Blog #6: Analysis of a Meta Work on Meta Concepts. It's Meta.

Blog #6: Article Review

An Analysis of “Is It Cheating or Learning the Craft of Writing? Using TurnItIn to Help Students Avoid Plagiarism”

Graham-Matheson, Lynne, and Simon Starr, “Is It Cheating or Learning the Craft of Writing? Using Turnitin to Help Students Avoid Plagiarism." Research in Learning Technology^⁠1, 21.1 (2013): 1-13.

A review of an individual article rarely comes after a wider-scale review of the field as a whole. Perhaps, in this case, it is somewhat necessary to reverse the order. Graham-Matheson and Starr’s work is an intriguing piece of academia, particularly in the way that simultaneously bucks and embraces classic ideologies and preconceived notions in the field of Composition. Acting outside of our rather insular bubble of Composition Theory, Graham-Matheson and Starr appear to be concerned with education, and learning technologies^⁠2, rather than with theories of writing and reading specifically. Although applicable for our purposes, it is reasonable to expect that the literacy needed to read such a document will involve a certain number of skills of a different character than one might traditionally expect from a teacher of literacy. The moves that are made can be somewhat jarring and unexpected, but understanding the scope and implications of the ideas presented is an important part of developing a broader understanding of literacy.

For me, it was difficult to discern the formal genre style that backs “Is it Cheating or Learning the Craft of Writing?” One one level, it mostly seems to be centered on quantitative data sets. But on another level, there is a certain degree of qualitative-ness associated with the whole study. It represents a fairly large data set, covering questionnaires delivered to several hundred students and teachers on campus, with three hundred and sixty-seven responses from students, and over 26,000 volunteer originality reports on TurnItIn. However, it is also a case study of a single university^⁠3, and relies heavily on opinion-based questions. Regardless, the information paints a rather compelling story that people, at least from initial usage, tend to find TurnItIn either compelling and useful, or, at worst, an inconsequential and harmless step in the assignment process. The framing of the study as a whole was something of an odd conceit: reviewing student opinions on anti-cheating measures. Traditionally, the relationship between students and anti-cheating measures has been framed as antagonistic. It is assumed that some students inherently want to cheat, and it is only through forceful external pressure that they will avoid doing so. Yet, this study asked the students themselves^⁠4, and found that they overwhelmingly want to be “good” students. The indication seemed to be that the majority of cheating arises from poor communication between agents, and that TurnItIn’s black-and-white presentation of the rules allowed for a sense of understanding and comfort with the system. I genuinely cannot think of a single academic paper in the SFSU Composition and Literacy studies program that had ever once stopped to ask the students what they perceived as the the actual use of certain learning tools^⁠5. It is a certain paradigm that is difficult to center within the scope of these other topics, having been rather marginalized.

However, the most distinctive thing in particular about this whole study is that it lacks the hesitation and hedging that characterizes debates in the field of literacy education. Within the scope of the paper itself, after the survey concluded that TurnItIn was satisfying to the public, TurnItIn was immediately implemented university-wide. Among composition and literacy educators, the field is still debating whether or not dead trees, typewriters and toxic chemicals are essential to the experience of reading, let alone actually having time to work towards implementing new technology. This has both serious potential pros and cons. Graham-Mathieson’s and Starr’s work demonstrates the value of Technology such as TurnItIn, but the study and analysis seems to have no actual concern for where the program is situated within a greater system.

As a fan of systems and politics, I tend to turn towards examining the legal and economic impacts of actions^⁠6. TurnItIn is not a politically neutral program, nor does it pretend to be. Beyond the very obvious issue of plagiarism from clearly copyrighted works, TurnItIn was also embroiled in conflict over the rights of the works submitted to them. Information is not simply being processed by the program, the company behind TurnItIn actively harvests student texts. The company retains the rights to save a copy of anything submitted to them for future indexing and analysis purposes, as affirmed in court as a form of legal “Fair Use”^⁠7. For this very reason^⁠8, a number of international and domestic Universities have declined to participate in TurnItIn’s database. This is an ongoing debate in the field of plagiarism discussions- even if TurnItIn claims to allow students to allow full reservations on the rights to their works, how can it actually offer full rights when participation in the service inherently degrades that right drastically? On this topic, Graham-Matheson and Starr have absolutely nothing to say. It would be quite reasonable to say that such an issue was simply irrelevant to their research.

