Teaching & Learning in the Digital Age: Feb. 27

While the Revolutionary Year of the MOOC has crashed and burned in a flaming heap of venture capital, actually existing online instruction has continued to develop in a more deliberate way at UCLA.  Out of the limelight, and mostly outside the much-maligned UC-Online system, departments and individual professors have been piloting online courses in many different flavors.

On Thursday, February 27, the campus community will have a chance to take stock in these developments at the second "Online Summit" sponsored by the  Academic Senate, the Library, and other campus units.  With the theme Teaching and Learning in the Digital Age--Making It Happen the event is billed as a venue for constructive conversation, rather than a policy forum.  The highlight of last year's Summit was the showcase of faculty work in the new YRL Digital Commons--a feature that will be repeated this year.

So whether you love or hate online education, or are confused and curious, this is a good opportunity to find out what is going on in real classrooms.

Teaching and Learning in the Digital Age: Making It Happen
Thursday, February 27, 9:15 AM to 4 PM
Young Research Library, UCLA
Website: http://www.sscnet.ucla.edu/history/reiff/~online/Summit2Index.html

Faculty Strike at University of Illinois Chicago

Faculty at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) launched a two-day strike today citing stalled negotiations with university administrators.  Several hundred people rallied on the Chicago campus this morning, and picketed classrooms throughout the day. 

Faculty decided to unionize in 2012 citing lack of pay raises and temporary pay cuts during the recent financial crisis, among other issues.  Adjunct faculty, who are coordinating bargaining with tenure-system faculty, are seeking multi-year contracts as well as better pay and benefits.  As evidence that the university can afford their demands, faculty cite a 25% increase in tuition since 2007, rising enrollments, and a $275 million reserve fund.  Illinois faculty are also fighting a major overhaul of their pensions by the state legislature.

Faculty are frustrated that 18 months of negotiations have yielded practically no progress of the key financial issues.  There is concern that the university is not bargaining in good faith. 

Professors Lennard Davis and Walter Ben Michaels note that faculty are striking to preserve the campus's tradition of serving students of moderate means.

Every entering UIC student takes at least one writing course; most take two. Not surprisingly, our writing courses are overwhelmingly taught by lecturers (i.e. non-tenure track faculty), on year-to-year contracts and paid a standard salary of $30,000. Furthermore, although the administration carries on endlessly about the importance of merit, they’re unwilling to mandate a promotion track for non-tenure track faculty, the whole point of which would be to reward merit. 


So what exactly does it mean to insist on the importance of the first year experience and then pay the people most responsible for that experience a wage that virtually requires them to work a second job? What does it mean to claim you want to reward the best and the hardest working when you not only won’t promote them, but you won’t even provide a position they could in theory be promoted to? You’re short-changing both the faculty and the students.

The strike continues tomorrow.  You can follow this story at the UIC United Faculty website http://uicunitedfaculty.org/ and on Twitter (@UICUF).

Fewer Posts for the Near Future

A note to all our faithful readers: Dan Mitchell is taking a break from posting here, so we will not have our regular daily updates.  We' continue posting but at a slower pace until Dan is back in the saddle.

Toby Higbie
UCLA FA Chair

On Valentine's Day, We Repeat an Earlier Post Entitled "A Modest Proposal"

Click on the link below:

For those who take a more clinical approach to such matters, see:
http://wamc.org/post/dr-robert-levenson-university-california-berkeley-genetics-marital-bliss

Jerry Brown Looks for an Online Course that Requires No Human Interaction

At the Regents meeting of January 22, 2014, Gov. Brown seems to be searching for an online course that requires no human interaction.  Such a course, he reasons, could have unlimited enrollment because it is completely self-contained.  He gets some pushback from UC Provost Dorr, who thinks courses should have such interaction. 

You can hear this excerpt at the link below.  The entire meeting of the Committee on Educational Policy of the Regents was posted yesterday.

Jerry Brown Suggests Master Plan is Dated

Our previous post covered the Jan. 22 meeting of the Regents' Committee on Educational Policy.  As noted, there was discussion of the 1960 Master Plan for Higher Education, considered a major accomplishment of Brown's father when he was governor.

Below is a link to Brown's comments in which he suggested the Plan was now dated. 

Listen to Part of the Regents Afternoon Session of 1-22-2014

As we have noted in numerous prior posts, the Regents refuse to archive their meetings beyond one year.  So we dutifully record the sessions in real time.  Below is a link to part of the afternoon session of Jan. 22.  This segment is mainly the Committee on Educational Policy.  Gov. Brown was in attendance.  We will separately (later) provide links just to certain Brown segments.  But for now, we provide a continuous recording.

There was discussion of designating certain areas of UC-Merced as nature reserves, followed by discussion of a new telescope.  The discussion then turned to online ed and the governor seemed to push for courses that involved no human interaction so that there could be unlimited enrollment.  At a later point, Chancellor Block made a comment about the virtue of "residential" education which seemed aimed at the governor's online push.  He talked about a digital divide in which better off students would have traditional in-person classes and poor students would have mainly online offerings.  There was discussion of the old Master Plan.  Heads of the three segments in the Plan - UC, CSU, and the community colleges - were part of the discussion.  Brown indicated that the Master Plan was a political compromise of an earlier era and that it needed to be questioned as to today's needs.

The president of the UC Students Assn. spoke in support of a larger state budget allocation than the governor was proposing, an oil tax to fund education, divestment from fossil fuels, and other items.

You can hear this portion of the afternoon session at the link below: