john hawks weblog

All the NY Times columnists will be writing about MOOCs before long, I suspect. Today it was David Brooks' turn: "The Practical University". His argument is that digital technology allows much more efficient transmission of "technical" know-how than do classrooms in big buildings, but "practical" know-how cannot be taught without real hands-on training.

The problem is that as online education becomes more pervasive, universities can no longer primarily be in the business of transmitting technical knowledge. Online offerings from distant, star professors will just be too efficient. As Ben Nelson of Minerva University points out, a school cannot charge students $40,000 and then turn around and offer them online courses that they can get free or nearly free. That business model simply does not work. There will be no such thing as a MOOC university.

Nelson believes that universities will end up effectively telling students: “Take the following online courses over the summer or over a certain period, and then, when you’re done, you will come to campus and that’s when our job will begin.” If Nelson is right, then universities in the future will spend much less time transmitting technical knowledge and much more time transmitting practical knowledge.

Like many NY Times columns about education, this one reads like a paid advertisement -- in this case for Minerva University. That doesn't mean that it's wrong, but I don't think the practical-technical distinction holds. In anthropology, for example, it is possible for us to use digital tools to bring much more of the experience of the field to students than we can accomplish in the classroom. I also think the "technical-practical" distinction breaks down when considering laboratory work.

I think a basic rule of thumb is to ask whether the analogy works for sports. In sports, we have broadcast events seen by millions, and coaching clinics that scale down to individuals. It takes lots of experience and practice to perform a sport well..and it also takes some experience and practice to watch a sport well. But watching and playing are not the same kinds of activity. They can enhance each other, feed back on each other, and both can contribute to broader appreciation. And digital tools can help with both of them -- they're just different digital tools.

A jeremiad from Henry Bourne: "Writing on the wall" [1].

Competition drives scientific discovery, but too much competition for scarce resources can block progress, and has done so. Thus, the growing flood of grant applications surpasses growth in NIH dollars, reduces the proportion of grants that are funded, and renders peer review increasingly arbitrary because a project ranked in the 20th percentile is often no less meritorious than one ranked in the 10th percentile (Berg, 2013).

Another problem is that we now have a ‘holding tank' of postdoctoral scholars that is overflowing with bright young scientists who are indentured to greying lab chiefs and are thus unable to break new ground as independent researchers (Bourne, 2012). The worst consequence, but harder to quantify, is that scientists avoid risky, creative projects in favour of ‘sure things’ more likely to be funded by conservative reviewers (Nicholson and Ioannidis, 2012).

Probably most people who have thought about these problems recognize the fundamental catch-22 represented by centralized funding of science. It would be more efficient of time, training, and human capital of all kinds to simply pick a limited number of "winners" early in their careers, provide adequate funding to a relatively small number of institutes, and turn excess talent away at the door. But large institutes often breed groupthink and complacency. There is no accurate indicator of "talent" that would allow selection of those who will achieve great scientific findings from the vast pool of undergraduates. And forcing people to compete every so often does provide a mechanism for cutting out deadwood. That is to say, the likeliest alternative to the current system has lots of obvious problems.

Yet as Bourne and many others say, granting agencies have become the main drivers of groupthink and complacency, we have set up a system where talented creative people are actively turned away from science careers, and no "deadwood" is ever actually cut out of the system because networks of greyhairs protect each other zealously.

I want to draw attention to the comment section of the essay, which has a series of thoughtful exchanges. This passage from Bourne deserves to be front-paged:

A more vexing and crucial problem is that even the faculty who agree with me remain silent and virtually inert. They worry constantly about difficulties getting grants funded, and (correctly) feel pressured to spend most of their time writing grant applications, scrambling to support students and postdocs, and wrangling with prestigious journals. These pressures combine with habituation (in earlier years) to a friendlier funding climate to impose a devastating inertia.

My instinct is that we need to democratize the process of science. A wider group of researchers should have power, not just a stake in the results.

References

Dan Ariely is an economist at Duke University who has been teaching a massive open online course on behavioral economics to 140,000 students, titled "A Beginner's Guide to Irrational Behavior". He recently sat down with the PBS NewsHour to answer questions and share perspectives about the MOOC: "The Plusses and Pitfalls of Teaching Online". It is a long piece with many useful parts, here's a sample:

there's a great deal of room for variance once you have over 140,000 students in a class. There's a substantial probability that at least some students will be engaged, knowledgeable, thoughtful, and passionate about the class. And indeed, the discussion boards for my online class show just this -- a select group of students truly stand out as motivated individuals who are taking the content seriously and thinking critically about how ideas can be developed and applied to the real world.

In this regard, the diversity of backgrounds is also a huge benefit in online classes that are available internationally. We hear from students of different ages from around the globe who have so much to contribute. And they not only contribute by sharing their perspectives with their professor and teaching staff, but also with their fellow students.

Ariely also discusses some of the negatives of a very large student sample: the greater likelihood of disgruntled students looking to draw attention in a public forum, for example.

