Mastered and the time period allowed for completion of the course varies amongst the students. Like the US Army: you keep at it until you’ve mastered the subject; some take longer, some don’t. In a nutshell: conventional classes vary the grades and fix the time period while Mastery Learning varies the time period and fixes the grade. Additionally, the student has opportunity to engage in self-paced learning and evaluation.

• Students in large classes are more likely to speak out on the email/chat room portion of a MOOC than they would be in a live classroom.

• Ability to reach a truly massive number of students in one course --- while there is a low bar for admission, to receive credit the bar can be set as high as the instructor wishes.

• In a large, globally offered course there is going to be much more diversity in age and culture and thus each student benefits from being exposed to diverse and different points of view. Student’s perspective is broadened.

• Cheating on exams can be controlled in some ways better than large conventional courses through the use of video cameras and computer software.

• MOOCs offer a way for administrators to lower the cost of college.

Cons:

• Students are less polite in their communications. While a face-to-face encounter softens our criticisms, electronic media acts to disassociate personal responsibility from the conversation and the results can range from uncomfortable to downright nasty. This behavior, seen also on bulletin boards, blogs and chat rooms is known as “flaming”.

• When students take a live class they usually have the opportunity to meet with their advisor  and teachers; they live in an environment that supports the goals of learning and are thus more motivated to attend the course.

• A video lecture provides no nonverbal feedback to the teacher from the students (blank stares, gazing out the window, sleeping) and thus the teacher cannot take steps to make the presentation more interesting (take a few minutes break and ask the student next to you to explain a concept that is still puzzling)

• It takes a teacher in the range of 100 to 200 hours  to produce one hour of video; this requires a huge startup cost and commitment by the teacher. Interestingly this has not changed much since the 70s.

• Although MOOCs may be a way for administrators to lower the cost of college, they threaten to replace teachers --- thus jobs are lost and the unions are busted.

• Initial data show completion rates are low --- in the 10 to 20 percent range.

Assuming the Cons can be addressed, MOOCs seem to be the wave of the future, but take a moment to recall the promises made about TV in the 1940s and even into the 50s. TV was going to replace bricks and mortar schools and we could all be educated from home. And what do we have now: five hundred channels of Infotainment, at best. My guess is that we will see hybrid systems with a mixture of live and online classes which will vary by discipline --- there are good reasons to deliver a poetry and a science course in different ways.

The Changing Face of Education Part 1

April 14, 2013

So I’m reading page A2 of the Feb 8 edition of the PR and this headline catches my eye: “College credit recommended for free online courses”. Reading further,  I learn that Duke University is offering a course, “Introduction to Genetics and Evolution” --- a topic that has long interested me but I’ve never had enough time to investigate fully.

I was also curious to see how much progress has been made in the past (roughly) 40 years in the area of Computer Managed Instruction (CMI) which not only delivers courses but manages the total learning environment by assigning resources (e.g. books, videos, teachers) and evaluating the student’s progress through exams, labs and other learning experiences. In fact in the mid-seventies I had designed and implemented a CMI system named ACCOLADE around a course in Computer Literacy.

Next I went to my favorite search engine (rhymes with “frugal”) and entered, “ “Genetics and Evolution Duke University” and before I could  lift my coffee to my lips,  I was presented with a page of links that beckoned and promised to guide me in my quest. I also learned that these massive, open, online courses were referred to as a MOOC and that the New York Times, about six months ago, named the “Big Three” MOOCs as  Coursera, Udacity and edX  (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/04/education/edlife/the-big-three-mooc-providers.html)

while The MOOC List website which claims to be: “A COMPLETE LIST OF MASSIVE OPEN ONLINE COURSES (FREE ONLINE COURSES) OFFERED BY THE BEST UNIVERSITIES AND ENTITIES.” seems to have a more comprehensive list (http://www.mooc-list.com/).  I strongly suspect both lists are not current since the content of the Internet changes so rapidly that nothing is ever really up-to-date.

I chose to register with the Coursera Corporation and while only moderately badgered to join the “signature” edition of the course which accredits the experience for only a small sum I suppose, I soon reached the Home page  which looked  as follows:

Welcome to Introduction to Genetics and Evolution!!!

As you begin the course, please do the following:

• From the menu, select "Philosophy" and read about what we are offering and what we expect from our students.
• Review "Due Dates" to see when problem sets and exams will be open and due, and "Grading Policy" to find information about grades.
• Look over the "Video/Topic Schedule" to get a sense of the overall plan for course topics and the key ideas in each lecture.

