What Happens at Conference

“What happens at conference stays at conference.” That’s how I would paraphrase what Gordon Research Conference (GRC) organizers would say. The GRCs are small focused meetings typically with less than 200 participants. We eat meals together, purposefully, for more mingling and exchange of ideas. Presentations feature at least some cutting-edge results that are new and yet-to-be published, hence the call for confidentiality. On the first day, we’re told not to publicize the work presented at the conference. I’ve only been to a few GRCs, and none of them were in Vegas. In any case, I can’t tell you anything about them since what happens at conference, stays at conference.

This past week I was at a very different type of conference. The national American Chemical Society (ACS) conference is held twice a year and has ~15,000 attendees. The host locations are limited to places that have conference centers, usually in a downtown metropolitan area. The Spring 2017 meeting was in San Francisco. There was a national ACS national conference once in Vegas (I didn’t attend) but they were never invited back apparently because chemists aren’t good about spending money at the casinos and other tourist-hotel joints. Maybe chemists are an especially stingy group, because clearly Vegas didn’t make enough money off us.

The ACS does not have a confidentiality clause, so I can divulge what happens at this conference. The downtown conference center is actually not large enough to accommodate everyone so many of the conference sessions are spread out among the nearby hotels. Everything is within walking distance in San Francisco, and the weather was very pleasant. The main things at an ACS conference are: (1) oral presentations, (2) poster presentations, and (3) the Expo where vendors hawk their wares. But probably the most important part about these conferences is not the formal presentations, but the informal networking that goes on in hallways, hotel lobbies and local restaurants.

What you do at a conference to some extent is related to the stage in your career. As a young faculty member, I was very focused on the science. I went to as many talks as I could, walked the halls of the poster sessions, asked questions, and tried to learn as much as possible. I’d visit the Expo at least once to see if there was anything new and interesting. (As a computational chemist, the Expo tends to be less useful.) Nowadays, I spend my time differently. I still attend some talks and poster sessions, but a significant number of them are not in my research area – I’m simply interested in broader things that may or may not have any impact on advancing my career. Meeting up with friends, old and new, has become a much higher priority. Yes, we talk science, but we also just catch up on life. I don’t feel bad about missing some talks in lieu of meet-ups. I still give at least one talk every time I go to the ACS and my research students typically present posters.

One highlight of the conference: The faculty and students in my department who attend often try to have one dinner together as a group. I really enjoyed our dinner gathering in San Francisco. We have a great group of students! Being able to leisurely chat with them about life, family, food, and sometimes a bit of chemistry, is one of the most enjoyable things about being a faculty member! (I also enjoy consuming Asian pastries so having a good Chinatown nearby is a major plus! It’s a bit unhealthy but I did do a lot of walking and I refrained from overeating.) For the students I brought to San Francisco, this was their first national ACS conference, and I think they all enjoyed the new experience. The Expo is also a highlight for students looking to pick up chemistry swag. For me, it’s old hat and I’ve skipped the Expo the last five years.

The only drawback with going to a conference during the semester is the catching up on work responsibilities when you return. Colleagues covered my classes while I was gone (we have a great department culture in helping each other out), but I did have a lot of student work to read and grading to do. However, I managed to get a lot accomplished the last couple of days so I can enjoy a relaxing weekend. We’re in the middle of registration for next semester so I had lots of students coming by to talk about their schedule. My students and advisees also asked me about my trip so I was able to tell them a little about what happens at a chemistry conference. I spent a moment in my classes before my trip telling them about why scientists go to conferences. Hopefully, this gets some of them more excited about chemistry!

Changing Minds and Language

In the second half of March, I was part of a working group hosting a biologist who is also an expert in science education. Helping organize and attending multiple workshops and meetings made me think a lot about teaching and what I do in the classroom. It also prompted me to read a slew of chemical education papers. I’ll be sharing my thoughts on some of the readings in the coming weeks. Today I wanted to reflect on three things that stood out to me from the past two weeks.

