An epiphany of another kind

I have recently come to several realizations, most of which are quite startling.  First of all, we only have twelve days of class left, three of which I will likely be traveling across the country to run.  In that time span I have a ridiculously long and frightening list of things I have to do. One of them is figure out my classes for next semester.  Until now I have pretty much known what I was going to take and scheduling was just a matter of fitting things together.  However, next year I have to take biochem, p-chem, and physics and the rest is a bit up in the air.  I think what I have been thinking about the most is how I am going to fill out my social science and humanities credits.  These are especially intriguing because I have not had a lot of time to explore other areas besides my major.  

There are so many choices, so many things that I want to learn and pursue but there is simply not enough time.  I would love to be fluent in a variety of discourses- not necessarily languages but I want to understand communities and spheres within the University.  I wish that time and homework were not limiting factors in the four valuable years we have here.  I am intrigued by science classes but sometimes I feel like they are just throwing information at you that could just as easily be learned independently.  I want to find classes that challenge me in more ways than memorization.  However, this is extremely difficult to accomplish by just looking at a course catalog.  The more I have thought about this university wide blog system, the more excited I get about it.  Several times when I have been class searching, I wished that I had a type of reference like that to really see into professors and classes.  However, this is not yet a reality so I am restricted to word of mouth and course descriptions.  But I will eventually decide and then inevitably change my mind the first week or two into the semester.  Because that seems to be how I operate.

Another possibly scary realization is that my time here is nearly halfway gone.  I can't believe how fast the last two years went.  When I am looking at my requirements for my major, I am shocked at how many grades fill my transcript.  In some ways, my time here has been all that I have imagined and more.  However, I am always searching for that extra dimension to my academic experience.  A dimension beyond sitting in a packed Chem 1800 furiously scribbling notes of aldols and hemiacetals.  A dimension beyond shallow group discussions that nobody really wants to have.  I am still looking, and I am hoping that the best is yet to come and my searching will yield discovery.

This is somewhat irrelevant and a bit of a tangent but I feel that it belongs in this blog if it belongs anywhere.  First of all, I love being a member of the University of Michigan cross country and track teams.  There is nothing quite like wearing the block M across the country and still hearing cheers of "Go Blue!"  Being a part of the team has enhanced my college experience but sometimes I feel like it sacrifices some of my academic potential.   I am constrained by practice time and traveling and a conservative course-load is somewhat necessary to retain sanity.  I know I could take more classes and spend more time learning if I didn't run.  Sometimes I think about this and it bothers me slightly, but I realize that being a part of this kind of team is a very unique opportunity.  It has allowed me to understand a discourse of a very different type, although not necessarily academic, it is valuable nevertheless.  Ultimately, maybe classes and homework are not the only way to understand discourses and other communities.  I think the most important part is to look for opportunities everywhere- in classes, dorms, teams, clubs- to expand your perspective and learn something.  As for my classes, I am going to look for something that challenges me to expand my current range of classes.  This is a scary concept but exciting as well.  And as for my time being almost halfway done, I am going to try to think of it as more than half left.  Still time to find what I am looking for and more.  And of course, run fast in the process.

Go Blue!

Eureka moment!

I've been passively thinking about this persuasion presentation and wondering how I am going to be persuasive on an argument that I'm not sure is quite developed yet.  Needless to say, I have been stuck.  However, tonight I was hit with an inspiration and right now I am disappointed that I didn't come up with this earlier because my last paper would have been a lot easier and a lot better.  But what is past is past and there is no use dwelling on it.  So here we go.

The students at the University of Michigan are known as the leaders and the best.  Our school boasts top ranking programs and is one of the best universities in the country.

However, if you stood at the back of any given lecture hall, you would observe an interesting trend. NOt only would you see students typing notes but you would also see a great deal of the familiar blue border of the Facebook home page. 

 Facebook is ridiculously appealing and contagious. You can see what everyone is doing at all times as well as let them know what you are doing as well.  It is mindless and frighteningly addicting.

Although facebook can be considered a detriment to the education process, we can harness some of its appeal to create a more connected and open learning environment at the University of Michigan. 

How, you ask?

The answer is thorough blogs.

Blogging is  a relatively new media form but it is revolutionizing articles and online writing and establishing itself as its own medium.  They are often personal and make lighter reading than articles or more formal writing.  It is more accessible and often enjoyable.  Ultimately, blogs are information fused with personality.

The  key is to utilize a campus wide blog engine that every student and professor will be a part of.  The professors would be  required to keep a blog that they update somewhat regularly that explains what they are interested in as well as their research projects and goals.  The writing should not be formal but reveal a little more about who they are and their passion for what they do.  This would allow students to be able to connect with and understand their professors on a different level as well as being a useful tool when choosing classes instead of relying on rate my professor.  Students would also keep blogs that would be a window into their coursework and passions.  This would allow students to connect with each other and understand what people in other departments actually study.  The boundaries between departments are often very finite and after you choose a major, the other fields seem like mysteries.  I would like to know what goes down in West Hall or North Campus, for example.  This would make a big university smaller and allow a whole new perspective.

