Carrots and Sticks in Higher Education

Has higher education become all carrot and no stick? Are we so tolerant of what some of our learners produce – or don’t produce – that discipline hardly exists any longer? Have absences become normal after Covid and the global fuel crisis, excused by the fact that we are now living in an abnormal world? Defining what is acceptable and unacceptable has become hard, almost impossible. The lines are blurring between right and wrong, reasonable and unreasonable. Some students appear to take advantage of blended courses in order not to work when activities are online, coming back with various excuses for late or missing work.

I see all carrot an no stick. We seem to be turning a blind eye to outrageous behaviour in order to appear sympathetic and caring. We are urged to be tolerant until our patience is strained. We overlook absences in an effort to project empathy. We use clear rubrics for grading, which, if applied strictly, could fail large numbers of students. How many of us are actually failing the lazy joyriders? The carrot wins.  We even receive e-mails asking us to give certain “struggling” students more time on exams. Some of them don’t seem to be struggling at all; they will use any means to maximise their chances.

The treatment of younger school children has followed similar trends. When corporal punishment was replaced with arduous tasks such as writing the homework ten times, people objected, and detention is now more common instead; yet even that is frowned upon by many who argue that instead of punishing kids one should motivate them instead, as a preventative measure.

While motivation and rewards are important in education, unacceptable behavior needs to be phased out. A study on reward and punishment at Washington University has shown relevant results: “ Reward and Punishment Act as Distinct Factors in Guiding Behavior”. More importantly, punishment has a more decisive role in changing behavior: “Given the well established behavioral effects of rewards and penalties …, one would expect that the larger a reward, the higher the tendency to repeat a choice, and the larger a loss, the higher the avoidance rate. We found that this indeed is the case for rewards …, but strikingly, there is no modulation of the effect by the magnitude of a penalty. A loss drove a uniform avoidance of the choice that led to the loss” (Kubanek, Sneider & Abrams).

Educators need to balance the carrots out with more sticks, especially now, post-Covid.

Post Covid Brain Damage

 

Those of us who have so far been fortunate to escape Covid should be feeling blessed; some survivors have brain damage affecting thought, including language. The effect is more serious than an altered sense of smell that fades with time. Whether you are a student, a teacher or anyone else concerned about their health and general performance at work or in society, make sure you don’t catch the virus. Continue to take precautions. Although the virus itself does not appear to enter the brain, it affects nerves leading to it, blood vessels feeding it, the master gland playing a role in stress, and possibly the immune system, producing toxic substances that can reduce brain function.

Apparently, the “brain fog” associated with Covid is usually temporary, but with some people it drags on for extended periods. Brain scans are showing brain damage, including some overall brain shrinkage, even in asymptomatic or mild Covid cases, not just in cases that were hospitalized. Studies have reported that despite the brain’s plasticity, even young adults who survived mild Covid are struggling 6 to 9 months later with certain cognitive functions such as episodic memory and sustained attention on challenging tasks.

As far back as 2020, the journal Brain had reported on the possibility of severe brain damage in mild cases. The “transient encephalopathy”, including delirium, psychosis, and paralysis emanated from strokes and nervous issues.

In March 2022, the journal Nature reported on a huge study showing brain atrophy and damage in the grey matter of Covid patients. Monitoring is needed to watch how long the damage lasts. Apparently, the part of the brain affected the most plays an important role in emotional behaviour, learning and memory. Students beware, catching Covid may affect your learning, your grades, your future. Avoid it like the plague!

Blogging versus Journalism

Whether to include blogging under a broad umbrella of journalism has been a matter of debate for a long time. While the difference between blogging and journalism is not a matter of black and white, there are clear differences:

• Blogging is meant to be personal and highly opinionated, unlike journalism, which is expected to be fact-based, establishing the five Ws (Who, What, Where, When, and Why) early in the text. While blog readers appreciate facts, they tend to seek blogs for personal stories and opinions. An exception may be corporate blogs which are designed to be less personal than individual ones.
• Both bloggers and journalists are open to feedback. However, feedback on blogs may be faster, in the form of comments appearing publicly online; feedback on journalistic writing usually goes through editorial teams and may or may not be shared with the public. Journalistic writing tends not to be conversational in the same way that blogging can be.
•  Journalists are often bound by deadlines. They are restricted, working under tight schedules to produce writing while news is fresh. Personal bloggers, on the other hand, can often choose their own time frames; while they enjoy posting timely information, they are not under the same pressure as journalists. In this sense, they are free. Ironically, bloggers can be faster than journalists sometimes, publishing content in seconds if they so wish; their writing is meant to be self-checked rather than going through editors first, which may waste time.
• While news pieces can become stale quickly, sometimes in a matter of days, blog posts can remain relevant for longer.
• News audiences are often much broader. Most personal blogs tend to cater to narrower audiences.
•  Regarding platforms, journalists can experience greater variety, including print media, radio, and television, not just online.
• In terms of word counts, news pieces tend to abide by their publications’ as well as the broader industry’s guidelines; there are specific word limits. For personal blogs, there is no minimum or maximum number of words. The sky is the limit!

It may be argued that without journalists, bloggers would have nothing to write about. I would disagree here as bloggers do not depend on others’ writing (though they avail themselves of it) to create their own. Much of what they write can be based on their own experiences in their immediate environments.

What about fake blogs, you may ask? Of course, there is a danger that fake personas may deceive blog readers, but journalistic news can be fake too. Readers should always be on the alert for fake stories everywhere, whether online or in any other form. 

Return to Normal or to Ignorance?