The first has to do with crafting questions to change minds. I had recently thought more about how to ask questions as part of formative assessment, and started to apply some of these strategies in my classes. However, I feel that I’m still doing this haphazardly instead of systematically – although I expect to improve with time. At one of the workshops a couple of weeks ago, we discussed how to leverage asking questions into a “sticky” learning experience, particularly suited for important concepts we want to stick with the students.

I often ask questions at the beginning of class. These take two forms: Sometimes I have pop quizzes to assess whether students have understood material from the previous class or did the reading for the present class. Other times I use questions as a starting point to motivate thinking about the topic we will be covering. What I hadn’t considered was to carefully construct a single multiple-choice question pertaining to the topic that superficially resembled a quiz, but did not function as one. The question is used not primarily to assess student knowledge, but for students to assess their own thinking, and to see that as a result of learning something about the topic, that it is okay and perhaps even desirable to change one’s mind.

As part of her visit, our illustrious visiting professor and science education expert provided binders of material with data. While these were all in biology, they were mainly at the introductory level, and I was able to see many, many examples of different questions. Each of the questions showed the pre- and post-results of the student responses. They also included a narrative on why the faculty member chose the question (and the crucial multiple choice answers) and a reflection on whether they would reuse and/or modify the question. The questions and answer choices were crafted particularly to target misconceptions. Students have typically had some science in high school, and they remember or misremember a range of concepts that are also covered at the introductory college level.

When students see the pre-results, they see a diversity of opinion and this forces them to pay attention. Why did so many of my classmates choose a different answer from me? Some form of metacognition is triggered. The student looks more closely at his/her own answer in addition to the other offerings. From what I gathered about what actually goes on in class, the instructor makes clear to the students that being able to change one’s mind after learning new information is not just permissible but even encouraged. The actual lesson can then take various forms, but at some later time the same question is asked again. Inevitably the post-results are “better” than the pre-results from an assessment point of view, but more importantly the student retention of the “key concept” is increased significantly. (This can be tested in a variety of ways including crafting a different but related final exam question.)

The language of the instructor is important in all of this. It sets the framework for why we as a class are doing a particular activity. This brings me to the second thing that struck me. In discussions with our visiting expert and with my colleagues, and also watching how she ran the workshops, I became very aware of what words are being used to motivate a particular activity. I often use Think-Pair-Share in class. When I do, the class participates both visibly and audibly. But I do two things to ensure this happens. The question is not one that has an easy or obvious answer, and the students know that I will call on several of them individually. Nobody wants to look ignorant when called-on in class. Thus the motivation is fear. While effective, I’m not sure this is the best motivating factor. It occasionally works well in the early stages, but as an extrinsic motivator (and a negative one) I don’t think it is a good strategy for deep learning in the long run.

The third thing that stood out to me was how much jargon I was using in my non-majors chemistry class. The last two weeks of March coincided with my introducing organic chemistry. There is a lot of nomenclature that the students need to know as they learn about different functional groups. In a workshop two weeks ago, we did an activity on traxoline. If you’ve heard of traxoline, you know exactly what I’m talking about. (If you haven’t, a quick internet search will yield many ways this activity is used.) Subsequently in class, I found myself consciously modifying my language to make sure I didn’t throw too much jargon in a single sentence, and inserted extra “terminology checks” throughout the class to make sure students were on the same page. The traxoline activity was very timely for me.

Of the three things I highlighted, language and jargon is beginning to make an impact in my classes. These are easier changes to make, and being more aware of what I was saying was sufficient to prompt those changes. On the other hand, crafting excellent mind-changing multiple-choice questions is not so easy. While I inevitably started thinking about some examples, I expect it will take multiple drafts to really get some of these just right. I now have a new summer goal as I prepare for my classes next semester. I should identify some of those key concepts I want to stick with my students and then work on question-craft!