The other dimension of this concept is using blogs as a teaching tool.  Blogs could be integrated into every class as a small portion of participation.  Students would be given open ended blog posts that encourage them to relate coursework to applications in careers, etc or think about the way they think about or learn the material. These would be graded on participation and quality of thought.  The expanse of the blogs would make cheating easy.  However, the students should work to make their blogs their voice and an honor code may deter cheaters.  Reading these blogs would allow students different perspectives and allow them to make connections that they may not have thought of.  Some classes, especially humanities, could encourage comments and interactions to stimulate conversation.  

This would provide not only practice in writing and thinking, but communicating to a wider audience.  Forms of communication are changing but employers want people who can not only analyze and do tasks but think, apply, and COMMUNICATE!  This is one of the number one things employers look for, even over math and science skills.

So I am encouraging the University of Michigan to use a new medium to connect campus and make connections between content, learning, and applications.  In order to be the leaders and the best, we should prepare our students with skills and knowledge but also the ability to communicate and a voice to face the world with.

Ultimately an epic expansion of what already exists in mBlog.

Now I just need to figure out how to present all this...

A surreal world of perfection

I am currently blogging from the lobby of the Sheraton Hotel in Palo Alto California.  This is my third visit to Stanford and I cannot get over how unnaturally perfect this place is.  Although the rain and gloom has somewhat dampened its flawlessness this trip, it somehow retains ultimately impressive.  There is immaculately manicured landscaping, quintessential shops, and beautiful buildings.  It is hard to imagine that students similar to ourselves live and study in this environment.  It is odd that they are learning much of the same material and having similar conversations in this alternate reality across the country.  Although I attend a well respected university, I'm still awe-inspired at the Stanford University.  There is an entire next level of respect that I have for these students that call this their home school.  I wonder if this is how some people feel about Michigan students when they visit Ann Arbor.

This has made me wonder about the phenomenon of "ivory tower isolation" and the disconnect of academia.  I get this feeling of an elite exclusive community when I walk Stanford's campus and I am somewhat impressed, yet somewhat disgusted.  I think that education should be respected but the school name should not necessarily be held on a pedestal.  Maybe if people felt that the attainment of knowledge was not so elitist, we would have an overall more educated world.  However, some people are driven to attain high education to attain this exclusive status.  This presents somewhat of a catch-22.

Well, this is not a concept that is going to be resolved in one blog post so I am going to go enjoy the Stanford atmosphere although it is neither warm nor sunny.  It is only 6:12 pm here and I still have four hours until race time.  I will be competing tonight against some of the fastest in the country at the Stanford Invitational and is my first 10k on the track and I am a bit nervous.   The 10k has its own mystique that can only be revealed through 25 laps of fun.

Thanks for pondering with me from across the country.

Go Blue!
Kaitlyn

Joining the conversation

            I have recently been thrown headfirst into academic argumentation in my discipline through a progression of a single idea.  In the fall, I met with one of my previous professors to talk about testing that the University of Michigan does on athletes.  Our first conversation snowballed into a research project investigating iron regulation in female athletes.  Over the last few months, I have been scouring the literature on the subject, reviewing what has already been done and looking at where our proposed research would fit in. 

In the meantime, the University of Michigan was selected to be the institutional research partner by the Women’s Sport Foundation and be the site for the Women's Sports, Health, Activity and Research and Policy Center.  The center recently proposed a pilot study grant competition for research pertaining to women and girls in sports.  Our small pilot study is currently unfunded and we are going to submit a proposal and I am responsible for writing part of it. 

This entire project has been challenging yet intriguing before the lab work even begins.  It has truly exposed me to how research works in my discipline, or basically any field.  The goal is to be able to develop even a single untapped question that can be investigated and discussed.  It seems like a simple goal but it is deceivingly difficult.  The difficulties lie not only in logistics, but in identifying an angle that has not been investigated and is possible to explore. 

I read a great analogy on academic argumentation that compared it to a conversation between educated individuals on a certain subject.  These people are having a conversation and you want to join but you cannot appear to be ignorant or repetitive.  Successful entry requires innovation, and this is when you know you belong in the discourse community.

         Right now I am working on making this entry into the conversation.  It is not necessarily being accepted by others that makes this entry significant.  What is especially significant is the entry symbolizes the potential to generate new knowledge instead of discussing what has already been established.  This is the ultimate role of academic argumentation is to generate new ideas that can be discussed and accepted or rejected and potentially add to the base of knowledge already established. 

        

         Because of this role of academic argumentation in science, I believe the science disciplines could benefit from the collaborative learning and “writing to make meaning” theories.  Since writing is the prime medium of collaboration and communication in this field, learning to think, write, and speak with peers in the discipline is invaluable. 

         As for my own entry into the discourse, I hope that I am successful not only in finding a niche to enter the academic conversation but the persuasive conversation to fund the project.  I need to not only determine where we fit in academia and but convince a very different community that it matters.  I could really use some collaborative learning right now.  

