Independent Study in Technical Education

Assistant Teaching, Informatics INFO 344
iSchool, University of Washington
Linda Murry Lane

Michael Crandall | Academic Advisor
Winter Quarter, 2007


Intimate moment of learning, image of a student and teacher at Starbucks in Fremont, Seattle, Washington

Introduction
The intention of this paper is to cover the activities of being an assistant teacher in INFO 344, a course on Web Application and Development at the University of Washington, iSchool in Informatics, Winter quarter 2007. Here I will briefly cover some of the reading materials and foundational experiences I considered with teachers from my past to illustrate how their teaching methods, especially the idea of team teaching, helped me to learn and improve my teaching. (Bransford, 2000)

Preparation
My goals in accepting an assistant teaching role showed me just how oblivious I was to teachers time commitments: class preparation, presentation, and evaluation. It takes far longer to prepare for a class than I could have imagined.

I decided to accept a role as a teaching assistant on Web Application Design and Development for several reasons, chiefly the experience, my own learning, some pay, and course credits.

* First, it would give me some experience teaching a university class in technology; prior to this I had only taught college students in ceramics, and fine art to youth.

* Second, I could learn more details about technology from the INFO 344 class, taught by Jim Loter.

* Third, with the monthly stipend and partial tuition waiver I would go into debt more slowly for my Master of Science Degree in Information Management while qualifying for a loan.

* Fourth, I would be able to earn 2 credits for an independent study in Technical Education under the stewardship of Mike Crandall, maintaining my full load for schools loans.

* And last, my best teachers have always been my heros. Maybe I could apply something I learned from them in teaching the two assigned classes which were my responsibility.

It looked fairly easy, the class meets only twice a week and so I thought I would be able to do the class work as well. “How much time could teaching subjects I already know require?” I asked myself. (Bransford, 2000) What a terrible assumption. What a newbie I was! Nowhere in that list did I expect to learn so much about teaching a class!

Not only does class preparation require many more hours, literarily days of reading and in depth thinking, then, the presentation is both far more draining and exhilarating that I imagined. Evaluation is a challenge – what are these students learning? What is it that they don’t understand? I was clueless. The idea that I could grade papers and take the class at the same time while in a Masters Program, for me it was magical thinking, not even close to possible. Class preparation requires considerable time, and grading the resultant papers and labs ethically, with a clearly laid out rubric, also requires significant time. (Michaelsen, Knight, Fink, 2004) Teachers at the University of Washington have assistants because they need them.

In preparing for the two classes, I took different approaches, based in part on the books I read but also based on my experience after teaching the first class, regarding what was successful, and what did not appear to work. I also based what I did on the dynamic presentations of extraordinary teachers from my youth.

From the beginning I knew that I had to be better rounded on the two main class topics, even if I felt I already understood them. Broad understanding and expressing this understanding fruitfully is what differentiates knowing from teaching. (Bransford, 2000) This meant taking the original presentations used in the class (written by the erstwhile teacher Shaun Kane) learning what he documented, following out the references, mostly links, and then adding my own spin. The first class I would teach was on “User Interface Design”1, and the second topic was “Privacy on the Web.”2

While reviewing the former teacher’s existing presentation materials I realized that an overview related to the Software Development Lifecycle (SDLC) was more critical to sound user interface design than previously I was aware of. As a senior program manager at Microsoft and other high tech companies I generally manage both the working process in software development environments as well as contribute to the user interface design and user experience. I know how important the entire lifecycle of software is to user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) design components and ongoing design needs from my actual experience.

Designers obtain information from the business on what is wanted for the interface. They have some access to end users in the best cases, or at least possess a baseline of end users needs. Designers and product manager write personas, scenarios, use cases, draw wire frames, design, try out rendered designs, perform user interface tests, and iterate these designs. Commonly developers just develop interfaces as described to them through the functional and design specifications.

More rarely they may even design and develop completely original interface tools, or use them in new ways that become part of the standard web lexicon of human computer interaction. They work together in groups to synthesize designs and that should be reflected in our learning environment. (Bransford, 2000)

Occasionally I hear about projects which failed often because the specification or the technical solution did not fit the required need. This is a result often of little or no communication in the SDLC process, probably due to a number of communication issues, a lack of emotional maturity, and brought about by not asking enough questions, out of fear, lack of engagement, or cultural norms.