Spycraft

I just finished reading Code Warriors by Stephen Budiansky. The book covers the history of the NSA with a focus on secret intelligence during the Cold War. It was particularly interesting to be reading this in light of current U.S. political issues related to Wikileaks, wire-tapping accusations, and collecting data and metadata on persons and governments. However, that’s not what actually prompted me to borrow the book from the library. I got interested because I watched Season 1 of The Americans in early March. (I am on the waiting list for the Season 2 DVDs at my local library branch.)

I did not know much about the history of how NSA was formed. I was flabbergasted learning about the turf wars between NSA and CIA, the inefficiency of different government entities, and the ridiculousness (in hindsight) of some decisions made by high-ranking officials in the government and military during the Cold War. Budiansky sums this up well in the book’s epilogue: “… the crazy jury-rigged American intelligence structure, with its perpetual internal bureaucratic warfare, tangled lines of authority, and wasteful inefficiency and duplication… [and] that even in helping to attain the victory of containment over Soviet Communism, the intelligence agencies had often failed spectacularly at crucial moments, and had left in their wake an often sordid trail of transgressions against law, morality, decency and basic American values.”

There were many successes in the work from signal intelligence, but also significant failures such as the Gulf of Tonkin incident and the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, and the Chinese pushback in Korea. Budiansky critically analyzes these failures, confirming once again that as flawed human beings we repeat the mistakes of the past. The successes are not as showy, but just as significant. In his analysis, Budiansky finds that “the American cryptologists of the Cold War deserve as much credit as anyone for the fact that Americans, Russians and the rest of the world were never vaporized in a cloud of radioactive ash; without them it is hard to see that containment would have lasted long enough to matter.” Signal intelligence and NSA played a crucial role in averting the Suez and Cuban crises, amidst saber-rattling and political posturing through threats and counter-threats.

In an episode of The Americans, an incident escalating tensions is eventually averted thanks to double-checking and verifying information through “old-fashioned” spycraft. The series illustrates the complexity of decision-making when presented with incomplete raw data. Budiansky hammers this point home in his book when discussing intelligence, information and appropriate analysis. How should the raw data be interpreted? Who is in the position to interpret? The deep cover field agents in The Americans face the same dilemma as do their superiors stationed in the same foreign country, while communicating back-and-forth with headquarters.

It’s not just the Cold War tension and spycraft that’s interesting in The Americans. The deep cover field agents, having adapted to their new country experience the internal tension of fitting in while remaining apart. Truth and lies among family, friends and acquaintances threaten to tear lives apart. How does one live a lie in an attempt to remain true? It was also interesting to see U.S. life portrayed in the 1980s, the setting of the show, during the Reagan era of the Cold War. (I grew up in a different country and first set foot in the U.S. in the 1990s.) Another aspect I found really interesting was seeing the “old” clunky technology used by agents to spy on each other and gain intelligence information.

The gadgetry of spycraft today is orders of magnitude more advanced and more miniaturized than the equipment of the ‘80s. I’m impressed by the ingenuity of people in those days. Setting The Americans during this era was brilliant on the part of the creative team that put together this first season. Spies had to use their considerable skills and adaptability to get around numerous obstacles given the limited technology and information. Technology is also a topic in Code Warriors, and Budiansky details the impact of signal intelligence and cryptanalysis needs and how they pushed development of IBM and Cray computers. The history of the early code warriors, people and machines working together, from the Second World War through today, is one of the most interesting parts of the book. It also reminded me of the power of modulo arithmetic, and that I should crack open the boardgame Twilight Struggle soon!

