Live Online Office Hours covered in the Duke Chronicle

The Duke Chronicle has a nice feature on the new phenomenon of Online Office Hours, in which I participated last Friday:

Professors offer online office hours
Jessica Chang

There is a pic. of me from the session. If you didn't catch it, most of the recording is archived for viewing at this link:

Online Office Hours with Mark Goodacre

It is missing the first five minutes or so, but otherwise it's all there, I am told. If you haven't the stomach for all that (and I know I haven't!), there is a brief clip over on Big Think:

Would Jesus tweet?
Duke University New Testament scholar Mark Goodacre says Saint Paul would be more inclined to Twitter.

Dear Jordan

There is a sobering column in today's Duke Chronicle headed Dear Professors, in which Jordan Everson challenges his teachers to take their job seriously, to do a bit of actual "professing", to enthuse students, to engage them, to throw themselves into teaching. The piece has something of a negative tone, and it is clear that Jordan's experience at Duke has been less satisfactory than that of many other students, from whom I have heard more positive things. I can't help thinking that Jordan has been unlucky in his choice of courses if he has only found one professor who has really engaged him in three years; I thought that students all talked to one another about the best, most engaging courses to go to, though of course it is never easy to judge these things from the other side of the fence. Nevertheless, Jordan's piece is a helpful call to us all to take our students seriously and to take our teaching seriously, and his plea is well taken, at least from this corner. Jordan writes:

So then profess! Enlighten your students with the marvelous task you have undertaken, the ideas that inspired you, that you have dedicated your life to studying.

I know, I know, you spent years researching for that Ph.D., and before arriving here your main concern has probably been research.

There is little for you to gain from professing; Research, not teaching, determines your career advancement. Only disastrously bad student evaluations will hinder your upward mobility, an easily avoidable fate so long you reserve low grades only for the truly indolent and hand out evaluations during the last day of classes.

Still, as professors you have an obligation to teach us, your students.

In my perhaps naïve optimism, I am inclined to be a bit less cynical than this, not least because for me, and for colleagues I know, there is a genuine interaction between research and teaching. Some of my best research ideas emerge in teaching, and my teaching often provides the occasion for testing new ideas, or developing new ways of communicating older ideas, to talk to students about work in progress. One of the things I love about teaching at Duke is that the students are so bright, so engaged. I often come back from class thinking about some interesting question or observation that a student put to me. I might even dare to suggest that the best kind of research, especially if we are talking about the humanities, comes directly out of teaching, and the best kind of teaching emerges from the professor's research.

Perhaps I might throw in too that this week, after the summer hiatus, I found myself really looking forward to returning to teaching. Yes, it gives me less time to write, but it gives me no less time to think, to communicate, to engage, all of which are elements in research in the humanities. And somewhere like Duke gives one the luxury of being able to teach right in one's major areas of interest. It is not as if one has to teach courses in subjects that one has no primary competence or expertise in. Furthermore, Jordan underestimates just how important teaching is in hiring practices at Duke. Bear in mind that one of the major tests for incoming candidates is to present a lecture in which you need to be able to communicate effectively to undergraduate students, and the search committees, in which I have participated, spend a lot of time thinking about the candidates' teaching record (or potential). It is by no means the case that people are hired on research alone. Jordan later writes:

Professors, I implore you: Engage your students. Change the world not only through erudite publications but through the spread of wisdom to the men and women you have the luck to influence.

Do not return papers with a short comment and a letter grade, leaving your TAs to fill in the gaps. Write a paragraph about our work, about our thoughts against yours. If our only feedback on a paper is the letter grade, how can the goal of our learning be anything other than achieving a high letter grade? Before muscle can grow it must be torn. Provide resistance, be engaging, be demanding, and do not accept complacency.

The first paragraph I endorse, and the challenge is accepted, and encouraged. The second paragraph quoted is, I think, one of the most useful things Jordan says. I well remember receiving papers back, as a student, with only minimal guidance about what was good, bad or ugly in them, and I think it is vital that we try to give the fullest feedback possible. I will certainly be bearing this in mind in grading later this semester. The only thing I would want to add is that I am always happy, and I know that I am not alone in this, to provide detailed feedback in appointments with students. Many students, usually in my experience the ones with As and A-s, do not come for that feedback, but the door is always open.

Thanks, Jordan, for a provocative piece. One of the things that makes Duke a great place to teach is that it is full of students, like you, who take the academic experience so seriously, and who want to get the best out of their education.

Nifong Goes to Sunday School

It's not often that elements in the Duke lacrosse case are discussed in relation to the Bible, but one of our Religion majors here at Duke, Emily Thomey, has written the following today in her regular Et Religio column in the Duke Chronicle:

Nifong Goes to Sunday School
Emily Thomey

Duke Lacrosse Players Cleared

The news that everyone had been expecting for some time arrived this afternoon, that the Duke lacrosse players have been cleared of all charges. No one in the USA will be unfamiliar with this story, and many elsewhere in the world will have heard about it too since it has made an impact also on the world media. Today's Guardian, for example, has a good summary of the case that has cast a shadow over Duke for the last year or so.