Designers, product managers, and developers can be brought in during any part of a functional, design, or technical specification project and they need to know when to speak up to clarify such things as user interactivity issues, or articulate why something specified won’t work. It’s not enough to just say something won’t work in results focused companies, workers need to propose new solutions, and be prepared to defend their ideas and reasoning. These are the things I wanted the students to learn. (Michaelsen, Knight, Fink, 2004)

Learning group dynamics in a safe learning environment helps to develop professional skills as critical assets before one’s job is on the line. (Bransford, 2000)(Michaelsen, Knight, Fink, 2004) Team structures and managers may either reward or condemn such initiative, and it’s pretty clear that rewards bring better results, often immediately. Being afraid of failure is not the same as being invested in success.

Emotional maturity is one of the human values I discussed with the class, which is important to understand working in this field both subjectively and objectively, in order to be successful. Even when a UI/UX expert’s ideas are correct or better -- their designs may not be selected for use -- it can be frustrating. The example I gave was:

“I witnessed an independent consultant from a widely used user interface firm become emotionally upset during a presentation, because a manager decided not to accept the recommendation to standardize the interface. In this case the person was not even aware of how emotionally involved they were, and how that reflected poorly on their consultancy.”

The other side of that example is that the expert was engaged for all the right reasons, in defense of the end user, but not in the right manner, which is a detached business sense, because such business decisions need to be viewed as not personal, even if they are.

UI design is a process. It requires an investment as an advocate of end users. It requires knowledge, passion, and courage; in that way it is a lot like teaching a class. (Bransford, 2000)

By doing some in depth thinking, reviewing some of the available materials, from the point of view of needing to prepare to teach a class in UI design, I reflected that it is not just who the users are and what they need, what is possible technically, or the physical UI components in terms of specific selection items: buttons and checkboxes, or aesthetic design choices such as colors; but more importantly is also an understanding an overview of the whole iterative process -- how UI design interacts highly with the design and development methodology in place, and where the designer / product manager / developer is within that SDLC framework timeline. (Bransford, 2000)

Considering the high level of knowledge of the class and the wealth of reference materials on user interface design, I decided to first focus on issues that are more process oriented and human based than the typical UI class might be.

Presentation

For my first class I presented a detailed SDLC -- edited into in the existent PowerPoint UI presentation. It was long, with just me speaking, at least three students felt asleep. For my second presentation I considered what had worked and what didn’t work and radically improved my presentation.

Enduring years of education I found that some teaching styles did not work well for me as a student. It was easy to observe from my classmates, they were bored too, arrived late, avoiding attending at all, drifted off into a dream world, or fell asleep. In the brightest educational situations, the risky, most creative teachers actually put their jobs on the line to enable their students to learn.

One would think that adults who are paying to attend school would arrive promptly and pay attention. The reality is that it doesn’t matter how old you are or what you paid for a class, dull presentations are boring, unlikely to be inspiring, and can not be justified.

The rude awakening from students generally comes from their teacher evaluations but these occur at the end of classes, but by then it is too late for creative interaction to take place. Vice versa, a student can get to the end of a class and find they have learned little or have nothing to take away and a grade that reflects that lack.

Myself, the teacher Jim Loter, and the students in our class were all raised during the years when television and film are common place. The people in my class have enjoyed using computers nearly their entire lives, and take them for granted at some level. People expect to be entertained in classes. (Michaelsen, Knight, Fink, 2004)

It’s not television itself that makes students do poorly in school, but they get bored and that contributes to poor grades. “There was no evidence that television by itself had a major effect on cognitive abilities,” reads one study on even the most isolated populations (rural Alaskans) behavior in school and other social environments after the introduction of television, “The social learning concept of reciprocal determinism can be used to explain the complex ways in which television interacts with person variables and other environmental variables to influence test scores.” (Forbes, 1980)

Because of the easy availability of entertainment, keeping students actively interested is to some degree what modern education is about. In the book “Team Teaching”, the authors make many statements about the effectiveness of team teaching as an automatic way for students to become responsible for their own entertainment by engaging them actively in the learning process with other students.