The Librarians: Magic Lite

We recently finished watching Season 1 of The Librarians. My librarian spouse had been waiting for the local library to acquire the DVDs. She put them on hold and they came in a week ago. (She works at a research library, not the local library.) There are just ten episodes, so we watched a couple every night for five nights. The series is an offshoot of three previous TV movies, the first being The Librarian: Quest for the Spear (which we watched sometime in the last decade). The movies had starred Noah Wyle as an Indiana Jones type globetrotter who gathers magical artifacts for an ancient organization, The Library. As the titular Librarian, he is a polymath who goes on quests, and is aided by a Guardian who has practical skills and can fight off the baddies.

The Librarians is light-hearted in character with many comedic moments. Instead of one Librarian, there is now a team. The story begins ten years after the first Librarian movie, and the first episode introduces the new team while making connections to what has gone before. The series resembles a police procedural without the heavy drama and angst. It has the quality of a light romp. Each episode features a quest that involves collecting an ancient artifact imbued with magic. The premise is that the magic of old was concentrated in such artifacts, many of which have been lost over time. Set in the modern age, magic is not commonplace, until it “breaks out” due to the mischief caused by an artifact.

In one of the later episodes, there is a discussion among the team about how sufficiently advanced technology looks like magic, but that the converse is true. Magic can be hidden nefariously, masquerading in the form of advanced technology. This is an interesting idea, and I hope to see if this is pursued in Season 2. (The local library does not have this yet. We’re patient and willing to wait.) The magical artifacts are tied to legends – Arthurian, Greek, Minoan, Druidic. But the fast pace of storytelling has the air of Magic Lite. There aren’t long agonizing Hamlet-like moments; things move along very briskly. But the lack of anchoring depth makes the stories feel less substantial and perhaps more pasted-on, i.e., Lite.

For the most part, the team goes against stereotype. The leader who also provides the muscle and does the fighting is a woman, as is the mathematical genius. The light-fingered thief is male, and so is the expert in history-art-anthropology. However, the “old man” of the group who provides the gadgetry resembles Q in James Bond or Batman’s Alfred. In several episodes, Noah Wyle makes an appearance, but I feel that he unbalances the team and weakens those episodes. So frankly, I hope he shows up less in Season 2. I like the liberal-arts team approach more than the singular polymath. I’m also hoping to see some deeper thinking about the nature of magic – this would incline me to keep watching. On the other hand, it’s possible that the series could devolve into soap opera, the bane of many a popular TV series.

The Name of the Wind: A More Scientific Magic

Guest blog post from one of my sisters. Quotes from the book are in italics. Enjoy!

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Adult Harry Potter: That’s how I’d describe Patrick Rothfuss’ The Name of the Wind if I had to in only three words.

2017 marks the book’s tenth anniversary, and I can’t think of a more fitting novel to review for a blog about CHEM:

•          It’s got its own “Hogwarts” (a less child-friendly one).

•          It’s partly about young Kvothe’s formal “Education” at the University.

•          It certainly has “Magic” (a science-inspired magic).

•          It even has “Chemistry”! (not a major subject in the novel, but Kvothe does learn a bit of the natural sciences)

Introducing an adult Harry Potter (with minimal spoilers)

My name is Kvothe.

I have stolen princesses back from sleeping barrow kings. I burned down the town of Trebon. I have spent the night with Felurian and left with both my sanity and my life. I was expelled from the University at a younger age than most people are allowed in...

That’s how Kvothe might introduce himself.

Actually, that’s how he does introduce himself, on the book’s back cover blurb. And no, I can’t pronounce his name either.

You might guess from the blurb that Kvothe’s tale is more “serious” than Harry Potter, at least in tone. The frequent goofiness and light-heartedness found in HP is mostly absent in Name of the Wind. NOTW is grittier; Kvothe is less sheltered and protected than Harry. In that sense, NOTW is more adult than HP. But not adult in the sense of TV ratings – I would rate NOTW as PG-13.

Kvothe and Harry aren’t far apart in age, but comparing them is a little unfair – Kvothe might say so, I think.

It’s true they both come from “less fortunate” backgrounds (I use the term loosely) and go to a school of magic. But the major similarities end there.