I have often thought seriously about blogging on this issue because it has been on my mind a great deal, especially in recent months as it became clear that the case was collapsing. My reasons for not blogging on it were twofold. First, this blog is focused on academic New Testament studies and I generally keep all other unrelated material out of it. Regular readers will know that it is rare for me to stray outside of that mandate. Second, and more importantly, I felt profoundly uncomfortable about commenting in public on an ongoing criminal investigation. Some of the difficulties that have arisen in relation to the case are the result of people making public comment when it would have been wiser to use greater caution and to suspend judgement until more was known. The attorney general today spoke of the "tragic rush to accuse". Perhaps my decision to avoid public comment was wrong, but it was made, I hope, in good conscience. My lack of comment was not because of lack of interest in or concern about the case, which I have followed very carefully from the beginning.

Having heard the news today, my major reaction was one of no surprise. It has seemed clear for some time that the charges were likely to be dropped, and that there was no case against the three men. That reaction is combined with a feeling of profound regret and some degree of anger about the original prosecution of the case, which now appears to have been utterly flawed. I also feel a great deal of sympathy for the three players who have been cleared. I could not condone the behaviour of the lacrosse team at the party which was the catalyst for the false allegations, but it is important not to confuse one's condemnation of some student misbehaviour (which is common all over the world, not just here) with the making of one of the most serious criminal allegations that can be made. Indeed one of the most troubling elements in the early days of the media coverage was the confusion made between general student misdemeanour with very serious criminal allegation.

The most sensitive issue for those of us on the Duke faculty, however, is the question of our attitude to the members of the lacrosse team over the last twelve months, which was focused in particular by the placement of an ad in the The Chronicle by 88 members of the Trinity College of Arts and Sciences, one of the major divisions at Duke, of which the Religion Department, to which I belong, is a member. The ad achieved some notoriety and many saw it, I think rightly, as somewhat misguided. I was not one of the signatories of this ad, nor did I sign the follow-up "clarifying" letter produced last January. I should perhaps add that members of the lacrosse team have always been welcome to join my classes (and several have been in my classes). I regret that sometimes the Duke faculty have been characterized as not supporting their students. I made the decision not to talk in class about the case, though I was happy to talk to and listen to students outside of class when they wished to talk about it, and so to offer my support in that way.

The case has been a very unhappy one for Duke and Durham and I hope that in the long term important lessons are learnt. For me, as a relatively new member of the faculty, it has been an unpleasant welcome to a university that in so many other ways has so much to be proud of.

What your students are typing in class

Ever wondered what those students with laptops are actually typing in your classes? You know, the earnest looking ones who are typing away as if there's no tomorrow? Here's the answer, from today's Duke Chronicle:

Why are we here?
By: Stacy Chudwin

Believe it or not, I'm actually typing this column while sitting in the back of one of my classes. I won't tell you which class, because that could threaten my participation grade, which I sorely need. This will be our little secret.

Right now I am sketchily hunched over my laptop, peering around to make sure my fellow classmates don't realize what's going on. I fear that they, along with the professor, will discover that I am not actually a digital hipster student of the 21st century taking notes on the computer, but rather someone who just doesn't want to pay attention during her last lecture class before Spring Break.

As I defensively glance around the room, I realize that I am not alone in pulling off this brilliant ruse . . .

Actually, I am happy to say that this was not one of my classes, but if Stacy should wish to enroll for a New Testament class next semester, she would be welcome. I rather admire the the ingenuity. Better than sleeping in class, or staring out of the window.

Grade inflation

There's an interesting piece in today's Duke Chronicle on the question of grade inflation, with the humanities the worst offenders:

Data Shows Rising Trend for Grades
Shuchi Parikh

When freshman Sharmistha Rudra chose her courses this semester, she aimed for balance.

To even out the heavy workload of her biochemistry and physics classes, she looked for a couple of "easy" humanities courses, deciding on a "Water and Conflict" seminar because it carried the lightest workload, according to www.ratemyprofessor.com.

Rudra's instinct that the University's liberal arts classes give out higher grades was not unfounded, according to data from the Office of the University Registrar.

And some evidence indicates that there has been consistent grade inflation in recent years. Latin honors, awarded to the top 25 percent of each graduating class, have had steadily increasing GPA cutoffs since the Class of 2001, the last year data was publicly available.

Summa cum laude, honoring the top five percent of the class, had a GPA cutoff for Trinity College graduates of 3.868 for the Class of 2005, but rose to 3.894 for the Class of 2007. The summa cum laude GPA cutoff for Pratt School of Engineering graduates rose from 3.905 to 3.950 over the same time period . . .

I have only had three full semesters at Duke, so I can't judge how far I am contributing to this problem. What I would say is that the quality of the work that comes in for the courses I teach (Introduction New Testament; Historical Jesus; Life and Letters of Paul) is remarkably high. Duke students are very bright and highly motivated. In other words, it's a nice problem to have. One amusing, or perhaps disturbing feature in the article above is to see a student choosing courses on the basis of ratemyprofessor.com, and on the basis of the alleged easiness of the courses in question.