... and much, much more including information on lectures, problem sets and exams, discussion forums (like chat rooms) and so on and so forth. (Due Dates presents an interesting problem as students register from time zones all over the world.) I eagerly began the course and my initial impressions were twofold:

1.CMI had changed a lot

2.CMI had not  changed very much at all.

Impression  number 1 was based on the slick presentation and the sheer quantity of resources available to the student under the newer system.  Impression 2 was the realization that while the quantity and speed of delivery of the resources had radically accelerated, the type and kind of resources were pretty much the same. My ACCOLADE system of the 1970s contained a “Yellow Pages” of resources which comprised: Printed Material (books, magazines, journals, etc), Other university courses, Other lessons on the computer, People, Movies, Videotapes and Audiotapes. These resources were linked through a Semantic Network that displayed the topics to be learned as well as the relationships between them.  Like Coursera and similar MOOCs, ACCOLADE also provided an email and a Bulletin Board system so that Learners and Teachers could communicate as well as the opportunity for students to take self-paced tests and evaluations.

While Coursera can provide its resources online to truly massive class sizes (claims of over 100,000 are common), ACCOLADE had a more tightly integrated navigational system via the semantic net. Overall, I would choose the modern MOOC over older CMI systems, but the really important question is would I choose a MOOC over a standard college course with live students and a live professor?

In the next columns, I will explore the future of MOOCs and the interesting politics of changing education.

Automation Part 2

In my February column,”The Challenge of Automation”, I began a review of some of the ideas in Martin Ford’s book,“ “The Lights in the Tunnel: Automation, Accelerating Technology and the Economy of the Future” . His basic premise is that as technology grows exponentially so will automation and its net effect will be to destroy more jobs than it creates causing unemployment to grow and economic chaos will ensue. He concludes that we must start now (this was 2009) to plan for this crisis and take what steps we can to deal with it.
The title of the book is a metaphor for the way free market capitalism works. The Tunnel represents the boundaries of our global economy. Consumers (the workers as well as the capitalists) are represented by floating lights of varying intensity depending on their wealth. Businesses are represented as TV screens which advertise their products. The purchase of a product by a consumer shows up as one of the lights touching a screen and, as a result, the screen gets a bit brighter and the floating light dims a bit representing a transaction (a transfer of wealth) within the Tunnel. I found this metaphor a bit of a stretch but I liked Ford’s later metaphor of a river out of which water is pumped --- you’ll have to read the book for a detailed description.


The author argues that since near full automation is inevitable, the best solution is to bite the bullet and pay people who have lost their jobs to automation so that they may continue to consume goods and services so that the overall economy will not collapse. He views both capitalists and workers are consumers but since the workers are a much larger population, when the workers lose their jobs, they can no longer participate in the free market and the economy eventually tanks. He suggests that the businesses which save money by replacing human workers with machines(machines are cheaper and no payroll taxes) be taxed to pay the displaced workers. He understands that there will be a massive pushback against this idea as it smacks of Socialism but believes attitudes can and will change especially under massive economic pressure.

In fact, much of the criticism of the book revolves around a free-market vs govt-imposed solution. However, I believe that it’s not an either/or situation --- it’s both/and. Our economy has evolved into a hybrid Capitalist and a Socialist one like two horses pulling one chariot (to use Plato’s imagery). Our job is to keep the chariot on course by not letting either horse pull us too far to the right or the left. We have to regulate the unfettered freedom and underlying greed of capitalism which can crush the working class as well as the over-regulation of unshackled socialism which can constrict individual choice and create a bloated bureaucracy. The enemy is not Capitalism or Socialism; to paraphrase Kafka ,“The enemy is laziness and impatience “ in ourselves, not the economic systems we devise.


Ford also argues that while providing additional educational resources will slow the job displacements of automation, it cannot stop the ultimate result of massive job losses. In fact he makes the claim that education alone is not the determinative factor deciding whether a particular job can be automated or not. Until recently, most economists have opined that automation displaces low-skilled workers more than skilled ones; basically blue collar jobs are more likely to be replaced than white collar jobs. However, Ford provides several counterexamples throughout the book such as a housekeeper vs a radiologist --- which would you predict is most likely to be replaced by automation? Certainly the radiologist needs higher level skills than a maid, but Ford makes a strong case that it is the job of the maid that is more difficult to automate.

