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The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program of low-cost laptops for developing countries has not led to any measurable impact in academic achievement, according to a recent report.
Instead, the study concluded that Peru might be better off spending funding on acquiring and training high-quality teachers, and not investing in technology without complementary instruction.
The paper, published in February, concluded that the "intense access to computers" the program provided "does not lead to measurable effects in academic achievement, but it did generate some positive impact on general cognitive skills."
While these organizations have the best of intentions, there may be inadvertent aspects of what they do that actually undermine their stated goals. In particular, in this piece I’m going to argue we can make science communication better not only by having lots of panels on the matter, but by changing some very simple and basic things about how scientists present their knowledge at conferences like AGU and AAAS.
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My focus on how scientists present at mega-conferences is not accidental. These conferences are, for many scientists, their number one opportunity to engage in the act of communication. Their talks, to be sure, are aimed towards their peers rather than public audiences. But nevertheless, the techniques and practices inculcated here surely have an oversized impact on scientists’ broader communication activities—including their classroom activities (where bad habits are also common).
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Caught in a Bad PowerPoint. A cardinal sin of PowerPoint is putting lots of tiny words up on the screen, and then, basically, reading your notes to the audience. It certainly isn’t only scientists who do this—you see it everywhere. But scientists are often guilty parties in this respect.
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From personality to neuropsychiatric disorders, individual differences in brain function are known to have a strong heritable component. Here we report that between close relatives, a variety of neuropsychiatric disorders covary strongly with intellectual interests. We surveyed an entire class of high-functioning young adults at an elite university for prospective major, familial incidence of neuropsychiatric disorders, and demographic and attitudinal questions. Students aspiring to technical majors (science/mathematics/engineering) were more likely than other students to report a sibling with an autism spectrum disorder (p = 0.037). Conversely, students interested in the humanities were more likely to report a family member with major depressive disorder (p = 8.8×10−4), bipolar disorder (p = 0.027), or substance abuse problems (p = 1.9×10−6). A combined PREdisposition for Subject MattEr (PRESUME) score based on these disorders was strongly predictive of subject matter interests (p = 9.6×10−8). Our results suggest that shared genetic (and perhaps environmental) factors may both predispose for heritable neuropsychiatric disorders and influence the development of intellectual interests.
academics aren't trying hard enough to get involved in the public policy debate.
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Given that professional incentives for academics are so skewed towards publishing in journals which only other academics read, maybe it's remarkable that we get even our current level of participation in public debate.
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there might also be cultural factors at play within institutions.
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They also keep us in conversation with the great minds of our past. This conversation may not, as some hope, tap into a source of enduring wisdom, but it at least provides a critical standpoint for assessing the limits of our current cultural assumptions.
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no one has theoretical expertise in more than a few specialized subjects, and there is no strong correlation between having such knowledge and being able to use it to resolve complex social and political problems. Even more important, our theoretical knowledge is often highly limited, so that even the best available expert advice may be of little practical value. An experienced and informed non-expert may well have a better sense of these limits than experts strongly invested in their disciplines. This analysis supports the traditional American distrust of intellectuals: they are not in general highly suited for political office.
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"The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning. One specimen of this method will suffice:
"It is reasonably certain that a petty chieftain named Arthur did exist, probably in South Wales. It is possible that he may have held some military command uniting the tribal forces of the Celtic or highland zone or part of it against raiders and invaders (not all of them necessarily Teutonic). It is also possible that he may have engaged in all or some of the battles attributed to him; on the other [hand, this attribution may belong to a later date."
This is not much to show after so much toil and learning"
--- AHistory of the English-Speaking Peoples / Winston Churchill
For all their pondering on matters moral, ethicists are no better mannered than other philosophers, and they behave no better morally than other philosophers or other academics either. Or such, at least, are the conclusions suggested by the research of philosophers Eric Schwitzgebel (at the University of California, at Riverside) and Joshua Rust (of Stetson University, Florida).
On Ethicists’ courtesy at philosophy conferences as recently published in Philosophical Psychology‘, Schwitzgebel & Rust report on a study that suggests that audiences in ethics sessions do not behave any better than those attending seminars on other areas of philosophy. Not when it comes to talking audibly whilst a speaker is addressing the room and not when it comes to ‘allowing the door to slam shut while entering or exiting mid-session’. And though, appropriately enough “audiences in environmental ethics sessions … appear to leave behind less trash” generally speaking, the ethicists are just as likely to leave a mess as the epistemologists and metaphysicians.
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research raises questions about the extent to which studying ethics improves moral behavior. To the extent that practical effect is among one’s aims in studying (or as an administrator, in requiring) philosophy, I think there is reason for concern. I’m inclined to think that either philosophy should be justified differently, or we should work harder to try to figure out whether there is a *way* of studying philosophy that is more effective in changing moral behavior than the ordinary (21st century, Anglophone) way of studying philosophy is.”
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I think it’s fairly common that professionals in any field are skeptical about it.
Professional politicians are much more skeptical or even cynical about politics than your average informed citizen.
