Wednesday, March 16, 2016 // The Statement
4B
Wednesday, March 16, 2016 // The Statement
5B
Every Monday and Wednesday at 1 p.m., room 1230 of the Undergraduate Science
Building slowly fills with students. Around 1:05, Communication Prof. Paddy Scannell
walks to the chalkboard at the front of the room and begins to write out his plan of attack.
As white chalk hits green slate stone, his nearly 50 years of academic teachings present
themselves to approximately 80 students that are still filing into room.
Usually, the format of the writing reads as an outline, but sometimes diagrams of
interconnected ideas or key figures commandeer a large portion of the board. When the
writing stops, the professor takes a step back, looks over his work one final time and begins
his lecture. Throughout the lecture, he will add points or diagrams that complement what
is already there.
In a world of hyper connection, PowerPoint presentations and iClickers, Scannell
consciously selects only two technologies to engage with his students: his voice and the
piece of chalk in his hand. It is the technology of talk and the technology of chalk brought
together to educate the masses.
Although it isn’t electrically powered or connected to the Internet, Scannell’s lecture is
technologically considered. It is technological efficiency in its purest form.
***
The nature of the average college classroom is radically different today than it was even
five years ago. In almost every classroom on campus, professors have the ability to use a
projector screen, a desktop computer, document cameras and sometimes even electronic
whiteboards. Looking back at those professors are often hundreds of glowing Apple logos,
illuminating the thousands of dollars in laptops brought to class each day by students.
With an ever-expanding wireless network supported by the University of Michigan,
both professors and students in modern higher education quite often mix class with the
Internet interactions. Professors might spend some of their lecture showing a YouTube
video or a Prezi presentation. Meanwhile, students might spend some of the same lecture
taking notes on a Google Doc while simultaneously filling out an online survey to find out
which character from “The Walking Dead” they are most like.
Outside the classroom, learning management systems like Canvas and CTools connect
professors and students in ways that 1950s college students could never imagine. E-mail
systems complement such learning management platforms and allow for formal and direct
communication between academic citizens.
Collectively, these in-classroom and online technologies have shifted the conversation
in higher education from what a professor says to what technologies they use in the
framework of their teaching.
Barry Fishman, a professor in the School of Information and the School of Education,
focuses much of his teaching on how technology plays a role in the collegiate classroom.
Having developed (among many, many other projects) a gamified class format called
GradeCraft, which mirrors the achievements one might experience in a video game rather
than traditional grading scales, Fishman knows all about how technology influences
higher education.
His first experience with technology in education came when one of his undergraduate
English classes was formatted entirely in hypertext, which is the underlying format for the
World Wide Web.
Rather than relying on the traditional English book, Fishman’s professor used hypertext
pages as the backbone of his classroom. In this hypertext network, Fishman’s classmates
created content that became interconnected in ways that were not possible in a hardcover
novel.
“It caused me to think about my own learning in a way that surprised me,” Fishman said.
Since that time, Fishman has dedicated his teaching and research to the pursuit of
implementing technologies into learning environments that enhance the educational
opportunities for all those involved.
His current venture, the aforementioned GradeCraft, has the ambition “to motivate
students and allow them to feel in control of their own learning.” Rather than assigning
CHALK TALK
AND HYPERTEXT:
TECHNOLOGY IN
THE CLASSROOM
BY ELLIOTT RAINS,
DAILY OPINION COLUMNIST
arbitrary percentages to assignments and
allowing grade finalization to occur three
weeks after a final exam, GradeCraft allows
students to progressively gain points to
reach different achievement levels.
For example, a student who reaches 7,000
points out of the 12,000 possible points with
10 assignments valued at 700 points each
might earn a “C” grade if they are to not
advance any further. Reach 10,000 points
and that student will earn an “A” in the class.
These scores update progressively and are
meant to visualize academic progression,
simultaneously encouraging students to
take risks without fear of failure and keep
working for greater game (read: academic)
achievement. By turning the class structure
into a real-world video game, Fishman’s
GradeCraft aims to incentivize learning and
engage students in a new way.
His work has even taken him to the
White House, having co-authored the
Obama administration’s 2010 U.S. National
Educational Technology Plan.
When compared to the nature of Paddy
Scannell’s lectures in Room 1230, one
might assume that Fishman and Scannell
fundamentally disagree on how to teach.
After all, Scannell uses a blackboard, chalk
and his voice to teach his class, which is
underpinned by a traditional grading scale
and structure. Fishman bases his entire
model of instruction around a concept that
can be played using a controller on a high-
def TV.
If there ever were polarities in the
classroom, one would be wise to assume
these professors were north and south.
However, at the core of each professor’s
ideology lies the same fundamental goal:
to help students gain knowledge that is
actually worth making the effort to learn.
“My philosophy of teaching is that the
classroom experience should be some kind
of human interaction between the teacher
and the class,” said in discussing his class
format.
The nature of a large lecture hall of
80-some students necessitates a relationship
where Scannell lectures and the students
listen; such sacrifices must be made given
student-teacher ratios at large universities.
As far as his use of the blackboard and
limited visible notes, Scannell said, “It’s
not as if I’m making (my lecture) up from
moment to moment, but I am talking it into
existence.”