Other engaging methods the authors point out use a variety of presentation tools, such as video and PowerPoint, emphasizing that modern students are less well engaged with a standard lecture method. (Bransford, 2000) Even a seriously disabled lecturer, Dr. Steven Hawking prerecords answers to questions in order to effect more lively interaction with audiences.3

For the second class, having done such things as lightly kick the chair of a sleeping student during my first lecture (see Problems), I realized that even though my enthusiastic tone, verve in presentation style, and desire to communicate were strong, without a chance to interact more solidly the students would not be interested in the information. (Michaelsen, Knight, Fink, 2004) My first PowerPoint presentation on UI and the SDLC was sweeping in its coverage, very wide – it was “information dumping”. (Michaelsen, Knight, Fink, 2004)

So, for the second presentation I severely limited the time and scope to precisely what was needed; one hour on aspects of privacy with a focus on the Web. Their attention I fixed on the social, historical, political, and economic fundamentals of privacy, and increased their desire to listen by using the value of entertainment specific to the topic at hand. In short I showed videos at the beginning of the class based on ongoing discussions. (Bransford, 2000) I continued what worked well in the first presentation - asking students impromptu questions, spoke quickly, walked among them like theater in the round, calling on those I knew by name.

While waiting for the videos to load I introduced the students to the concept of a Faraday Cage for protecting RFID sniffing of smart cards by asking them to describe one, showing my own metal credit card case for a brief discussion. My idea was to throw valuable materials into the room, just like any spirited conversation I would have with close friends, where you can just barely get a word in, because it is all so interesting. I also gave away “prizes”4 for those students who answered questions. I asked class members to read aloud privacy quotations from the PowerPoint presentation with Jim Loter clicking through them to keep me in motion, and asked questions about the meanings.

We examined two companies dubious ‘privacy statements’ that became obvious on deeper inspection as thinly veiled waivers for unwanted sales attempts.

For the video clips I choose six each from a different point of view on privacy topics, and screened four brief clips to establish the class themes. These videos were –

1. “Videocamera - Reclaim Privacy”5 Privacy radicals in Europe vandalizing video cameras placed in public which they marked out on maps, backed up by a funny punk attitude and music. (This outlined serious vigilante attitudes on privacy.)

2. An introduction to New Privacy Controls on ‘Second Life’6, Linden Labs massively-multiplayer online gaming environment, introduced by Nylon Pinkney an animated speaker interviewing other avatars with a particularly fresh “Gen X” deadpan sense of humor, “I’m more bored now”, “I have nothing to live for.” (Tied to a future class speaker, Doug McDavid from IBM, regarding ‘Second Life’)

3. “Are You Sexually Inappropriate?”7 This was Canadian TV news show about an offensive invasion of privacy for Stephen Pate, a disabled person. He was asked strange questions on government forms to obtain monetary aid for his wheelchair (which tied back to the presentation on disabled people using the Web, bringing together topics on human decency and databases.)

4. “The Conversation – Privacy Ends Here”8 A clip from the seminal 1970’s film about privacy and surveillance, “The Conversation” written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola.

With comments from Loter, (MA, Film Studies, University of Iowa, 1969), we played “The Conversation” clip entitled “Privacy Ends Here” which shows the protagonist, a listening post surveillance expert for hire, played by Gene Hackman, tearing out the walls and floor of his apartment at the end of the film. This illustrated that privacy is one thing when someone else’s privacy is disrupted; it’s completely another matter when the person losing their privacy is oneself. Jim and I discussed a few more films which include privacy issues as part of the plot, such as the popular Matrix series 10, and Gattaca 11. It gave Jim Loter and I the opportunity to interact while linking his in depth knowledge of popular culture to privacy making the class more immediately relevant. (Bransford, 2000)

For the very technical students I recommended a much longer video presentation available through YouTube.com on how RFID leaks privacy Information through DNS 12, by Karsten Nohl (PhD candidate at the University of Virginia, Computer Science.) Speaking about the history and legal context of privacy, the differences between the laws concerning privacy and ethical concerns on privacy, the differences of opting in and opting out, databases, and cookies I provided them an interwoven, broad based understanding on this sensitive technical and human topic. At the end of the class, I noticed self-directed education activities of the students – they followed the presentation links out to the various privacy sites without prompting. (Bransford, 2000)

I felt this interactive style was much more successful -- it connected the students to technologies they are familiar with, and play with on the Web (YouTube, Second Life) and materials presented in another class such as screen readers, as well as popular culture when these ideas are introduced in other social environments. I wished we had more time in which to interact regarding their own experiences with privacy issues. (Michaelsen, Knight, Fink, 2004)