What’s interesting are the differences. I would like to focus on two differences: between the protagonists, and the magic in their worlds. Finally, I’ll say why I enjoyed NOTW so much.

Harry vs. Kvothe: Protagonist differences

… I tread paths by moonlight that others fear to speak of during day. I have talked to Gods, loved women, and written songs that make the minstrels weep.

You may have heard of me.

Harry begins life as a legend. Along the way we see that he is an ordinary boy, who succeeds with the help of friends. In contrast, Kvothe’s tale is about how a nobody becomes somebody. Hardly unusual for a fantasy novel, but Kvothe is, I’d argue, a more interesting protagonist than Harry.

Kvothe is more of a smartass than Harry; it comes from being brilliant and ambitious. Harry, on the other hand, often appears clueless – though that’s not his fault, and to his credit he’s humble.

But I was more invested in Kvothe’s journey as a student. Driven by goals that are different from Harry’s, Kvothe pursues knowledge more fiercely and desperately. He’s also forced to work with fewer resources. For example, Kvothe is poor and has to make weighty financial decisions … while Harry has piles of gold sitting on the floor of his high-security bank vault (which one reader estimated to be worth over USD$240,000).

Because of that and other factors, our two protagonists go through very different school experiences. To avoid further spoilers, I’ll just say that Harry’s school life was full of feasts and friendship while Kvothe’s wasn’t.

A final, minor point: They had differing “extra-curricular” interests. Kvothe’s was music, while Harry’s was Quidditch. Poet-performer or sportsman? Take your pick!

I’m not arguing that Kvothe is a superior character or more likeable than Harry. I do find Harry a worthy hero. But Kvothe is less of a blank slate. And I like that he’s first a musician, and only second a magician.

Hogwarts Magic vs. Arcanum Sympathy: Magic differences

Abenthy proceeded to give me a brief overview of each of the sciences. While his main love was for chemistry, he believed in a rounded education. I learned how to work the sextant, the compass, the slipstick, the abacus. More important, I learned to do without. Within a span I could identify any chemical in his cart…

In a nutshell: The difference between magic in Harry’s world and Kvothe’s world is that the latter’s magic is more science-inspired.

In a mouthful: For Harry, think “Wingardium leviosa!” For Kvothe, think “The Maxim of Variable Heat Transferred to Constant Motion.”

Harry’s magic is more mysterious and inexplicable. The effectiveness of a spell seems to depend on natural talent, the condition of the spellcaster’s wand, and possibly practice. The power of the spell may also depend on the nature of the magic being used. But that’s roughly all we know.

Now, let me introduce the magic in Kvothe’s world.

There are different types of magic in the Four Corners of Civilization. Some are more sciencey; those are taught at the University. Other types are considered legendary, rare, unknown, or old wives’ tales.

I’ll only talk about one type of magic, “sympathy,” which the novel focuses on and which Kvothe first learns.

In sympathy, you create a “sympathetic link” between two objects. For example, between a gold coin and a silver coin (lying on a table). If successful, you can push the gold coin with your finger… and the silver coin should move by itself too.

But you have to exert enough energy to move both coins though you’re only touching one coin. Basically, sympathy is a system of energy manipulation (says Wikia). And you can do more than move coins. You could heat them, destroy them, etc. etc.

You can create a sympathetic link between almost any two objects. For example, stone and fruit. Or doll and human. The more similar the two objects are, the stronger their sympathetic link. This is foundational to magic in Kvothe’s world. If you try to perform magic between two very dissimilar, weakly-linked objects, you’ll exert and waste more energy. 

Performing sympathy requires extreme concentration. And you have to believe your two objects are connected.

Here are the 3 laws of sympathy, the 3Cs:

Correspondence: “similarity enhances sympathy”

Consanguinity: “one piece of a thing can represent the whole”

Conservation: “energy cannot be destroyed or created”

Sound familiar? Sympathy isn’t a new concept invented by Patrick Rothfuss – you can see it in HP too, in the link between Voldemort and his Horcruxes.

