Purpose Motive

This video explains why the standard model for incentives does not work at an Academic institution. Most of the faculty are interested in Autonomy, the desire to be self directed. The traditional rules of management which stresses compliance does not work with the faculty. The other interest of faculty is Engagement and studies show that self directed or the appearance of self direction works best. Finally, Mastery is another motivator for faculty.
All of these points are covered better in this video and I hope you will spend 10 minutes to watch this video. If interested you can read more about this in the book by Dan Ariely titled Upside of Irrationality.

Do You Know Where Is This?

This is one of the smoking areas on campus. Facilities has done a great job at this location.  Do you know where this picture was taken? Do you know the location of the other smoking areas? Where do you direct students who are smoking to move?
please take our little survey.

Taking Attendance Online

For the past few years, I have been taking attendance in my online class and dropping students who do not take the attendance survey. I tried to promote this idea in person but it fell on deaf ears. As usual I was ahead of the times. Now it seems there are some students who sign up for online classes without any intention to participate for the purpose of collecting Financial Aid.
For any faculty interested in my method here it is again feel free to use it. If you improve on my idea please share it in the comment field.

First you will need an attendance button on your blackboard site.

To create a button go to the upper left hand side of the screen in blackboard and click on the + sign

Click on Create Content Area

Name the area as Attendance

In this area place two simple surveys for students to take as attendance.

 The survey will ask a very simple question
It is important to keep the survey short and to the point so students will participate without stressing.

Use the grade book to see who has and who has not participated in the survey.
If a student participates in the attendance survey they will have a check mark in the grade book.
I suggest to take attendance twice in case students miss the first attendance quiz.
In my class I drop students who have missed both attendance quizzes for week one and week two.

Another method to discover who is and who is not participating in the class is to use the performance dashboard.

1. Under control panel click on Evaluation
2. Under Evaluation click on Performance Dashboard

You can view which student has logged in and which student has not. Also you can view how many days since any student has accessed the course.

You Have To Read This!!

Here is an interesting area of research on Underground Economy of Urban Squirrels. This is one of the few articles which has put a smile on my face. 

I am not making this up. It was done by an Ecology professor who took some economics classes, and uses economic modeling to study squirrels. It is serious research.

Starbucks Teens for Beans (click here to listen)

This is an interesting commentary I heard on my favorite show on NPR Marketplace. It seems that Starbuck is looking into marketing to the teen market. Every morning I see many of my colleagues with Starbuck coffee, and began to wonder if they will switch to AM-PM coffee if Starbuck goes teen.
To listen to the story click on the title of this post. You can read or listen to the commentary.

We Love Pictures

I have been monitoring the number of hits on this blog by using a free service provided by SiteMeter. They send me a weekly report. The usuall is 2 hits per week. I know Mr. Young is one and the other is me. After posting the pictures the number of page views per day jumped up to 9 per day! And the average length of the visit rose to 3-4 minutes!

This means that I have to walk around with my camera and snap pictures of you.

Good Intentions Gone Wrong

This is from the article in Los Angeles Times:
"All the effort to boost children's self-esteem may have backfired and produced a generation of college students who are more narcissistic than their Gen X predecessors, according to a new study led by a San Diego State University psychologist"
And have you seen this phoneme?
"Students and teachers said they often see examples of inflated egos on campus: students who converse in the computer center while others are trying to concentrate, preen in front of the reflecting windows of the economics building or expect good grades simply for showing up at class."

Spanish Class Gone Wrong

The following from the LA Times:

In June, the athletes were looking for Senora Rose Mary Ross, 73, a
grandmother and Spanish instructor with an engaging teaching style and a
generous grading philosophy — suddenly so popular that she had to take on two
classes at once.

Ross normally taught only Spanish 2 during the summer
but agreed to teach the Spanish 3 group in the same crowded classroom. Like many
other community college courses, her five-unit classes qualified for transfer to
USC and cost a fraction of the university tuition — $141 at Trade Tech compared
to about $5,500 two miles south.

And there was plenty of additional
motivation.

"Those USC kids told me, 'If I took this class at USC, I'd
get a D.' All of them said that," Ross said. But she is not apologetic.

"I've never given an easy grade in my life," she told The Times in a
recent interview. "You come to my class and work, and I see you want to learn,
I'll give you an A. I see some lazy ass, coming late all the time, acting like
he doesn't care, I won't give him an A. I'll give him a B."

She said a
primary goal was to make school a positive experience for students in an urban
neighborhood where financial pressures and job stress are common.

The
article does not show when this happened:


A Times review of the
25-student Spanish 3 class list shows that Ross, a USC graduate from the 1950s,
issued a B to five summer school students. All others got an A.

It was
that grade distribution that finally set off alarm bells up and down Figueroa.
Investigations and internal audits at both colleges ensued.

For USC,
just coming off probation after its athletic program was hit with sanctions over
academic fraud charges five years earlier, response was unequivocal. Officials
notified students late last year that transfers of Trade Tech Spanish 3 credits
to the university were rescinded and disallowed.

For Trade Tech, there
is lingering embarrassment and concern among staff that the incident will harm
the school's reputation.

"We need to do better," conceded Marcy
Drummond, Trade Tech's vice president of academic affairs.

Generation Next

This was an interesting program on PBS. This program is about the 16-25 years old who we get in our classrooms. Couple of situations/deas caught my attention. At the beginning of the story they showed how the newly hired workers (after being hired for two months) of this generation have the audacity to ask for vacation. The second idea that caught my attention was the amount of debt they carry.

Workforce Readiness Crisis

The following is from the article called Workforce Readiness Crisis.

1.a combination of basic knowledge and applied skills, with applied skills
trumping basics as in the top five most important for any level of
education;
2. professionalism/work ethic, teamwork/collaboration, and oral
communications, which are rated the three most important applied skills;
3. knowledge of foreign languages, an area that will increase in importance
in the next five years, more than any other basic skill;
4. and creativity/innovation, which is projected to increase in importance for future
workforce entrants.

Another idea that was presented in this article was: "that employers place much greater value on the applied skills of leadership, critical thinking, and problem-solving than on more traditional basic skills such as reading comprehension or mathematics .."

Behaviour

This is an interesting article from the daily news . It discusses how student behavior is deteriorating.
I am big believer in respecting the students and treating them like "college students" but recently I am beginning to reconsider my laissez faire attitude.

The article discusses how Paris' transport authority have created a Web site and invite passengers to rank the most irritating manners on French trains.
We should do the same at Rio Hondo. Build a page for students to visit and rank the most irritating manners on campus. This should lead to awareness which is the first step in solving any problem.