Other contributions of note include assigning each student a disability to consider ongoing through the lecturers 13, and assignments. The disabilities assigned: visual, aural, physical. This played out in a creative way for their UI comparison assignment papers, when each student brought forward a disabled person’s point of view to review functionality. From the papers it was apparent they had made a strong mental connection with disabled people and an ongoing commitment to consider the needs of disabled users. (Bransford, 2000) (Michaelsen, Knight, Fink, 2004)

To introduce the differences between privacy laws and ethics I began unexpectedly by shooting images of the class with my Nikon camera, pointing out the fact that I was not asking their permission, and stated, that according to the law I could even make money from the photos without giving them any, and publish them as well. This is how I introduced the case of Nussenzweig vs Philip-Lorca diCorcia, asking “Photographer's Ethics in a Free Society, Why is this Case Important?”14 I brought forth a possible answer “because the law tells us that it is legal, but our moral judgment tells us it isn’t right to profit from or use someone’s photograph against their will.” Why is this case important? It's important because it is complex; our sense of ethical judgment tells us it isn't right, while the law says it isn't wrong.

Evaluation

Most of the evaluation decisions, that is grading metrics for the students, were already made by Jim Loter prior to my arrival but I did introduce two ideas that he enthusiastically agreed to use. First, I suggested that we agree that the due to the interactive nature of the course work it was possible for everyone to earn an ‘A’ grade. We hoped that this would encourage more students to work together on projects. Jim Loter presented this idea in class, and there was a positive response. Two, wary of making mistakes or unfair decisions on grades I introduced a spreadsheet with a grading rubric which would account for points given or taken off for specific parts of the assignment. (Michaelsen, Knight, Fink, 2004)

The amount of time to carefully read each students work and make written comments regarding each paper while reviewing the large user interface project stunned me into understanding what my own teachers wade through -- poor spelling, strange grammar, a lack of structure in presentation, alien hanging information without connection to the subject, yes, it was all there in small amounts, but these students did absolutely outstanding work and I was very proud of them. We both told them so, after the grades were in for assignments.

To provide the students feedback about what really outstanding analysis is in UI, I had copied two exemplary student papers and handed them out to the class. (Michaelsen, Knight, Fink, 2004)

Jim Loter was evaluated by the students at the beginning of the last class. I was also presented with his evaluation of my TA work which I do not have the courage to read; even having studied how significant amounts of academic evidence shows that feedback helps teachers improve their methods.15 (Michaelsen, Knight, Fink, 2004)

What I learned from Jim Loter was a kind of fearlessness about the information sprinkled with a twist – an unexpected lighthearted silliness, freshened up his presentation of the some times overly dry content, which he knew very thoroughly.

Problems and Teaching Examples

In this section of my paper I will discuss a problem with one of the books on education I read. I will also bring up the examples of excellent teaching methods of my early teachers to illustrate what informed my thinking about how to engage students.

“How People Learn” is a book I loved and have re-read sections of it numerous times. The straightforward well-written academic style which the reader can just cruise through without stopping, huge numbers of references, with a well-considered relationship to the structure of the book, even though complex is not only pleasing, it is something I plan to emulate as I learn to write in an academic context.

One of the problems I encountered with my research is that the author Larry K. Michaelsen of the book Team-Based Learning claims to be the inventor of that style of learning in the late 1970s, long after team based learning was regularly used in Alaska during my education in both private and public schools, and probably predates our lifetimes by an untold number of years. (Michaelsen, Knight, Fink, 2004)

From my perspective from the introduction there was too much about the author’s accomplishment and I had to struggle to work past his and the other authors attributing the idea to him. What author Larry K. Michaelsen did was state, formalize, and study in an academic setting the transformative use of small groups in college teaching. Then he documented his findings and named it “team based learning”. Mankind invented team learning a long time ago to survive successfully using groups.16 Once past this issue, I found Team-Based Learning even more pertinent and useful than How People Learn.

Regarding team based learning, for example, as I child the teachers in Montessori kindergarten and pre-school used this teaching method. In junior high and high school due to the severely overcrowded public schools a few of my teachers used both tag team teaching (or co-teaching) and student team based learning methods. Tag team or co-teaching may be defined as two or more instructors working together by sharing the teaching load to enhance their students learning potential by using their best abilities and knowledge; it is commonly used in large size classes.

