Weigh in, folks, especially since Scott, who looks a good deal younger than I, seems to have been an undergraduate before I was, which means he might keel over any moment.
I have offered Scott this feedback to his excellent article:
"Ah, I detect the conflicted spirit of a kindred pedagogue. You, like me, have been both tormented and pleased about the role of technology in academia. Yes, email communication between students and teachers (I am among the latter) can be a blessing and a curse. Clearing up those simple questions is a breeze in the afternoon. Those 2 a.m. emails from panic-stricken students are absurd annoyances. I sit alone in the office during office hours during the past decade, but the emails keep flooding into my computer. Contemporary students and teachers are not much different from those a half a century ago (when I was an undergraduate), and I’m not sure technology–email in particular–has changed the basic dynamics. A more pernicious change is the university business model: we are now a business wherein the students are customers and we are service industry clerks who must accommodate those customers. That, much more than technology, is the most serious problem; the peculiarities of email communications between students and professors are symptoms of the business model issue. So, here is my advice: hang in there with your office hours, enjoy the fact that we still have jobs, and use the email system to your advantage–give students a piece of your mind without having to risk face to face confrontations (and then wait for the customer complaints to reach you via the dean’s office)."
Frank, my secret is clean living. Makes you look young. Also, it helps if you say you went to school in the 1950s when really it was the 1990s. But the clean living, too.
I have offered Scott this feedback to his excellent article:
ReplyDelete"Ah, I detect the conflicted spirit of a kindred pedagogue. You, like me, have been both tormented and pleased about the role of technology in academia. Yes, email communication between students and teachers (I am among the latter) can be a blessing and a curse. Clearing up those simple questions is a breeze in the afternoon. Those 2 a.m. emails from panic-stricken students are absurd annoyances. I sit alone in the office during office hours during the past decade, but the emails keep flooding into my computer. Contemporary students and teachers are not much different from those a half a century ago (when I was an undergraduate), and I’m not sure technology–email in particular–has changed the basic dynamics. A more pernicious change is the university business model: we are now a business wherein the students are customers and we are service industry clerks who must accommodate those customers. That, much more than technology, is the most serious problem; the peculiarities of email communications between students and professors are symptoms of the business model issue. So, here is my advice: hang in there with your office hours, enjoy the fact that we still have jobs, and use the email system to your advantage–give students a piece of your mind without having to risk face to face confrontations (and then wait for the customer complaints to reach you via the dean’s office)."
Frank, my secret is clean living. Makes you look young. Also, it helps if you say you went to school in the 1950s when really it was the 1990s. But the clean living, too.
ReplyDeleteGlad to hear it, Scott. Of course, I've earned my own ragged look by wild living.
ReplyDelete