Computers are getting very good at pattern recognition --- the armed services use software to analyze aerial photos --- they can spot a tank in a forest. Why then couldn’t a program analyze an X-ray or an MRI? Ford believes it’s only a matter of time before a computer can replace a radiologist or at least most of their functions so that fewer and fewer need to be hired by hospitals. But what about the maid’s job? One could argue that most anyone can it, but it turns out to be very difficult to program all of the situations that a housekeeper has to deal with. For example, what should our robot do when it finds a pair of glasses on the dining room table and the case for them by the TV? A human housekeeper would have no trouble identifying the item on the table no matter what its orientation and making the inference that these glasses belong in the case by the TV --- but this situation is easily left out of the program that drives the robot. In determining what sort of jobs are easy and hard to automate, Ford points out that it is more important how well a job description is suited to conversion to software. Once a process can be fully described in a language the computer can understand and execute then we can say that we’ve made tremendous progress towards automating that process.


An interesting counterargument that Ford considers is that nanotechnology will save us. With nanotech we will be able to create food and medicine, indeed any material, by manipulating molecular structures --- the building blocks of all matter. When this day arrives, we can surely rest easy as all of everyone’s material needs will be met and we can revert to great-ape behaviour where we spend most of time eating and lolling around in the sunshine. But will we be truly happy? Many people’s idea of hell is an eternal vacation in Miami Beach. Work supplies meaning to our lives and without it many would be deeply unsatisfied and unhappy. That said, Ford does not see the nano solution arriving anytime in the near future and he advises not to put many eggs in that basket.


For more see Paul Krugman’s article, “Robots and Robber Barons” at: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/10/opinion/krugman-robots-and-robber-barons.html?ref=paulkrugman&_r=0

and Matt Miller’s, “The Robots are coming” at:
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2013-01-09/opinions/36233090_1_egg-nog-technology-robots

as well as (some of ) the reviews of the book at Amazon.com, one of which makes the same observation that I made in my doctoral dissertation almost 40 years ago: humans and computers are connected more and more each day. The correct view is a partnership in which we humans do the things that we do best and let the computers do what they do best. All we have to figure out is who is best at what...

Finally, let’s take a look at what the great twentieth century philosopher Alfred North Whitehead has said about automation, “Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. “ For example, I can use an automobile to transport me from location A to B without knowing anything at all about mechanical engineering. But he also cautioned, “It is the first step in sociological wisdom, to recognize that the major advances in civilization are processes which all but wreck the societies in which they occur: — like unto an arrow in the hand of a child. “ In other words, technology is a double-edged sword --- we must be careful not to let it cut us as we use it to cut our problems down to size.

The Challenge of Automation

Living close to Lake Champlain we know about the tension between cormorants who feed on the fish that are eaten by the fish that sports fisherfolks like to catch. Are the cormorants an invasive species? Loosestrife, the beautiful purple plant with the electric purple hue, is classed as an invasive species because it will crowd out some of the other plant species considered to be native. This could mean that birds who depended on the native seeds for food will have to migrate elsewhere and animals which depended on those birds become the dominoes in a cascading sequence of cause and effect. But let’s not forget the ultimate invasive species: mankind. We move around a lot and do have a habit of trying to modify our environment so that it’s more to our liking and ofttimes these changes are not for the better. When we use technology to make these changes and these changes create and destroy jobs, we call it Automation.

I have recently been reading some books that deal with the problem of Automation. One of them is “The Lights in the Tunnel: Automation, Accelerating Technology and the Economy of the Future” by Martin Ford. In this and the next column I will  be discussing Ford’s views on the problem and some proposed solutions.

I received “The Lights in the Tunnel” as a Kindle e-book so it’s ironic that while it attempts to explain and suggest remedies for humans losing jobs to automation, in fact it contributes somewhat to the problem. How many jobs are replaced when Amazon wirelessly sends me this book? Depending on how far back in the chain we go, we had to get in our car, drive to a bookstore to purchase the book and then drive back home. From the supply side there were trucks driven by people delivering these books to store, not to mention the owner and the employees of that store. So lots of folks are impacted when technology enters the process.  Technology acts like an invasive species which comes into a dynamically balanced environment and crowds out one or more species from their niche. There's no question that it changes the environment. Does this make things better or worse? That's the question.

The challenge of automation is that while it’s fairly easy to identify the problem; it’s extremely difficult is to propose useful solutions. However, a good diagnosis improves the odds for a useful prescription. The problem is that new technology destroys some jobs and creates others; in the long term we don’t know whether more more jobs get created or destroyed and so we cannot judge a net gain or loss for society as a whole.