Other examples of ancient team based learning practices are rooted in very old established learning environments including the Tibetan schools of dialectics, which draws from older traditions in India, and uses these methods for preparing and conducting arguments, performed in Monastery courtyards with groups, symbolic gestures, and the slapping of hands to make a point.17

The example of my junior high and high school from 1969 - 1973 formed some of my ideas about dynamic presentations. Anchorage’s public Orah Dee Clark junior high school, in just my single 7th grade math and science class, had more than 100 students. (Michaelsen, Knight, Fink, 2004)The math and science teachers Arthur Denning and Don Luethe split decided to simultaneously teach all of the students in a single giant classroom using innovative techniques. They told us why they were doing it, and explained how they would teach us.

They taught Math and Science in a series of lectures interspersed with team projects everyday - designed to keep us on our toes and highly engaged in learning. They brought pet piranhas and made a 6 ft long gerbil village; we never knew what our teachers would do or teach us next. They switched out during the same lesson plan, with one teacher taking point while the other circled around to answer problems and questions, or take a break to stand in for teachers in another combined and overcrowded class in English Literature and History across the hallway.

We were encouraged to work in groups to solve problems. (Michaelsen, Knight, Fink, 2004) Those who did not join were assigned groups. Sometimes better students were pulled from their favorite groups and mixed with the slower learners, but generally it was based on where you sat in class, so arrival better be prompt if you wanted the best seat. Many mini-quizzes, and math puzzles were given every week, with “prizes18” for the winners. Based on that experience more than 30 year ago I too brought prizes to my class to encourage the reserved students to speak up in class and answer questions. (Michaelsen, Knight, Fink, 2004)

Denning and Luethe taught in that manner because there was no other reasonable way to teach such large classes of very diverse students. Many children spoke native Alaskan languages at home, and English only at school. My mother, a planner, and I estimated that many students had one or both alcoholic or drug addicted parents, one third of the total had parents either living in poverty, or were from highly transient homes as a result of working in the military19. These kinds of stresses often set up students for an uphill curve in learning when there was little or no direction at home, or when failure at school meant severe punishment such as beatings. Students were often silent observers in class, but social disturbances were common. (Michaelsen, Knight, Fink, 2004)

Endeavoring to educate regardless of the wide range of diverse issues, really good teachers were essentially my heros.

My best teachers gave me the ideas for the high energy tone I used in my presentations. This may explain why I kicked the student’s chair, far from being angry I was being kind -- I wanted him to have the advantage of everything presented. It was what I would want my teacher to do for me if I fell asleep in class. For example, to illustrate physical responses and adrenaline, my science teacher Luethe unexpectedly kicked the podium over at the beginning of a science lecture – it fell with a loud banging noise, which scattered several of the students sitting in the front rows towards the floor. He was red faced when he saw the kids terrified, some like their experiences at home. Some students sat stoically and stared at him while a few others laughed when he clarified the reason, “That’s adrenaline!” Later we heard Denning explain to Luethe in an undertone that he had to send one student home for a change of clothes -- but no one forgot that lecture about the mechanics of ‘fight or flight”, and with this knowledge transferred, students remained eager to attend. (Bransford, 2000) (Michaelsen, Knight, Fink, 2004)

That was not the only class taught in this engaging if occasionally abrupt manner – in high school at least two other classes were taught by tag teamed teachers overburdened with far too many students, and they relied heavily on team learning environments, such as in a class on American History where we did the same kind of work that early Americans did to survive.20

My teachers inspired me to encourage people to think for themselves, by example. In a series of classes taught by the phenomenal teacher, the late Mrs. John Kay "Mama" Reese, the focus was squarely directed to cause high school students to think for ourselves, and to act on our beliefs. This was a conscious decision on her part, she did not want us to memorize dates but express knowledge and act with wisdom. (Michaelsen, Knight, Fink, 2004) Returning from our summer vacation, on the very first day of class Mama Reese gave us an impossibly difficult written exam asking for dates, and other specifics. Finally when one student in exasperation ripped the test paper up and threw it in the air like confetti she expressed delight and encouraged all of us to think that way. Some students, however, completed their exams much to her astonishment, and actually turned them in.