My theory of writing- a successful failure

            If I had been asked to write a theory of writing one month ago, or even one week ago, I would have been at a loss.  Although I have read many essays and theories of writing, few of them truly resonated with me.  I would find sections of the essays that I would get excited about and could relate to but they would soon relapse into monotonous theoretical English discourse.  However,  the essay “Collaborative Learning” by Bruffee intrigued me and caused me to remodel my previous beliefs on writing theory. 

One theory of writing is utilizing it as a way to make meaning.  I liked this concept when I first read Bizzell’s "William Perry and Liberal Education" but at first could not see its practical applications.  However, Bruffee refined this idea and put it into a context that I thought to be quite brilliant despite my initial skepticism.  His proposal was that writing should be taught through “collaborative learning.”   Since writing is externalizing thoughts through a medium and conversation is externalizing thoughts through talking, the best way to improve writing is to practice and refine thinking and conversing within a discourse.  Collaborative learning allows students to engage in the "normal discourse," or conversation  that they will be using in any field they choose with their peers.  It is practice for writing and communicating not necessarily in the discourse that they will enter, but practice in the writing that will help them to attain this discourse.  He also talked about the illusion of the authority of knowledge.  It is easy to assume that those who “know more” or are more educated are automatically higher on the status ladder and students must jump through rings before attaining the authority to be an active member in a discourse.  However, if this is the active school of thought, minimal knowledge will be gained because everyone is working to obtain knowledge that has already been established instead of thinking and talking about new ideas although they might not have the authority to do so.  Although this was not an adequate synopsis of Bruffee's brilliant claims, I hope that it reflected some of the revolutionary and insighful ideas he proposed.  

  I feel as though English in college now is either too focused on adopting an argumentative and formal writing that is too contrived or it attempts to integrate today’s society by putting a media focused spin on rhetoric and analysis.  However, writing classes have the potential to be much more than this.  Writing can be practice in thinking, collaborating, and making connections between ideas.  These are not skills to be mastered, but practice in thinking about the world that will benefit students not just in English classes but throughout college and life.   After all, a college education should not just be focused on attaining skills but making connections and learning to collaborate with colleagues.   English classes could be revolutionized to optimize student’s experience and perception of writing  and enhance their college experience.   These experiences form the foundation for future education and careers instead of specializing to early and creating a one dimensional idea of writing.  Ultimately, this is not a theory of writing but a proposal for change.  My beliefs about how writing is and should be taught has continually changed while reading a range of theories, however, one constant has been my skepticism with the application of theories.  Most identify a need for change and can explain why but few address how to do this.  This is why my "theory of writing" is a commitment to change and improvement through revolutionizing writing education to benefit students and society.

Although this post is somewhat of a failure to develop a theory of writing, it has helped me to see a new angle to approach how writing should be taught.  So I'll take that and consider this long, convoluted blog post to be a success in my own mind, if not my readers. 

FINALLY!!!

Yes!  I have finally found a writing "pedagogy" (I hesitate to even call it this) that I agree with.  Kastman does a remarkable job of discussing the relevance and application of the post-process pedagogy of writing in his article “Post-Process ‘Pedagogy’: A Philisophical Exercise”.  Post process pedagogy is the concept that writing cannot be represented by a single "thing" or body of knowledge but instead is a public, interpretive, and situated form of communication. However, the process theory of writing is so cemented in our education system that it can be difficult to consider writing without this content focused and "commodified" approach.  

I don’t agree with using convoluted process theories that attempt to quantify and generalize the writing process.  The writing process is inherently complex yet natural at the same time and should not be narrowed into the confines of labels.  I could barely get through Flower and Hayes “Cognitive Theory of Writing” because it was so theoretical and impractical that I became frustrated with the ideas being presented. This theory of writing attempted to expand on the traditional writing models with the integration of the concept that writing should be understood as a set of distinctive thinking processes.  This model takes into account the rhetorical problem, the long-term memory as well as planning, translating, and reviewing steps.  However, I saw this as essentially just replacing one stage theory for another. Although I commend them for their efforts in investigating the subtleties of the writing process, I could not see practical application of their work.

  I felt liberated when Kastman provided solid reasoning that knocked process theory off its pedestal.  Although the post-process theory is often criticized for its vagueness and lack of application in the classroom, I found this abstract element to be intriguing. Post process theory proposes that writing be viewed as an activity that cannot be mastered or even taught.  It should be approached as a “dialogic understanding of meaning-making”.  Even more intriguing was the suggestions for implementing post process theory in education.  Kastman suggested focusing on more one on one communication through writing centers and including more dialogue in teacher student interactions.  I think that tutoring, especially by other students, is an interesting idea because it has the potential to help both the writer and the tutor.  

One of my friends is in a class through the university writing center that prepares students to tutor at the writing center.  They discuss theories of writing and the best ways to help others learn to improve their writing.  I think this is a great idea and I'm going to ask him more about his experiences to possibly incorporate some of these learning and teaching strategies into my own pedagogy of writing.  

This article more than any other has sparked my excitement about this paper.  I have never really liked the way English classes are taught and this paper has introduced some ideas that I feel like I can build from to create a method of teaching that I think is more effective and relevant.