And a mini hybrid smack-rant [from Wombat of the Copier]

Riddle: What's a great idea literally at *any* moment during my 10 fucking hours of office hours every week, but a *terrible* idea at literally any moment DURING THE EXAM?

Answer: Ask me "What does this mean?", "How do I do that?" or "What am I supposed to do after this step?"

Bonus ulcer points: if you ask me 7 such questions and you're the one who asked if "this is all we're doing today or are you teaching us something?" during the problem-solving session, then went to go see something your friends were doing at freshman orientation.

--WotC

Wiley is the Devil [Wombat of the Copier submits a rant]

WileyPlus is the devil.

My students are entering identical responses, down to formatting, and half of them are getting right answers marked wrong and the others are getting them marked right.  I've tried having them log into their accounts on one another's devices - no luck.  I tried entering the responses MYSELF in case there's some formatting inconsistency I'm not catching when I watch them do it.

I keep reporting it - and Wiley keeps "thanking" me and explaining how to manually fix the grade.  I don't give a flying fuck about the grade!  Fixing the grades is trivial - I'll do it.

You don't buy an educational product for the purposes of generating grades - educational products are supposed to advance the learning!  Any moron with Excel can figure out a fucking grade - You sold my students something you said would help them learn and you're making it fucking impossible to fucking do that!

What I fucking care about is my students getting demotivated and having their efficacy destroyed by unreliable feedback!  They waste 45 minutes trying to figure out why 12 divided by 4 isn't 3, then run out of time to finish the rest of the assignment.

The product is trash - textbook publishers are trash - capitalism is destroying education and that's further good for capitalism.

If I look for tenure track positions elsewhere after I finish my PhD I'm telling everyone in my first interview "I'm using open source materials only" so they can make an informed decision before they make any offers.  The only reason I'd ever leave my admin position here would be to get a faculty position so I can enjoy the full benefits of academic freedom.  And the only one I really care about is the freedom to put my students before publishers.

--WotC

From the pasture near the college.

It's hot and humid in Orange.

The college has a new president.

Summer drags on.

The pasture has some shade trees.

Ugh.

"The college reset everyone’s email passwords and assigned everyone the same temporary password."

Professors Are Often Asked 'What Do You Teach?' But They Do Far More [Forbes.com]

The flava:
In a few weeks, many colleges and university students will return to school. A few days ago at breakfast, a nice cashier in Athens, Georgia asked if I was a professor at the University of Georgia. I said yes.  The next question was "What do you teach?" and what we do in the summer. This perspective is the classic and oft-encountered public misunderstanding of what a professor does. Herein, I offer some perspective on what professors actually do.

The article:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/marshallshepherd/2018/07/19/professors-are-often-asked-what-do-you-teach-they-do-far-more/#2c68b6921745

CSU caught a professor forging an offer letter to boost his pay. They kept him another year. [Coloradoan.com]

The flava:
In July 2017, Colorado State University chemistry professor Brian McNaughton confessed to forging an offer letter and using it as leverage to secure a $5,000 raise and better investment in his lab from the university.

The article:
https://www.coloradoan.com/story/news/2018/07/12/csu-professor-forges-offer-letter-increase-pay/777447002/

Happiness is a warm blanket.

Higher education is. . . .

Some good news for a change: School actually makes you smarter. [from Frankie Bow]

Education and IQ are correlated, but why? We know there's a selection effect--people who start life with higher IQs stick around school longer. But can schooling actually raise your IQ?
Yes, it turns out. I'd guess most Zoozers already take it for granted that education imparts something of value, and isn't just an expensive sorting mechanism. But it's nice to be able to put a number on it.

The researchers were able to disentangle correlation from causation by including three types of
studies in their meta-analysis:

"The first type of study includes data collected from individuals over time, including intelligence measurements obtained before and after individuals complete their education. This allows researchers to adjust for participants' prior intelligence level when examining the association between years of school and later intelligence.

The second type of study takes advantage of "natural experiments" in the form of policy changes that result in individuals staying in school for different lengths of time. In one study, for example, researchers examined data from the 1960s when Norway gradually enacted a new policy that increased the basic education requirement by 2 years, testing whether IQ scores were higher for students who'd been given more compulsory schooling.

In the third study type, researchers use school-admission age cutoffs to compare children who are similar in age but who have different levels of schooling due to their specific birth dates...In each of the three types of studies, the researchers found that an additional year of education was associated with an increase in IQ that ranged from 1.197 IQ points to 5.229 IQ points. In combination, the studies indicated that an additional year of education correlated with an average increase of 3.394 IQ points."


Science Daily article here:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/06/180621112004.htm

--Frankie