But Rothfuss obviously put a lot of thought into his version.

In an interview with WIRED, he said, “It’s hard to get more scientific [than sympathy]. I literally have the math for a lot of these things. I have run the numbers about how much heat it takes for this and that, and accounting for slippage, or whatever. I can look at my chalkboard here and see all of the delta calculations for how much energy it takes to boil gold. So I do the math…”

If sympathy doesn’t strike your fancy, don’t worry. There’s still “traditional” magic in Rothfuss’ novel.

He admitted himself that “sympathy is many things, but it’s usually not wondrous. You never get true shock and amazement. So I wanted both. I wanted my cake and to eat it, too. On the other end of the spectrum is magic the art of which cannot be explained.”

Amazement. That’s why we enjoy tales of magic, such as the tales of Harry and Kvothe. (But isn’t science amazing too?)

Introducing a literary fantasy

Prologue: A Silence of Three Parts

"[The third silence] was the greatest silence of the three, wrapping the others inside itself. It was deep and wide as autumn’s ending. It was heavy as a great river-smooth stone. It was the patient, cut-flower sound of a man who is waiting to die."

What I enjoyed most about Name of the Wind was its prose. The prose is often lyrical and poetic, both in the narration and the songs that characters sing.

I also liked the lore of NOTW, which comes alive in the plot and doesn’t merely serve as requisite-but-stale background. The mythology found in songs and oral storytelling – such as tales about demons and Tehlu the Creator – give Kvothe’s world life and depth. They are delightful, scary, ironic, epic.

While you’ll recognize familiar ideas like demons and magic, the novel doesn’t simply rehash these fantasy tropes. It successfully avoids cliché.

Admittedly, the plot begins in a clichéd setting: a tavern in Smallville, where insignificant villagers discuss rumors of Bad Stuff happening in the Wide World Out There. It’s a slow start, and the real story doesn’t get going until several chapters later.

But if you’re tempted to quit, know that these early chapters do play a role in world-building – setting up important mythology – and will arrive in full circle when you finish the novel. If you can get beyond this slow, unassuming introduction, you won’t be disappointed.

If you’re open to a solid, meaty high-fantasy novel that’s well-written, you’ll enjoy The Name of the Wind.

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“What are the three most important rules of the chemist?”

This I knew from Ben.                                                                                 

“Label clearly. Measure twice. Eat elsewhere.”

Where Does the Time Go?

On a recent drive into work, an unbidden thought crossed my mind. Is there a trend to how I spend my time as an academic over, say, a ten-year period? I should know the answer to this question because I have religiously logged my time every workday ever since my first year as a tenure track faculty member.

The responsibilities of a faculty member can be divided into three broad categories: Teaching, Scholarship and Service. The percentage of time devoted to these areas vary widely certainly across institutions. For example, along the Teaching-Scholarship continuum, more Scholarship would be expected at an R1 institution with commensurate low teaching loads. At a community college, there is usually no formal research requirement, and thus teaching would weigh heavily. At a selective liberal arts college, teaching would be very important but faculty members are also expected to engage in productive quality scholarship, although not as much quantity as an R1 institution. These also vary across disciplines and departments even within an institution. The area of Service is much more nebulous and may vary idiosyncratically by individual faculty members depending on their interests and administrative abilities.

Since I had all the data, I constructed a ten-year snapshot for my time usage across the three areas. The chart below shows how the percentage of time spent in each area varies across a ten-year period. A year is marked by the academic calendar (Sep through Aug), since at my institution classes begin in early September for the Fall semester and end in late May for the Spring semester. Year 10 represents last academic year, AY2015-2016, and Year 1 is therefore AY2006-2007. Note that Year 1 is not my first year as a faculty member. Otherwise you might have expected to see a very large percentage of time devoted to teaching. The very first time you teach a course that’s new to you, the preparatory work is substantial.

