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Post Info TOPIC: You are hard to defend
Erratum

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RE: You are hard to defend
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Joe Olmi,

apparently i was too familiar with you by calling you by your first name.

saying that i am attacking faculty is not quite precise. i am attacking some faculty, those who need a little shaking up. i myself am a faculty member who thinks that simply taking the prepackaged, prepared powerpoint files that come standard with a textbook and using them as the totality of the lecture material is unconscionable. i think that it is worse to choose a textbook based on which author's powerpoint files create the least work for the instructor and to then use those slides without additional material. i have stated both of these points clearly in previous posts.

you, however, continue to either be unwilling to admit that this practice goes on or unable to bring yourself to admit that it could. without regard for which it is, i will say that to use your class and the small sample of colleagues around you as proof positive that it does not go on is poor science. as i suggested, take a walk and ask around. better yet, ask some students outside your college if they have had issues with this presentation medium. i can almost guarantee that you won't have to look too hard to find some evidence to support my assertion. otherwise, there's apparently no statement that can be made that will lead to your admission that this behavior is even possible.

if you felt attacked by my statements, then i am sorry, but, based on my arguments, you are clearly not one of those to whom i was referring, and i clearly stated as much. i am not quite sure why you continue to take offense at statements that are clearly not aimed at you and that, when investigated to even the smallest extent, would indicate unprofessional behavior at the very least.

as for being tired, i can guarantee that i am in the ranks of the tired. i've survived here through realignments, Glamser & Stringer, Katrina, and more. the problem is that some people are using that tiredness or those incidents as reasons to take shortcuts. one of the shortcuts that is being taken is the use of prepackaged, prepared powerpoint files that come standard with a textbook and using them as the totality of the lecture material. my original assertion was that this is not acceptable behavior and that conducting a class using this "method" is unacceptable as it (at the very least) encourages bad habits among students, telling that it's ok not to take notes--just use the handouts.

for you to say that you can't imagine anyone doing this or that nobody could be doing this because you don't know anybody who does this is a logical fallacy. i personally don't know anybody who beats his wife, and i don't beat my wife. does that mean there are no wife beaters out there?

on the subject of being tired, i am tired of being a faculty member who goes to work 6 or 7 days a week, who goes in early and leaves late, who lives in a professor-wary community and gets along with my neighbors, only to have an article in the Hattiesburg American highlight the borderline behavior of some of my colleagues.

i am amazed that there is such a closed-ranks attitude on this topic. how can you defend using powerpoint in the manner i described or in making it a habit to cut classes short? what possible defense can you offer besides "it doesn't happen around here"? i'm waiting on an answer to that.

apparently you take my statements as a personal attack. the only think i can say is that i don't get fired up about people who want rules for sex offenders because i'm not a sex offender -- i'm not affected by their statements. if my statements don't apply to you, then great. i have visual proof that this activity pervades whole departments regularly. and those departments are rewarded for it.




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Southern Justice

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I don't think all use of Power Point is a bad use. However, it takes a great deal of self-discipline to create Power Point slides that provide a good outline without putting every single point on them. What Erratum says is true: When professors add nothing to those prefab .ppt files, it makes for a boring (and some will say insulting) lecture. I also agree that IN SUCH CASES providing those slides to students creates an unnatural situation in the classroom; IF all information is on the Power Point slides and IF those slides are distributed to students, THEN good notetaking skills are not being rewarded (or expected). Some will say that good notetaking skills are unnecessary in our environment. I respond by saying that developing good notetaking skills is a vital part of the learning process. Learning to take good notes teaches students to separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak. It teaches students to learn what information is readily available (from the text or other course materials) and what is only available through the professor's lectures. Unfortunately, we seem to live in a society that thinks that having to work for education is bad. Why should elementary school students have homework? Why should high school students be required to take difficult courses and be tested rigorously? Why should we expect college students to study and prepare before class? My issue with the types of activities Erratum describes is that using Power Point in that manner reinforces bad study habits and bad professorial habits, two things we don't need to be doing.

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Not From Around Here

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My child is looking at colleges. I have yet to see a brochure from a top-ranked college (say Tier I or II) that shows a prof using Powerpoint. Most show a prof teaching a smallish class and using whiteboards. Funny how advertising people usually try to find out what students want before creating ads.

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Cossack

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While I routinely hold classes for the full period, I also reserve some time the class before an exam for student review. In addition, I hold help sessions on the weekend before the test to aid students in understanding the material. Not all of the class attends the help sessions, and students often do not take advantage of the period before the last test to ask questions. Given the atmosphere that will now exist, I will not reserve time for questions the period before the test. It will be safer to continue the class teaching new material than to provide an opportunity that students sometimes do not use to their advantage.

I am amused to read the discussions about Power Point at the same time so many departments are rushing to put courses online. Online is the ultimate of no class time and embraces limited communication.