One of the claims made by Ford is that as technology grows exponentially so will automation and although most economists seem to think that the net effect of automation will create more jobs than it destroys, the author strongly disagrees. But what exactly is “exponential growth”?  Ray Kurzweil gives an excellent example of exponential growth in his talk at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zihTWh5i2C4  where he points out that if a process is only 2% complete at the end of the year but it’s progress is exponential there’s no reason to fret as it will be completed within 7 years. It works like this: at the end of year 1 due to an exponential growth that doubles each year, the project is 2% complete, at the end of year 2, the project is 4% complete --- doesn’t sound too good does it?  But at the end of year 3 it’s 8% complete; by year 4 it’s 16% complete; year 5 it’s 32%; year 6, 64% and by year 7 it’s been completed!
According to Sigmund Freud as well many other philosophers and social scientists, one's ability to love and work is linked to one's degree of happiness and satisfaction with life. As Freud said, "Love and work..work and love..what else is there really?" --- so if we really need work to supply meaning to our lives and be happy, and automation will destroy more jobs than it creates as Martin claims, then we’d better start planning for some radical economic disruption.

Next time: Ford’s diagnosis and prescription to the challenge of automation.

Teaching is not so Easy Part 3

Well, it’s the middle of January once again and very soon you will notice an influx of students eager to begin the spring semester at Plattsburgh State. You may recall in my Sept 9 column “Teaching is not so Easy as it Looks “ I recounted my progress and lack thereof in preparing for and offering CSC372  “Ethics and the Information Age”  ---  the required Ethics and Writing course for Computer Science majors at SUNY Plattsburgh. I had great (albeit misplaced) confidence I could easily do this as I had developed this course for the department a couple of decades ago.

I described college teaching using the metaphor of the Acting Company where the professor plays all of the roles: Starring actor, producer, director and the most difficult and frustrating --- stage manager. The part I totally underestimated was that of stage manager who must attend to gazillions of unanticipated details (ranging from making sure the software actually works to getting the right keys for the right doors). You can go to: http://tec-soc.blogspot.com and then click on the CSC 372 link for the full syllabus to the course.

Now the most interesting part of the course (after the ethical theory of course) was the slick way the writing part was handled. Professor Del Hart, a colleague, had developed an Online Peer Review System (OPRS) based on the SWORD System developed at the University of Pittsburgh (sword@pittedu) that could be used locally and tailored especially for our students. On a Monday, Wednesday, Saturday (the computer never sleeps and apparently similarly for our students) schedule they would submit a first draft, critique the essays of 3 other students and using them to improve their papers, write the final draft (usually very close to 11:59 PM Saturday). Although the SWORD project’s research has shown that students come remarkably close to issuing the same grades that an instructor would assign, I still read the papers and assigned the final grades. I can attest that the student criticisms were very similar to my own and so the system could have automatically assigned the students’ final grades on the papers based entirely on the other students’ evaluations.

The OPRS supplies a rubric the student uses to assign quantitative evaluations to their reviews of the writing. For example, the rubric uses the criteria of Evidence, Sufficiency, Presentation, Insight, and Overall Quality on each paper and for each of these categories a dropdown menu allows the reviewer to assign a specific value; for example, Evidence could be measured as: none, weak, adequate,very good, and exceptional which could be assigned grades of E, D, C, B, and A. respectively. The instructors can manage these settings as they see fit.  Another advantage to the computerized system is that it can enforce deadlines and deduct points for lateness also determined by the instructor. I can be the good cop and the computer the bad cop.

But, I hear you asking, “What about easy graders? Or overly harsh ones?” --- won’t they skew the results?  Not really --- the full-blown system can correct for that situation.  As the semester progresses, each student’s reviews are compared to the class average and the easy and harsh graders are thus identified. It is then just a small step to weight these students’ reviews so that they don’t count as much as the other reviewers. Certainly not a perfect solution but a good one and as our politicians are reminding us these days: “Don’t sacrifice the good for the perfect.” A good followup is to have the instructor review the student reviewers occasionally to make sure he or she agrees with them and with the system’s weightings.

In the past I had to use a full class meeting period for the reviewing process --- now I could spend the class time supplementing and clarifying the ideas in the textbook. I liked the OPRS and think other writing instructors will also. We are currently in the process of reading the student evaluations of the system for their comments and criticisms so that improvements can be made and the system can be offered to other writing courses on campus.

I had a great time.