This is a really concern for me as I prepare my course, "Human Evolution: Past and Future" (which I announced here earlier this week). A fraction of my students may have goals that include promoting creationist or fringe ideas, for example.

We are working on some strategies in both the design of the course and the materials that will help to focus students of all backgrounds on the science, while hitting their learning level appropriately. That aspect of the course will really be an important target of our assessment and research efforts. Can we engage this diverse audience productively, increasing science and evolution literacy while stemming possible attempts to derail the process?

Jason Antrosio has composed a short report on the "Anthropology Blogosphere 2013 – Ecology of Online Anthropology". I appreciate his kind words about my work here, and love how he has connected the new media activity of many prominent anthropologists, the move to open access by Cultural Anthropology, and the increased activity of social media networks dedicated to connecting anthropologists. It really is an ecology with many niches for people to increase their engagement and connections across fields.

Jenny Rohn has an article on the wasted effort into failed grant writing, which is so full of good paragraphs it's hard to figure out which one to snip: "Show me the money: Grantwriting is taking over science". Here's one:

There is some evidence that having the vast majority of scientists spend the vast majority of their time writing grants instead of doing and thinking science might be a tad inefficient, and not, perhaps, the best way to get science done. A recent correspondence in Nature about the Australian system, for example, reported that collectively, in 2012, researchers spent "more than five centuries' worth of time" writing or revising grants for the major funding scheme; as only 20.5% were successful, this account for a staggering four centuries' worth of wasted time.

I suppose if we looked at the U.S. we'd be talking about the geological timescale.

So after they found the bones of Richard III under a parking lot, now everybody is apparently going crazy to dig up bones under parking lots, churchyards, unmarked graves, wherever.

Now we hear that churches and institutions that have bones under their parking lots are digging them up to prevent forensic anthropologists from doing it first: 'Alfred the Great' bones exhumed from unmarked grave".

His body was first buried near Winchester Cathedral, moved at least once there, then moved again to Hyde Abbey in a great procession in 1110. As in Leicester, that church was destroyed in the dissolution of the monasteries, and his remains too were assumed to lie under a modern car park which had previously been the site of a prison. In 1999 there was great excitement when archaeologists found the foundations of abbey buildings, and then human bone – but it proved to be that of an elderly woman who had suffered from painful arthritis.

Here, they have a body from an unmarked grave in a cemetery that they believe to be Alfred's. They've dug it up as a prophylactic against digging it up. Or something.

Does England have any parking lots without bodies under them? Can the ghosts of medieval monarchs turn your Lancia into another Christine? Is there any chance that these bones won't be subjected to forensic study leading to another TV show?

By the way, the most interesting use of genetics here would be to get a whole genome and make an estimate of the proportion of ancestry of common Britons that come from the royal family 1000 years ago...

I'm back home now from a week on family vacation, catching up on news from the last few days. I have been dismayed to read about Jane Goodall's book debacle. She has been accused of plagiarism, fabricating meetings and interviews that did not happen, and spreading misinformation about the safety of genetically modified organisms. Michael Moynihan, who played a key role uncovering the plagiarism and fabrications of science writer Jonah Lehrer last year, has written the most in-depth account of Goodall's alleged transgressions: "Jane Goodall’s Troubling, Error-Filled New Book, ‘Seeds of Hope’"

There is a sense in many of the reported accounts that Goodall’s co-author, Gail Hudson, is to blame. This is, of course, possible (Hudson did not respond to an email request for comment), but if Goodall had read her own manuscript—the one with her name on it—would she not have noticed the quotes from interviews with people she hadn’t spoken to? Wouldn’t a noted scientist double-check her source material? She is, after all, the person who accepted the publisher’s check and Seeds of Hope is written in the first person.

Pat Shipman's reactions largely mirror my own: "Betrayal and Disappointment".

Naturally the plagiarism is disturbing. But the shameful part is that poorly-researched and specious anti-GMO arguments in the book probably would not have been scrutinized without these charges of plagiarism. I see this lack of scrutiny as akin to the continuing science illiteracy of mainstream media, which I noted earlier this year: "Recantation of a former genetic know-nothing".

The Guardian has a profile interview with aging researcher Cynthia Kenyon: "Cynthia Kenyon: 'The idea that ageing was subject to control was completely unexpected'".

This finding built on her earlier research, but to the rest of the scientific community, "the idea that ageing was subject to control was completely unexpected," Kenyon says, before struggling to find the words to describe how she felt when she realised the magnitude of the discovery. "It was very profound because you look at these worms, and the normal worms are dying, and the worms in this other culture dish are young. And you think: 'Oh my God, they should be dead.' It was like finding something that shouldn't be. It makes your hair stand up." Then came a second realisation: "You just think, 'Wow. Maybe I could be that long-lived worm.'"

Kenyon's story is a great one, because it illustrates how a productive research path can depend on one serendipitous observation.