Mama placed us in team learning groups to do such things as design, write, layout, and publish a regular high school paper. When the principal of East Anchorage High school canceled the publication because he did not agree with the editorial contents she organized us to respond formally, and then, controversially she advised us to strike. 21 (1972-1974) I echoed Mama Reese’s teaching endeavor to think for ourselves, when I assigned disabilities to the students and looked for evidence in their assignment, a UI analysis paper examining websites, that they had conditionalized their knowledge, and developed professional empathy with those classes of end users. (Bransford, 2000) (Michaelsen, Knight, Fink, 2004)

Team based learning to create functional software applications in INFO 344 were decided long before I became a TA, but I feel it is a very significant way for the students to practically apply and learn new things, while reflecting back to their instructors what they have learned. (Michaelsen, Knight, Fink, 2004) Jim Loter used team based learning in an informal way by encouraging students to produce software in groups, and did not grade on a curve, but otherwise we did not use any of the more detailed methods covered in Michaelsen’s book, some of which could have been useful in developing interaction among computer science students who classically tend to have loner personality styles.

Improvements I could make:

“When teachers are faced with the responsibility of teaching large classes of 100 or more students and seek advice on how best to do then, they frequently get technical suggestions: get more organized, try to make your lecture lively, use more audio-visual materials, and the like: But technical changes do not have the ability to make a significant impact on the two biggest problems with large classes from a learning perspective: student anonymity and passivity.” (L.Dee Fink, from Michaelsen, et al, 2004)

1. Memorize the student’s names (Michaelsen, Knight, Fink, 2004)
2. Prepare with the class teacher more frequently and in advance to devise ways to engage students in team-based learning (Michaelsen, Knight, Fink, 2004)
3. Facilitate class inter-communication (Bransford, 2000) (Michaelsen, Knight, Fink, 2004)
4. Acquire more advanced knowledge about databases and related class topics. (Bransford, 2000)
5. Acquire the skills that the best teachers have: (Bransford, 2000) (Michaelsen, Knight, Fink, 2004)

Frame ideas and information in such a way as students realize them on their own and their consequences and can communicate these ideas to others. Great teachers enable students to transform their educational experience from listening to information being presented into directly realizing knowledge through their own understanding.

Resources Used

Author: National Research Council (U. S.) Committee on Learning Research and Educational Practice (Author), National Research Council (Corporate Author), John Bransford (Editor), Ann L. Brown (Editor), Rodney R. Cocking (Editor)
Title: How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School:
Pub Info: National Academy Press(September 15, 2000)
Edition: Expanded Edition (Paperback)

p. 25 “excitement of learning… transferred to the classroom.”

p. 31 Chapter 2, “How Experts Differ From Novices” 1-6 notice meaningful patterns, content subject matter … organized in ways … deep understanding, can not be reduced to sets of isolated facts, can retrieve important aspects of their knowledge with little … effort, Though experts know their disciplines… does not guarantee they are able to teach others”

p.49 “Knowledge must be conditionalized: in order to be retrieved when it is needed; otherwise, it remains inert.”
“Expertise in an area does not guarantee that one can effectively teach others about that area. Expert teachers know the kinds of difficulties that students are likely to face…”

p. 51, Chapter 3, Learning and Transfer “Assumptions about transfer accompany the belief that is it better to broadly “educate” people than simply “train” them to perform particular tasks”

p. 68 “Learning As Transfer from Previous Experience.”

p. 102 Self Directed and Other Directed Learning “They learn in situations where there is no external pressure to improve and no feedback or reward other than pure satisfaction - - sometimes called achievement of competence motivation.”

p. 141 Formative Assessment and Feedback, “ Opportunities to work collaboratively in group scan also increase the quality of the feedback available to students”

p. 145 “allow students (teachers) the freedom to make mistakes in order to learn”
“girls are sometimes discouraged from participating in higher level mathematics and science.”

p. 181- 182 “Facets may relate to conceptual knowledge…, to strategic knowledge... , or genetic reasoning. Identifying student’s facets, what cues them in different context, and how student use them in reasoning are all helpful in devising instructional challenges.”

p. 242 Conclusions, “Teachers need expertise in both subject matter content and in teaching”

p. 243 Learning Environments, Tools of Technology. “Bringing real-world problems into classrooms through the use of videos, demonstrations, simulations, and Internet connections to concrete data and working scientists.”

p.279 “Investigate successful and creative educational practice”
“Investigate the potential benefits of collaborative learning in the classroom and the design challenges that it imposes.”

Author /editor: Larry K. Michaelsen, Arletta Bauman Knight, L. Dee Fink.
Title: Team-based learning : a transformative use of small groups in college teaching
Pub Info: Sterling, VA : Stylus Pub., 2004.
Edition: 1st pbk. ed.