All of this adds up to a rather intriguing whole. I couldn’t possibly imagine using nothing but works like “Is it Cheating…” in my research. As powerful and intriguing a piece it is, the scope of applicability to discussion is narrow. The results serve best as a bullet point in a larger argument, rather than representing any sort of larger philosophy or world view. Yet, at the same time, I feel like it demonstrates the absolute necessity for works like itself. I tried finding a similar study in Composition works before turning to Research in Learning Technology, but Graham-Matheson and Starr made a distinctive, salient and powerful analysis within the limited scope of their efforts. For this reason, it seems that branching out further into unfamiliar styles of paper, even when (possibly especially when, even?) the results and ideas can be complicated, unfamiliar, and incomplete. Despite the criticisms made here, “Is it Cheating…” seems to truly illuminate some realities of the ways that familiarity and comfort with a system can improve certain aspects of student performance and satisfaction. And, ultimately, those issues lie at the heart of Composition teaching.

¹ RiLT is an open-access journal. No predatory access fees involved.

² One is an Education Research Directorate, the other a Learning Technologist.

³ Canterbury Christ Church University. Admittedly, A Christian University might have students who publicly express their passion for moral values at a higher rate than the greater population.

⁴ Because this was a survey of opinions, I can only surmise that the results were largely valid. Other than claiming that the surveys were faulty (which I detected no trace of, in my limited ability to cross-examine such issues), or that the students were lying, it can only be assumed that these were indeed opinions.

⁵ There were indeed a number of studies and papers in the program that concerned themselves with the students and their opinions. The issue here is the scope at which they were asked to reflect at. The peak of complexity in this topic seem to peak at the rather pitiful “Difficulty Paper”-type analysis of student opinions, in which the student is endlessly encouraged to assume that the system is inherently efficacious and organized, and themselves blind neophytes.

⁶ I am not a lawyer. Nothing I say here constitutes legal advice, and should not be taken as such.

⁷ http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-4th-circuit/1248473.html

Admittedly, this is American case, and likely wouldn’t be remotely relevant to a university located in Canterbury, England.

⁸ http://dailyprincetonian.com/news/2006/04/university-opts-not-to-turnitin/

Blog #7: Learning Systems and Learning to Read

The Meta-Tastic Dynamic:

Embracing Systemic Familiarity

A teacher asks you to read something you’re not interested in, and then write a paper on the topic. You choose to skip reading the book, instead listening to an audiobook or examining articles and Spark Notes, and piece together a passable paper from the context clues. Have you just cheated the assignment? Regardless of whether or not you consider this cheating, the simple reality is that students utilize such strategies constantly. As a student, this can be a lifesaver. As a teacher, this can feel like a frustrating slap in the face. For whatever particular reasons they may have, humans will always try to find “easier” paths and shortcuts. Historically, pedagogy’s answer to this problem has been to suggest either making assignments that are impossible to cheat^⁠1, or blindly catering to whatever seems to be the most popular thing to read^⁠2. In both cases, something of a disservice is being offered to the students, either through assignments that have the potential to stifle creativity, or that lack challenge. This problem has largely been settled within composition studies by a compromise, wherein the teacher aims for a personally preferred balance of permissiveness of creativity and restriction of loopholes. However, when discussing these issues, the framework of the conversation is almost always centered around trying to stomp out “cheating” behavior. Even when acknowledging the effort and critical thinking involved in these processes, there is rarely a positive institutional reaction. But, what if educators were to view these efforts as part of the learning process? If we look to how students work to bypass the measures that educators establish, we see an incredible dynamic- people engaged in a careful negotiation of the boundaries between acceptable behavior and duplicity. Learning these processes, learning systemic familiarity, contributes to a student’s intellectual development and literacy skills. As teachers, we would be better served trying to accept, perhaps even embrace, student efforts to understand and work around problems. 

Reading adaptations and cheats extend all the way to the micro-textual level, where they are suddenly relabeled as “reading tools”. A student who can piece together roots, prefixes and suffixes into a facsimile of a large vocabulary in order to enhance their reading pace is considered a good reader. A student who knows where the heading, relevant parts of a text, citations, and other textual elements is a good reader. In reality, there isn’t really much of a controversy in embracing systemic familiarity and tools that allow for workarounds of difficult aspects of these processes.