As with earlier posters, I have worked at many jobs in factories, retail, and agriculture. Until I became a faculty member, I never had someone I did not know tell me how to perform my job. Now I have a gaggle of folks that are experts on how to do my job. It could be that I should invite a portion of the gaggle to volunteer to help me, particularly the classes from 6:30 P.M to 9:15 P.M.

The saddest part of all is the total breakdown between the University faculty and the City of Hattiesburg over the past 4 years. My colleagues at State and Ole Miss indicate that this is unique to USM and Hattiesburg. It is a situation that will not get better for a long time, if at all. Sadly, it makes both Hattiesburg and USM worse off.


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Southern Justice

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Cossack,

I think we as university faculty are in a similar position to politicians: no matter what we do, there will be someone who has never done our job but who wants to tell us how to do it. There are, however, certain activities that we should agree are requirements for our jobs. One should be that letting classes go early should be a rarity and not the norm. It just looks bad when, in one day, a student has all of his classes let out early. The class activities that were described in the article seemed reasonable to me (I'm no management expert) -- review for an exam and group projects -- but to literally waste 30% or more of a class day by letting out 30 minutes early or more is more than knocking off a little early. Over the course of a semester, cutting even 30 minutes out of class once per week equates to a 20% reduction in contact minutes. If one adds reviews into the equation (say 1 30-minute review every two weeks), then the number of contact minutes drops to 70% of the expected minutes.

That's what we have to guard against. Without a strong public face telling everyone about the positives we produce (teaching, research, service) and educating the public about our profession, we must be careful of how our actions can be used against us. The Mixons, Warrens, Thameses, and Drewses of the world just love to see this kind of stuff in print because it gives them ammunition for their next Warren Paving meeting. It may not be right that we have to watch our own backs, but that's the way it is.

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Angeline

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This thread is a lot like the one where the mean history graduate student supposedly failed a student for her religious beliefs.  More faculty bashing.  Its old, its tiresome, it don't work here.  We are the most productive under-paid faculty in the state and probably the entire southern region.  Enough already.

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just the facts ma'am

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Re: The article about Maddox:  Something doesn't add up here.  The schedule of classes for spring '06 indicates only one section of mgt 325 - operations management - taught by Dr. Fennel at 6:30 - 9:15 pm Manday night.  The advanced operations mgt is taught by Dr. Fennel from 8 am to 9:50 on mwf.  The only class taught by Dr. Carr at the undergraduate level is mgt 400 on Monday nights. 


Last fall there were sections of mgt 325 at 11:00 - 11:50 and 1:00 - 1:50, both taught by Dr. Fennell and no undergraduate sections taught by Dr. Carr. 


 


Could someone tell us where the problem lies here, is it the "journalistic license" of the article writer or in the official course schedule?



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stinky cheese man

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i just went into soar and there is an operations management course taught from 10:00-11:50 MWF taught by Fennell.

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LVN

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Were these faculty aware that a reporter was sitting in class? Was this cleared with them in advance?

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Murrow

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LVN wrote:

Were these faculty aware that a reporter was sitting in class? Was this cleared with them in advance?



Since when does the media have to get clearance from a state employee to attend an open meeting?

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Erratum

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Angeline wrote:

This thread is a lot like the one where the mean history graduate student supposedly failed a student for her religious beliefs.  More faculty bashing.  Its old, its tiresome, it don't work here.  We are the most productive under-paid faculty in the state and probably the entire southern region.  Enough already.



this is nothing like that thread. this is a real discussion of some unpleasant topics. by the way, every time you say how overworked and underpaid we are, it just makes us look worse.

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Cossack

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Since when does the media have to get clearance from a state employee to attend an open meeting?

I did not realize that classes were an open meeting. I was under the illusion that students paid the university for the right to attend classes. I also recall getting memos stating something to the effect, "do not allow students in your class that are not on the roll" which I took to mean that the class was not an open meeting. Does this not apply to media members as well?

Of course in my case, many would pay not to be in my classroom.

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Gone, gone, gone

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One of the interesting things about this thread is that it demonstrates exactly how "raw' the academic clinate at USM has become. And who is responsible for this? I think we all know the answer.



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LVN

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Thanks Cossack.

A class is not a public meeting. I've always been under the impression that the instructor's permission was required for outsiders other than chair, dean, etc. to come in. In fact, this was one of the issues when Diane Stevenson's class was invaded by Dr. Malone, et. al.

I assume that these instructors knew, since the classes were small, but I just wondered. In any case, I doubt a professor would do anything they thought was wrong with the press on hand.

I appreciate Joe Olmi's fatigue with constantly having to defend himself. For a long time I've tried to step in and take up some of the defense, since I have some teaching experience but more business experience, and am more representative of the community than of the faculty. I too am growing weary of it and am about to stop.

