Edward Bilodeau

I'd like to point out two opinion pieces in the National Post following up on the Unions vs U of T professor case I wrote about the other day.

First, an important aspect of this case that I discovered while writing this post. I was surprised and disappointed to learn that peerScholar is a Pearson product. I expected the software, if shared, to be available to other professors and universities under an open-source license. Naïve on my part, I guess. I'm assuming that after Joordens developed the product for his course, Pearson acquired rights to the software and is now looking to sell it into all universities who are dealing with the problem of large classes. No pricing is available on the web site, but my guess is that since you have to contact a sales rep for that information, it isn't free and it isn't cheap. That parties stand to benefit financially from the use of this software should have been made clear from the start, since it changes the context of the discussion, giving both parties a fair amount of self-interest in the outcome. Anyway, on to the opinion pieces...

The first opinion piece is by the professor involved, Steve Joordens, titled Placating unions versus educating students. While I agree with Joordens that the unions should not be allowed to prevent him from using peer-assessment in his course, I didn't find his editorial did much to support his position. Placing this discussion in the context of formal vs informal education doesn't help, especially when the issue has to do with assessment, specifically peer-assessment. The learning the students do though peer-assessment still formal, certainly more formal then when they learn from their friends how to add an application to their iPhone.

(FWIW, kids don't have a "complex and deep knowledge of iPhones, Facebook and computers in general". That is a myth. They were introduced to these applications at a time when the user interfaces were much more advanced and usable then when we started using them. As a result, their conceptual models of these devices are much different. And while they do have a great facility with the technologies, there are very, very few of them who have any idea how they work at all.)

Joordens is entirely correct that the unions will not succeeded in stopping him, they'll just force him to work around the union rules to achieve his goals.

The union's op-ed piece is titled Fast and cheap student grading isn't the answer at first glance provides a good justification for their position against the use of PeerScholar. For example, they calculate that the course generates approx $1.8 million in revenue for the university, with only $30,000 going to pay for the salaries of the teacher and existing TA. They argue that more could money could be spent on TA. However, this argument assumes a simplistic model of university economics.

Putting aside overhead costs for the course, the reality is that while you do have a few large 1500 seat classes like this one, you have many courses and programs that do not pull in enough revenue to cover their costs. Courses are not restricted by the revenue they generate, nor do they have access to all the revenue they generate. This allows the university to fund a wide range of activities that do not generate enough revenue on their own, but which nevertheless contribute to the student experience and the university as a whole. It is misleading, therefore, to suggest that there is over $1.7 million sitting in an account somewhere waiting to be spent on the course.

I agree that the formula for TA budgets are too small, and that 1500 people in a class is too many. However, I don't accept the union's position that they are making a stand on behalf of the students, nor do I accept Joordens' position that this is entirely about student learning.

If there is anything positive to be drawn from all this, it is that universities should be taking a look at the issues around large classes, as well as the availability and use of teaching assistants.

My various social networks are all tied together by thin, apparently weak threads so that activity in one gets pushed around to the others. For example, status messages are posted via Gtalk to identica, which pushes them to facebook, twitter, and friendfeed.

This morning, that particular process isn't working. I can post via gtalk, and what I do post to identica isn't flowing to facebook or twitter (but friendfeed is ok...). The whole mess has left me somewhat frustrated and thinking that this system of tenuous links is a Bad Idea, and that I should prob rip the whole thing out and start over...

The Virginia Quarterly Review has discovered that Chris Anderson's book Free contains sections that have been plagiarized from Wikipedia. Anderson has issued the same comment that most people who get caught doing this kind of thing do: sorry, my mistake, we'll change add proper citations in future versions of the book.

Anderson is not only an author, but the editor of Wired magazine. He knows better, and this is not a mistake someone with his experience can easily make. His excuse that footnotes were removed at the last minute is lame, since in many cases the text is pulled directly from Wikipedia, requiring quotations and footnotes. I encourage you to click through to the article linked to above and review the examples yourself.

I think that Anderson may have taken the notion of 'free' that he is pushing in his book a bit to seriously. I can see him on his book tour, "Let me give you an example of free. Parts of this book you paid for, the book I just signed for you, were written by someone else, and I used them in my book, for free!"

A radical notion indeed. We used to call this dishonesty. Anderson and his publishers, Hyperion Books, appear to want to brush it all away with an apology. They apologize, you get less then what you paid for (since I'm assuming you didn't pay $30 for repurposed wikipedia entries), they keep your money.

I think in addition to apologizing, Anderson should donate his income from the book and the publisher their profits from the book to the Wikimedia Foundation. Then I might just believe he is sorry about the mistake, and not just sorry that he got caught.