Substantial cuts to university operating grants were announced in the provincial budget on March 7. There are ongoing discussions about how to implement budget cuts across institutions, faculties, and departments. There is pressure from the minister of Enterprise and Advanced Education for institutional reorganization. Researchers sense encouragement of applied research, and discouragement of “curiosity driven” research. Students, faculty, and staff are marching on the legislature. Coffee with some of my younger colleagues includes mentions of exploring opportunities elsewhere.
Not surprisingly, some of these
discussions are online. Many can be
found by searching Twitter for the hashtag #abpse. The minister, Thomas Lukaszuk, contributed to
this Twitter feed by posting a link to a YouTube video that provides “An
Open Letter To Educators.” The
minister simply aksed “Interesting – what do you think?” In the video, a former University of Nebraska
student argues that universities are in the business of communicating facts to
students, but now the internet makes facts free. Universities have to adapt to this reality or
die. His university experience – with
large classes, powerpoint lectures, fact memorization and regurgitation, and
professors not interested in even learning student names –led him to drop out. Presumably, he could find better facts (for
free) using his web browser or smart phone.
His point is that if the goal of a university education is memorizing
facts, then it is a waste of time and money.
I have a lot of different
reactions to this video, but the most straightforward is simply that its creator
missed the point of a university education.
As a professor, I am not in the business of uploading facts to student
brains. Instead, my goal (as advertised
in my teaching
dossier) is to create an environment in which students
learn by building – reading, discussing, writing, programming, simulating, experimenting
– as they explore the exciting interdisciplinary ideas at the foundation of
cognitive science.
One
easy example of putting this teaching philosophy into action is my fourth-year
course on embodied
cognitive science. Sure, this course
involves me lecturing. It involves more
than this, though. Students get
hands-on experience with behaving agents by building a variety of robots out of
LEGO Mindstorms components. They use
these robots to explore how very simple agents can generate surprising and
complicated behavior when embedded in the real world. Building on lectures and hands-on activities
early in the course (where students learn about and construct our versions of
some famous robots), by the end of the course students create, study, and
document their very own robot projects. Examples
of student projects in the most recent edition of this course are online;
these videos (not to mention the robots and their programs) were student
creations. (I even took the time to learn all of the students' names.)
A
more recent example involves my PhD student and two senior undergraduate students,
both taking independent study courses with me this year. All three students have been involved in lab
activities, and the fruits of these labours appeared at the recent Joseph R. Royce
Research Conference hosted by the Department of Psychology at the
University of Alberta. All three
students (seen in the image below) gave their first poster presentation at this
conference. Of course, this required
them to be involved in the research, as well as the poster preparation. More
importantly, at the conference itself the students engaged in conversations with
conference attendees about the work on display and about why it is significant. You learn a lot about your own research from
conversations of this type, both by learning how to present it, and by dealing
with a variety of unanticipated questions!
The
two examples above are from my direct experience, and I could provide many others
from my own experience as a professor (and in my earlier years as a student!). I am not in a position to make general claims
about the state of university education, but I do not believe that I am an exception
to the rule. Many other instances can be
found in my own department (there were many undergraduate and graduate students
presenting posters and talks at the Royce conference), and in all of the other
departments at my institution. If this
was not generally true at most universities I would be astonished.
Brian, Sheldon and Josh at the poster session of the Royce conference
It pains me to think that the person holding the purse-strings for higher education in this province--who holds a degree (in education, no less) from the UofA--considers that video "interesting."
ReplyDelete