(Michaelsen, Knight, Fink, 2004)

Preface, Origination of Team-Based Learning
The idea of Team Based Learning originated with Larry Michaelsen in the late 1970’s. [LL: This statement, made several times in the book was difficult to agree with. He named, researched it, and documented what was used by many teachers prior to this, and in other civilizations, much earlier.] “An alternative to lecturing in the sciences.”

p. 2 Chapter 1 “Several factors have prompted teachers to explore this form of teaching. In part teachers are feeling pressure both from the younger TV generation of student who are not very tolerant of lectures and from older students who was a learning experience that consists of more that an “information dumping.”.

p. 22 Large Classes, “When teachers are faced with the responsibility of teaching large classes of 100 or more students and seek advice on how best to do then, they frequently get technical suggestions: get more organized, trey to make your lecture lively, use more audio-visual materials, and the like: But technical changes do not have the ability to make a significant impact on the two biggest problems with large classes from a learning perspective: student anonymity and passivity.”

p. 23 Classes with a High Level of Student Diversity, Team-based learning creates conditions in which people who are very different from one another learn that they need to work together an that they can work together Courses That Emphasize Thinking Skills “Team-based learning can be especially helpful to anyone who wants to emphasize the development of students thinking skills in their courses.”

p. 37 First, because there is not enough time for the teacher to cover all of the material, focusing on how we want students to use their knowledge is an extremely powerful and reliable aid in deciding which elements of the course content are really important”

Designing a Grading System, “…ensure that the grading system is designed to reward the right things. An effective grading system for team-based learning must address the concerns of both students and the instructor. For both, the primary concern is related to past situations in which too many groups have had free-riders.” [LL: this depends on which kind of team-based learning and grading structure is used.]

p. 58 “ …stresses based on group work”, Rewarding Group Success

p. 59 “…what we know is more a function of our ability to retrieve and use information than it is the sum total of the information that we have taken in.”

p. 125-131 A Dramatic Turnaround in a Classroom of Deaf Students

p. 203 Students with Disabilities, “Perhaps the most amazing and fascinating example of the incredible versatility of learning teams is the strategy’s effectiveness with students who are disabled.”

Author: Angelo, Thomas A., 1954-
Title: Classroom assessment techniques : a handbook for college teachers / Thomas A. Angelo, K. Patricia Cross
Pub Info: San Francisco : Jossey-Bass Publishers, c1993
Edition: 2nd ed

I did not make use of this book in any detail.

Author: Forbes, Norma
Title: Television's effects on rural Alaska : summary of final report / prepared by Norma Forbes
Pub Info: Fairbanks, Alaska : Center for Cross-Cultural Studies, University of Alaska, Fairbanks, [1984]
Abstract: “There was no evidence that television by itself had a major effect on cognitive abilities. Numerous interactions show that television in Alaska did not, during the period of the study, have a uniform effect on the children in the study. The social learning concept of reciprocal determinism can be used to explain the complex ways in which television interacts with person variables and other environmental variables to influence test scores. There was no evidence that television by itself had a major effect on cognitive abilities. Numerous interactions show that television in Alaska did not, during the period of the study, have a uniform effect on the children in the study. The social learning concept of reciprocal determinism can be used to explain the complex ways in which television interacts with person variables and other environmental variables to influence test scores.”

(Original publication was: Author Forbes, Norma E. Sociocultural and cognitive effects of commercial television on previously television-naive rural Alaskan children / Norma E. Forbes and Walter J. Lonner. Publisher Bellingham, Wash. : Western Washington University, [1980], but it is no longer available from the Summit collection of the Orbit Cascade Alliance Union catalog, so I used the 1984 version.)

Conversations with Dr. Norma E. Forbes, on her studies, Fairbanks, Alaska 1974 – 1980.

Dan Comden presentation “Accessibility on Websites”, Mary Gates Hall, University of Washington, Seattle, Jan 18, 2007. Observations

http://wonderlane.blogspot.com/2007/01/on-accessability-from-dan-comdens.html
PowerPoint Presentations edited with referenced and original content :
* PrivacyLecture.ppt
* WebApplicationDev.ppt

Author: Hinton, S.E.
Title: The Outsiders
Pub Info: Viking Press, New York, NY April 1967
Edtion: 1st ed

Further research:

Author: Vidyabhusana, Satis Chandra, 1870-1920
Title: History of the mediæval school of Indian logic / by Mah¯amahop¯adhy¯aya Satis Chandra Vidyabhusana
Pub Info: New Delhi : Oriental Books Reprint Corp., dist. by Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, 1977
Edition: 2d ed

Pleasure of Elegant Sayings Press, “A History of Tibetan Culture.”