Most of the doctors whom I’ve talked to off the record are fairly skeptical about the merits of medical care.
Those who specialize in giving investment “advice” will generally admit that they have no idea about the future of markets with the inevitable comment: “if I really knew how the market will react, I’d be on my yacht, not advising you”.
Delhi University has a digital archive of its off-copyright books. Browsing through it, I came across Academic Man: A Study in the Sociology of a Profession (1942) by Logan Wilson. Here's Wilson about the need for such a book-length study:
... [O]n the basis of present sociological literature the future historian would have less difficulty in ascertaining the social behavior of the railroader, or the professional thief than he would have that of contemporary university professor.
A quick search tells me that this book is a classic in sociology, and that Wilson is one of the people credited with coining the phrase "Publish or Perish."
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I think I see where the notion of the arrogant physicist comes from. First of all, some high-profile physicists are undeniably arrogant. Physicists take pride in their work and think it is important. Perhaps most significantly, physicists tend to think that their scientific worldview, with its ideals of objectivity and empiricism, is superior to the alternatives.
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Any subgroup you can name has its share of arrogant jerks. Pretty much all academics take pride in their work and think it’s important. So does the guy down the hall in advertising, and, I expect, so too do my lawyer, barber, and most other workers. And isn’t it almost axiomatic that once you’ve found a worldview that works for you, you’ll find it superior to the ones you’ve rejected?
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Twitter is
being used increasingly as a means of continuing and extending
dialogue, commentary and networking amongst academic
conference participants and is rapidly becoming the default
technology used to support what is known as the ‘backchannel’.
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What are the most important lessons you’ve learned about using social media for teaching and outreach?
It is easier to reach fame than impact. If it’s so personal, you run the risk of standing in the way of your content.
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What’s the single most important piece of advice you would give to someone just starting out in university-level teaching?
Pick the subjects and courses that really interest you rather than those that are predicted to give you nice job and salary, but study what you study very hard and go deeper and broader than what is required.
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"At £18,000 a go, it seems it won't be the very brightest but those with the deepest pockets who are afforded the chance," said Sally Hunt, general secretary of the lecturers' association, the University and Colleges Union.
"The launch of this college highlights the government's failure to protect art and humanities and is further proof that its university funding plans will entrench inequality within higher education."
Grayling said the decision to set up New College came after the government cut subsidies to humanities and social science subjects and introduced increased competition by allowing universities to charge annual tuition fees of up to £9,000.
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the business model might seem unusual for a group of professors who are, for the most part, "pink around the gills and a little bit left of centre", but he said government cuts meant going private was the only way to provide a high-quality humanities education and he predicted more universities would go private.
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"It is the economic reality," he said. "The £9,000 cap is completely unsustainable. The true cost is way more and that ceiling is going to have to be burst. Other universities might also think 'either we sink or go independent'. Almost all of [the professors signed up] have served our time with decades in public sector higher education and we have seen it get more and more difficult. It is quite a struggle now to see into the future with how we can cope with these cuts. Either you stand on the sidelines deploring what is happening or you jump in and do something about it."
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Students will be charged £18,000 a year to attend a new university established some of Britain's top academics to rival Oxford and Cambridge, it emerged today.
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The university’s fees are twice as high as the maximum that can be charged by state-funded institutions because it is exempt from Government regulations.
But the college’s backers, several of whom are shareholders and will make a profit out of the venture, defended the move, insisting it would allow them to offer the “highest quality” education.
Students will expect Oxbridge-style one-to-one tutorials with academics, more than 12 contact hours a week and a 10:1 student to teacher ratio, the university said.
Lavish consulting fees, varsity-business tie-ups chip away at public's faith in academics as independent critics
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the 2011 Edelman Trust Barometer, published by research firm StrategyOne, which surveyed 5,075 "informed publics" in 23 countries on their trust in business, government, institutions and individuals.
One of the questions asked of respondents was: "If you heard information about a company from one of these people, how credible would that information be?". Of the eight groups of individuals - academic/expert, technical expert in company, financial/industry analyst, CEO, non-governmental organisation representative, government official, person like myself, and regular employee - academic/expert came out tops with a score of 70 per cent, followed by technical expert at 64 per cent. -
the film on the global financial crisis Inside Job, which won the 2011 Academy Award for best documentary.
One of the documentary's themes is the role a number of renowned academics, particularly academic economists, played in the global crisis. It highlighted potentially serious conflicts of interests related to significant compensation derived by these academics serving on boards of financial services firms and advising such firms. - 13 more annotation(s)...
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The Templeton Foundation claims to be a friend of science. So why does it make so many researchers uneasy?
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With a current endowment estimated at US$2.1 billion, the organization continues to pursue Templeton's goal of building bridges between science and religion. Each year, it doles out some $70 million in grants, more than $40 million of which goes to research in fields such as cosmology, evolutionary biology and psychology.
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Not all intellectuals are on the "left."
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But in their case, the curve is shifted and skewed to the political left.
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