The title of AUB’s latest international conference on effective teaching and learning was “Negotiating New Norms of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education”. There is clearly a sense that new norms are needed, with varying points of view. A Times Higher Education article entitled “Returning to Normal is Really a Return to Ignorance” illustrates this by emphasizing how online teaching and learning helped non-traditional faculty members like the author Torrey Trust succeed. The example here was of people with physical disabilities or fragile health, whether teaching staff or learners.

In the second half of 2021, educational institutions worldwide were celebrating the gradual return to the campus. In-person learning, after all, was a top priority for most academic institutions. People were craving for the “true college experience” as if online teaching and learning were fake. An adjustment period was of course needed for those who had gotten used to teaching online, like drug addicts in need of rehabilitation. The flexibility of the past years was going to be taken away – the drug withdrawn. Rightly, students were looking forward to the resumption of athletics, student organizations, cultural events, and access to physical resources such as libraries, as well as campus housing. Yet many of us were aware that the “new normal” would not be a replica of the old. Colorado State University’s vice president for student affairs Blanche Hughes told the students, “Sorry, no, returning students, it may not look exactly like it looked two years ago, but we can co-create this experience together to still make it meaningful.”

As reported by George Veletsianos, Professor and Canada Research Chair in Innovative Learning and Technology at Royal Roads University, a Canadian study including surveys of faculty members and students in North American institutions of higher learning showed that both teaching staff and students were in fact hoping for better times, not wishing for “a return to normal”. What they wanted carried forward were teaching and learning innovation, increased support, flexibility, and focus on equity. Marcia Devlin, a globally recognised expert in education, urges movement beyond the old criteria of effective teaching and learning (dating back to 2010), raising awareness of their insufficiency after Covid. Those criteria were summarised as follows: broadening participation and promoting greater student diversity; promoting standards for accountability; greater transnational education; digital transformation and data analytics; changing assessment philosophy and practice; work-integrated learning; students as partners; encouraging collaborative teaching; and applying new pedagogies that leverage digital technologies. Part of what was missing was emphasis on resilience to added layers of chaos and ambiguity, such as those engendered by the pandemic (Devlin and Samarawickrema). Steven Mintz, a professor of history in Texas, has blogged about this subject in “Let’s Not Return to the Old Normal”; instead of seeing the pandemic in a completely negative light, everyone should use it as a learning experience that has raised people’s awareness of the options available, leading to reforms.

Being back on campus should not mean thinking or behaving like people did many years ago. Change can be stupefying, but if it’s for the public good, whether in education or any other sphere, it must be given a chance.

New Avenues of Learning

 The World Economic Forum recently published an article on “Universities After Covid”, by  Kyungmee Lee, a Senior Lecturer in Technology Enhanced Learning at Lancaster University. The article is relevant to teachers and students alike, the main idea being that face-to-face university teaching can be improved through insights gleaned during the global pandemic. Here is a summary of the most relevant points:

• Online learning during the pandemic was flexible, inclusive and compassionate; this is what all educational frameworks should be like from now on.

• The digital learning support systems that were set up during the pandemic should remain in place as lecturers should be encouraged to be creative in the way they design and deliver their courses.

• The solidarity and sympathy that was engendered between students and teachers during the global crisis should be appreciated and maintained, whether online or face to face.

• Some of the small-scale online activities that were used to replace long lectures, enhancing student focus and engagement, would work well if integrated into the curriculum.

• Blended learning should become more widespread; certain parts of lessons or modules could be moved online for greater flexibility.

• Heightened sensitivity towards digital and educational inequality must be maintained after the pandemic.

• Online accessibility removes physical barriers that can hamper learning for some.

It is hard to disagree with any of this, really. The lessons learned from the trauma of the pandemic should be cherished by universities rather than forgotten. We have come to understand, for example, that when students say they want face-to-face lectures, what they mean is this, as elegantly expressed by Sheffield Hallam’s vice chancellor: “…it’s not that they want to have lectures, they want to go for coffee with their mates after it and talk about it. They want to engage. So what you really need to do is say, how do you most effectively use your campus to stimulate engagement?”(as cited in Weale & Adams, 2021). A good question in need of reflection.

Blends and Hybrids Everywhere

Those who hadn’t heard of hybrid or blended teaching ended up hearing about them during the past year or two. While the two terms were often used synonymously prior to the pandemic, lately they seem to have developed divergent meanings: blended learning for that taking place partly online and partly face to face for the same individuals, and hybrid learning for classes that are taught mainly face to face while allowing remote attendance for those that cannot be there physically.

Blends are in fact everywhere around us, as illustrated in the words we use. We are constantly creating words through lexical blends (also referred to as portmanteau words). Blog is a blend of web and log; Spanglish, Spanish and English; maglev, magnetic and levitation, and technocrat, technology aristocrat.

Lexical blends also appear in words for everyday things, such as food, drink, and clothes. Here are a few: flexitarian (flexible vegetarian); mocktail (mock cocktail) and jeggings (jeans leggings).

Lately, some blends relating to animal crossbreeds have caught my attention. I thought I would share some of these in the hope that even those who are not animal enthusiasts would be entertained or at least enlightened. Note that not all of these terms have entered the dictionaries – only a few.

Cama: a cross between a camel and a llama

Coywolf: coyote and wolf

Geep or Shoat:  crossbreeds between goats and sheep (rare and usually stillborn due to genetic distance)

Jagleon: jaguar and lion

Leopon: leopard and lion

Liger and Tigon: crossbreeds between lions and tigers. In the first case, the father is a lion, while in the second case, the father is a tiger.

Wholphin: whale and dolphin

Zonkey: zebra and donkey

Zorse: zebra and horse

Finally, some of the newest word blends around these days relate to Covid: Covax and covidiot. Earlier, we saw plandemic, which does not seem to have survived very well.

What new blends will 2022 bring? Let’s watch and see.