1 https://faculty.washington.edu/loter/info344/calendar.php January 16, 2007

2 http://faculty.washington.edu/loter/info344/slides/lect10_files/frame.html

3 Judy Siegel-Itzkovich, “Hawking's black hole lecture leaves teens in the dark” http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull&cid=1164881864835 “Questions submitted in advance by three pupils in the audience, which included previous winners and finalists of the Intel-Israel Young Scientists Competition, pupils from Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, Nazareth and other locations received short replies in pre-recorded answers from Hawking's synthesizer.”, accessed March 11, 2007.

4 The symbolic prizes were small ceramic figures, which come free with a purchase of Red Rose tea, and other small items I found laying around my domicile.

5 “videocamera - reclaim privacy”, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZuU93dvBnE accessed YouTube.com.

6 Error displays “Removed from the YouTube by the user.”

7 Are you sexually inappropriate? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TRIKi6ZAnw, web video, YouTube.com

8 “The Conversation - Privacy Ends Here”, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0-nV3TSMpw, web video, YouTube.com

9 Jim Loter’s education: B.A., Film Studies. Wayne State University (Detroit, MI). 1993. M.A., Film Studies. University of Iowa, (Iowa City, Iowa). 1996. http://faculty.washington.edu/loter/

10 The Matrix (1999) A computer hacker learns from mysterious rebels about the true nature of his reality and his role in the war against the controllers of it.

11 Gattaca (1997) Film, Written and directed by Andrew Niccoll, “A genetically inferior man assumes the identity of a superior one in order to pursue his lifelong dream of space travel.”

12 “RFID Privacy, Old Threats and New Attacks” presentation by Karsten Nohl, a University of Virginia PhD Computer Science candidate, speaking at Hope 2006, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLsUBmbjNDY web video, YouTube.com

13 On Accessibility, Dan Comden's lecture in Info344 (Informatics, iSchool UW) Jan 18, 2007

14 Videos documented and presented from embedded links on my blog: http://wonderlane.blogspot.com/

15 Classroom Assessment Techniques: A Handbook for College Teachers (Jossey Bass Higher and Adult Education Series) (Paperback) by Thomas A. Angelo (Author), K. Patricia Cross (Author) Publisher: Jossey-Bass; 2 Sub edition (March 12, 1993)

16 Mike Crandall, Feb 27, 2007 8:53 am email “team based learning has been around since our first ancestors figured out how to use each other to catch prey and garden. How else did we learn all these things we seem to take for granted?”

17 I visited the Buddhist Dialectics School, McLeod Ganj, Himachal, Pradesh, India in 1993. Recommend research from English Pamphlet, A Brief History of the Buddhist School of Dialectics.

18 My prize for winning a quadratic equation quiz was of little other than symbolic value, a coffee cup ringed and stained, dog-eared copy of the “The Outsiders”, by S.E. Hinton, pub. Viking, New York, 1967.
(I read the teen book dutifully twice, but it was no match for Heinlein. Heinlein informed me; science fiction, world building, utopia, “The robots' Three Laws”, the right to privacy.)

19 Based on informal estimates Mrs. Darlene L. Lane, my mother, a city, state, and regional planner, made on the population with me for a land use study I presented to the Anchorage City Council in 1969 at age 13, with Mary Liston and Nancy A. Byrd apposed to building another school on the Orah Dee Clark site in part due to undocumented safety concerns and unconsidered feasibly issues. The school is to be demolished 2007 and rebuilt on the same site.

20 We settled into groups where we did things just like early Americans, such as made pickles by hand, with limited tools carved hand-made furniture using trees available behind East Anchorage High School. We built fires and made dinner - created a pumpkin pie totally from scratch. We learned to think about the time involved in survival among early Americans. This was not far from how the Alaskan Native students’ families lived in subsistence environments c. 1970’s.

21 An example of Mama Reese’s husband, Alaskan Superior Court Judge John Reese, dealing with the Anchorage School District’s fatally flawed thinking in dealing with students: http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/showStory.cfm?ArticleID=2382

Independent Study in Technical Education Winter Quarter, 2007

End Notes:
After teaching my first class I came home and ate oysters for dinner. Biting into one I pulled a small heart shaped pearl from between my teeth. I took this as a good sign.