A conspiracy theorist would think there was a deliberate effort underway to wear us down.

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just the facts ma'am

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stinky cheese man wrote:


i just went into soar and there is an operations management course taught from 10:00-11:50 MWF taught by Fennell.

oops - my bad.  I forgot to disable the "open classes only".  Thank you  SCM

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joright

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LVN wrote:


Thanks Cossack. A class is not a public meeting. I've always been under the impression that the instructor's permission was required for outsiders other than chair, dean, etc. to come in. In fact, this was one of the issues when Diane Stevenson's class was invaded by Dr. Malone, et. al. I assume that these instructors knew, since the classes were small, but I just wondered. In any case, I doubt a professor would do anything they thought was wrong with the press on hand. I appreciate Joe Olmi's fatigue with constantly having to defend himself. For a long time I've tried to step in and take up some of the defense, since I have some teaching experience but more business experience, and am more representative of the community than of the faculty. I too am growing weary of it and am about to stop. A conspiracy theorist would think there was a deliberate effort underway to wear us down.

LVN, I think it would benefit USM faculty to remain out of the media.  It's situations like this one, or several faculty being shown on WDAM picking up $22,000 MIDAS checks in the dome, or other events that do not shine the best light on things.  The next thing will be "Heroes of Katrina" that we will pay for. 

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more facts

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Fennell, the first professor mentioned in the article, does not hold a PhD, she is an adjunct.  The article is wrong on the "Dr. Fennell" count, but that's a common mistake.  How what happened relates to the Jay Grimes article in the same paper is another issue completely.

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get your facts straight

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More Facts,


You are not correct about Fennell.  She is NOT an adjunct, she is an instructor.  There is a difference.



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Black Cat

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get your facts straight wrote:


More Facts, You are not correct about Fennell.  She is NOT an adjunct, she is an instructor.  There is a difference.

I don't know the status of Mr/Ms Fennell, but being an "instructor" does not make one a PhD-holding "Doctor."  A person can be an adjunct instructor, no?

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psychology student

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Not to derail the tangent, but I would like to say that many of the students who dislike powerpoint is because they use it as a sole study source and score poorly on exams.

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Erratum

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psychology student wrote:

Not to derail the tangent, but I would like to say that many of the students who dislike powerpoint is because they use it as a sole study source and score poorly on exams.



when instructors use powerpoint exclusively and read slide after slide without adding anything novel to the presentation, can you blame the students for their reaction? maybe this method tells students that what's important is all on the slides. by the time they find out otherwise, it's too late.

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manova

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Erratum,


You seem very concerned about the quality of instruction at USM, and that is great.  Instead of complaining about in on a message board, do something about it.  If there is an instructor in your department that only uses the canned lectures provided by the text, pull them aside and talk to them.  Give them some helpful pointers.  Maybe you can go beyond that.  Help set up a faculty mentorship where new faculty can sit in on experienced teachers' classes and vice versa.  Start up or suggest to someone that there should be a pedagogy workshop where things like proper use of power point is discussed.  My school does all of these things.  In fact, next Monday's topic is "Power Point as an Instructional Tool."



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Invictus

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manova has some very good ideas. See if the shoe fits & if it does, see if you can run with it!

Personally, when I lectured on a regular basis, I used a lot of overhead projector transparencies (which should give away my age & hairline). Things like technical illustrations, graphs & basic outlines are pretty useful in lecture. I see Powerpoint as nothing more than a high-tech (and infinitely more flexible) extension of that tool.

Another thing that I've regularly done with Powerpoints now that my main emphasis is on presenting to faculty & colleagues is to embed links to webpages, spreadsheets & other external documents. I've seen very few folks who do this, but it lets me use Powerpoint as a sort of notebook for organizing a lot of other resources on my computer & the Web.

As far as the spoon feeding process goes, I give you the official Dylan take on it (as released by Columbia records), along with the outtake. I think there's insight in both:

<PUBLISHED LYRIC>
They're spoon feeding Cassanova
To make him feel more assured
Then they'll kill him with self confidence
After poisoning him with words.
</PUBLISHED LYRIC>

<OUTTAKE LYRIC>
They're spoon feeding Cassanova
The boiled guts of birds
Then they'll torture him with self confidence
After poisoning him with words.
</OUTTAKE LYRIC>




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LVN

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Boring anecdote alert:
In the early 1970's I transferred from Northwestern into a teacher ed program elsewhere. In my first ed class, I was shown movies, read to from the book, and pushed into "groups" for an entire semester. The teacher was getting a PhD and I decided not to buy what they were selling in that department. I changed to liberal arts, even though it meant an extra year to pick up the math, language, and other requirements. Power Point hadn't even been dreamt of.

A tool is a tool. Good teachers will use them, lazy teachers will abuse them.

Of course we in English are just bitter and jealous because we can't use Power Point.

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