My time log is actually more fine-grained than these three broad categories so I had to make some “lumping” choices. As a faculty member in a liberal arts college setting, time spent with my undergraduate research students constitutes both teaching and scholarship. As I see it, having undergraduates work in my lab is part of their education and much of my time is spent training and teaching them. However, the time spent with them on their projects also advances my research agenda. I therefore chose to divide this equally among teaching and scholarship. Similarly, my “Reading” time is spent both on teaching/pedagogy and on science/research; I make a similar 50-50 division here. Scholarship includes subcategories such as writing and when I am directly doing research on my own projects .I lumped together all committee work, departmental service, administrative work, and other things that do not fall into Teaching and Scholarship into the broad area of Service.

I had a yearlong sabbatical in Year 5 of the chart corresponding to the upward spike in Scholarship and the downward spike in Teaching. Beginning halfway through Year 7 and running through Year 9, I took on substantial administrative responsibilities at my institution that resulted in lower formal teaching loads. This resulted in the prominence of Service with dips in both Teaching and Scholarship. When not on sabbatical or serving as an administrator, my time contribution to teaching is roughly 50% corresponding to a typical teaching load of five classes over two semesters. During these years, Scholarship and Service hover around 25%. Interestingly, even while on sabbatical, I somehow still spent a substantial 20% of my time in the Service area. I also thought a lot about my classes, and was working on a new special topics Origin of Life chemistry course that I was slated to teach in the Fall after my sabbatical.

Are the semesters different from the summer? Yes, and I have the chart to prove it! The summer (chart below) is typically where more research gets done. Undergraduates working in my lab are full-time since they are not taking classes in the summer. The Teaching percentage mainly hovers in the 20-30% window: some of it goes to “teaching” my research students and part of it has to do with preparing for classes in the upcoming Fall semester. In Year 7, the Teaching spikes because I was leading an interdisciplinary team of more than ten faculty members teaching a new Scientific Inquiry course across multiple sections. This took half my time, while Scholarship fell to 10%. Service was high during the years I took on significant administrative duties. Administration is year-round and never ends.

During the semesters, the trends in the nine-month chart (below) look similar to the twelve-month chart. Service remains roughly the same. Teaching increases by about 10% with a concomitant decrease in Scholarship by about 10%. During the school year, with the exception of my sabbatical year and the heavy administrative years, Teaching takes up closer to 60% of my time, with Scholarship dropping to 15% on average.

Across all ten years, the average percentages are Teaching 45%, Scholarship 25% and Service 30%. Am I happy with these overall numbers? I guess so. But if they were different, I think I would still be happy with them. I suppose it’s because for the most part, I have the freedom as a faculty member to choose how I spend my time – a luxury compared to many other professions. Yes, I have teaching obligations but I greatly look forward to spending my time in this area. Service is part of being a good citizen of the institution and the community. Scholarship is where I get to enjoy thinking broadly about education and science, with the breadth defined by Boyer. The three categories have substantial overlap, for example, I’ve served multiple years on the curriculum committee, something I’m very interested in even though it can be tedious at times.

How will I spend my time in future years? I don’t know. At some later point I might end up in a more administrative role, because I’m very organized and decently good at management activities. Teaching is still my favorite activity by far, and my enthusiasm has not flagged in the last ten years. In fact, if anything I might be more excited about it now then ten years ago, judging by the number of new ideas I get but have not the time and energy to implement. I’ve also noticed that I read more widely now compared to when I was a new assistant professor. Back then, I read very narrowly in my subfield. My interests have certainly broadened over the years. I can’t believe I’ve been blogging regularly for 2.5 years. Where does the time go, indeed?