The technology of talk facilitates this
interaction and prevails in one of Scannell’s
lectures. Rather than reading directly off
a sheet of notes or a slide, Scannell’s vocal
variance and sentence structure make each
statement conversational, educated and,
most importantly, humanistic.
And what goes into those limited notes
is a conscious choice by the seasoned
professor.
“I don’t like making (my lecture) too cut
and dry at this point,” Scannell said.
What he hopes to achieve in his teaching
is not for students to copy definitions off
a PowerPoint slide and get the “cut and
dry” experience, but rather engage in a
conversation that sparks interest in the
topic at hand, a sentiment Fishman, in a
sense echoed.
“Now that most facts can be looked up,
anything you can answer with Google
probably isn’t worth teaching,” Fishman
said. The “cut and dry” information one
might get off a PowerPoint is inevitably
something one could also find with Google.
What one cannot find on Google — and
what might be worth taking the time to
learn — is the conversation around topics,
ideas, facts and history.
“The teaching situation, ideally, is an
interaction between the teacher and the
students,” Scannell said. It is in such an
interaction where the technologies of chalk
and talk facilitate what Google cannot.
Where a computer sits, waiting for input,
Scannell engages on his own, guiding the
conversation in such a way that only an
expert human in his field could do.
Furthermore, as a resident-expert on
all types of teaching software, devices and
inventions, Fishman insisted, “It’s not the
technology; it’s what you do with it.”
While
some
might
complain
that
professors like Scannell should at least use
PowerPoint, there is nothing inherently
possessed in a PowerPoint slide that can
teach a student what is worth knowing.
Likewise, while Fishman’s gameful model of
academic progression affords students the
ability to engage with learning in a unique
fashion, were it to be implemented in the
same way a traditional grading scale might,
the technological ideology of GameCraft
would not help at all.
Although technologies like Smart Boards,
iClickers and tablets all generate the type
of hype that would suggest each device is
the singular invention that is going to “fix”
education, Fishman says this is a myth. While
each of these products, and the GameCraft
program more conceptually, all allow for
new experiences, the implementations of
each idea is what matters.
In contrast, Fishman said, products like
iClickers don’t bring something novel. “It’s
a failure of imagination,” he said. “When
people use clickers for attendance, that’s
not new; that’s (just) a lot of infrastructure
for attendance.”
“But
when
people
do
something
interesting
like
collaborative
problem
solving (using clickers), that makes them
more interesting,” he added.
For professors like Scannell, structuring
his class to be most interesting and most
adept at engaging students in order to
facilitate learning might just consist of
talking at a chalkboard for an hour and a
half.
Of course, for all professors, it quite often
doesn’t matter how interesting or engaging
they might make their course if the students
they are attempting to connect with are
engrossed in a Buzzfeed quiz or the most
recent Twitter updates. Laptops and laptop-
based notes facilitate more distraction
than ever before, so maintaining focus and
engaging with the learning process can
become more difficult for students.
But nonetheless, all of this is to say
that, at the aesthetic level, professors like
Barry Fishman and Paddy Scannell seem
to be operating in completely different
universes when it comes to the technology
when analyzed based on the ideology that
underpins each professor’s views, we can
see that technological devices or programs
haven’t really changed the nature of
education all that much.
Where Fishman hopes to see change
directly
facilitated
in
the
university
setting is in the overall structure of higher
education. The nature of degree progression,
based on distribution requirements, credit
hours and measuring knowledge by the
number of classes a person takes might soon
see the axe if technology advances as it has
recently.
“One of the exciting potentials in
electronic teaching tools is they throw off a
lot of data from the interactions,” Fishman
said. “And, in theory, it could be used for
very powerful means to help guide teaching
or guide learning.”
Rather
than
relying
on
arbitrary
measures like the credit hour, such large
data could generate alternative credentials
that signify actual knowledge retention and
application.
Learning programs like ECoach at the
University, which takes machine learning
and applies it to artificial intelligence-based
homework feedback, will hopefully use big
data to enable in-classroom opportunities
that educators dream of, as well. Of course,
if improperly applied, even applications so
advanced will serve little purpose beyond
current measures.
Such is the nature of technology in the
classroom. At the end of the day, the field
of higher education is made up of human
beings. And, in the eyes of human beings like
Paddy Scannell, this human relationship
will hopefully stick around for quite some
time.
“So long as there are classrooms and so
long as students assemble in a learning
situation with faculty, there’s room for good
old talk,” he said
***
It’s nearing 2:25 and Scannell is now
finishing his good old talk for the day.
As students begin to close their laptops,
zip their book bags and pull out their
smartphones, Scannell begins to erase the
chalk off the green slate stone in front of
him.
Somewhere across campus, at quite
possibly the same moment, a group of
students is packing their bags and checking
their phones as Fishman is finishing his
class for the day. As Fishman logs off his
laptop and unplugs it from the projector,
his metaphorical chalkboard is wiped clean
for the day, leaving the screen on which his
lecture notes existed barren.
At this moment, a professor who engages
in the technology of talk and a professor
who engages in the technology of games
exist in symmetry. At this moment, and in
many moments in the future, the nature of
education will not be defined by a screen
being on or a chalkboard being covered,
but by the respective thought that each
professor decided to stop on for the day and
where they will continue with that thought
when their class meets again.
Photos by Zoey Holmstrom // Daily