OER and the Content Trap

OER stands for Open Educational Resources. A couple of weeks ago I read the following blog post titled The OER Content Trap by Jim Luke. Other related posts to that he links to are also worth reading, and I found them informative, although I haven’t read the recommended book, The Content Trap. Luke’s main point is that we should focus not on the content, but rather on the connections and community of open education. Focusing on content is a trap, and drawing up the battle lines between advocates of adopting “open” textbooks and the for-profit “publishing” industry is a losing strategy.

He writes: “We’re not alone in this trap. Nearly all higher ed institutions are there too. They almost all think their special sauce is in the courses they teach or the research publications they produce. They’re wrong. Similarly, the special sauce in open education isn’t the OER, the resources, books, video and content. The real special value is in the connections people make, the community that forms, and the identities they forge.”

A look at my college’s chemistry curriculum bears this out. Our courses aren’t special in terms of content; they’re special in terms of the relationships we forge between teacher and student thanks to our small class sizes. Our introductory science major courses, General Chemistry and Organic Chemistry, use standard publisher textbooks – less for the content, and more for the online homework system. Less instructor grading, more immediate feedback for the students, and more importantly it gets them to practice working on problems multiple times a week – which is essential for learning chemistry. There are caveats to the online homework system that I’ve written about in previous posts.

Even in the junior and senior level classes, Biochemistry, Physical Chemistry and Inorganic Chemistry, standard texts are typically used. I teach one semester of P-Chem (Quantum Chemistry) with a textbook, but the other semester (Statistical Thermodynamics and Kinetics) without one. And this semester I’ve chosen to teach my non-majors chemistry course without a textbook as part of an OER initiative by our library. There are various reasons for these choices, but much of it has focused on the content and to some extent the pedagogy. Trying to keep costs lower for students does factor into the decision, given how expensive tertiary education can be in the United States particularly at a private institution.

How did I choose my OER? Not surprisingly, and perhaps naively on my part, I chose my resources based on content. I do recognize that’s not the special sauce of my class, and I’d like to think the special sauce has to do with what happens in my classroom. The OER provides pre-class reading and practice problems. Essentially, I’m just using the OER for content – and because of the choices I made to keep the “textbook cost” at zero, the particular set of OER I have chosen do not come with an online homework system for practice. I do have homework that students turn in (although not too much). I’m trying to include more formative assessment strategies in my classroom activities. And I’m exhorting the students to practice, practice, practice, but to some extent allowing them to decide how much time and energy they wish to put into it. The students who put in the work do well, and those who don’t – well, they don’t do well. A voice in my head justifies my choice as “treating students as adults”, but does this approach really serve the students well? That’s debatable.

For-profit publishers have also been moving away from content. Witness the rise of data analytics and A.I.-based adaptive learning coupled to an online homework system. While no big publisher will make the bold claim right now that the relationship between student and machine is what counts (because right now they rely on professors assigning their online systems so that students “buy” them), that’s where we’re headed. Professors are still being wooed, judging by the strategy of sales representatives, but increasingly the pitch is made to university administration, both to the academic side and student affairs.

I suspect that Luke is correct in exhorting OER advocates to steer away from the content trap. For the Open community to out-innovate the for-profit juggernaut, it needs to focus on the community. The percentage of harried instructors who would want to spend much of their time mixing and re-mixing OER content is likely to always remain small. So just putting out content is not going to be enough, particularly as the for-profit products with their powerful data analytics increasingly present “evidence” that their systems result in better educational outcomes for the student. One could debate what these educational outcomes should be, but a high-minded idealistic outcome (most often trotted out by liberal arts colleges) is likely to prove unconvincing over time as strategic decision-making becomes increasingly tactical and short-term. A sad situation, but we’re already seeing this happening in higher education.

I’m not exactly what to do next. Maybe that’s a summer project. In the meantime, I need to do a better job in my non-majors class this semester. The Spring Forward time change sapped my energy in class this Monday (waking up an hour early), and I did not do a good job. But tomorrow is a new day!