When Ellen Engstrom wrote “Reading, Writing, and Assistive Technology: An Integrated Developmental Curriculum for College Students”, it is unlikely that she was thinking about cheating or shortcuts at all. As a teacher and researcher for students with learning disabilities^⁠3, Engstrom’s focus was on teaching her students literacy, with whatever tools happened to be available. As part of this process, she committed a number of actions that would be considered egregious sins in a traditional English classroom. Central to her classroom process was focused on providing and training her students in technology that allowed them to avoid reading and writing^⁠4. Because her students happened to be unusually hampered by these aspects of the literacy experience, Engstrom was able to reassess her pedagogical priorities. It seemed that students didn’t need actual physical reading and writing as much as they needed “opportunities to…understand the multifaceted process of reading, and be active observers of their own reading styles so that they can develop the skills, strategies and confidence needed to be successful students.” Engstrom’s presentation of this concept is so subtle that is fairly easy to overlook. By framing these assistive tools as necessary for those with learning disabilities, her argument for not reading in the reading classroom becomes palatable. But, why couldn’t this philosophy apply to the greater student population? With Engstrom’s work, there is clear evidence that shortcuts can be beneficial to literacy growth. Reducing educational opportunities in the name of some obtuse work ethic or sense of pride is to go against the very concept of teaching itself.

Systemic Familiarity in the Real World

Although there are certainly issues with the lens of interpretation I am about to put forward, I invite the reader to enter into the mindset of a “market” model, wherein all actions and objects are goods and services available for barter, with facets being valued differently based on the relevant participants. Although it will occasionally be necessary to reduce options to binary choices, most marketplaces will rely on actors attempting to advance multiple lines of progress simultaneously. A possible classroom example of this dilemma is a phrase like “I will cheat to pass this test, but I actually want to know more about this subject, so I will also study.” In this case, the student has decided that grades can be traded for correct answers, regardless of their origin or the effort and processes put into obtaining the answers^⁠5. The teacher, now deceived by an incongruity in values, has lost out on some of the returns expected from the trade. But what has been lost? In our example, it would be the loss of the service of the student reading the readings and filtering the work through their own interpretative lens. Because this is quite impossible to quantify, it seems that as the moral skeptic in these trade agreements, the teacher is ultimately the partner at the mercy of the students’s choices, as the process requires willful compliance on only one end^⁠6. Some teachers may claim that students have “cheated themselves out of an education”. But, if the students were not seeking “an education” outside of trade-specific skills, nothing has been lost in their eyes^⁠7.

Let us examine this concept outside of the classroom, and look to the most-read document in the world: the Google Search Results webpage. In its earliest days, Google Search organized its results in an “F’-shaped pattern, mimicking printed textual formats, but with a greater emphasis on the upper left corner of the page^⁠8. As a way of monetizing their services, Google began putting Sponsored Links, a form of paid advertisement^⁠9, in the center of the most heavily-read areas of their search page. Presumably, consumers would integrate reading the Sponsored Links into their reading activity. In reality, this didn’t seem to happened. Instead, Google’s attempts seemed to lead to a warping of internet reading processes as a whole. By 2014, looking through their search results, the average experienced Google user spent virtually no time or mental energy on examining the first two entries on their results page^⁠10. Not coincidentally, the first two results on any Google post are the aforementioned Sponsored Links. Therefore, for Google (much like a teacher who wants their students to read), who measure their success in terms of time spent viewing something, the fact that their product have different priorities from their own ideals of success becomes a source of consternation. As the viewership rate for these positions goes down, the rates Google can charge to prioritize occupying this position dwindles^⁠11. However, even more damaging than the loss of revenue is the relative loss of control. Google’s algorithms and education run on a sort of “opt-in” system, where a website has to both agree to be indexed by Google, and also play by Google’s rules regarding interacting with their search engines. Part of the implied deal with everybody involved in this indexing partnership is that Google is attempting to provide a fair platform for which to promote their websites and causes, and that adherence to the rules is part of assuring that merit is the cause of a page’s indexing priority. As of 2015, Google doesn’t seem to have an answer to this problem- any attempt at subterfuge destabilizes the product as a secure platform, removing the entire value of Google’s side of the deal. Had consumers simply continued to blindly read in a traditional format, the overall quality of literacy would have declined. Critical analysis of sources and authorial intention would be laid by the wayside, in favor of “not cheating” at Google^⁠12. Reading is reliant on systemic familiarity and shortcuts to advance it as a form.

Potential Applications in the Future

Rather than throw our hands up in the face of the concept, researchers like Lynn Graham-Matheson and Simon Starr have examined ways in which student familiarity with system processes can actually be turned to explicitly beneficial^⁠13 and directed purposes. In examining the “TurnItIn” online automatic plagiarism detection system, Graham-Matheson and Starr found that students were able to take advantage of TurnItIn’s features to enhance their awareness of writing processes. Their research (and any teacher’s personal experience) found that students were typically enthusiastic about the idea of producing professional-sounding academic writing, but were nervous about the boundaries of acceptability and unsure of their own limitations. Questions regarding the ambiguity of writing systems lead to paralysis of effort. For the students in their research, TurnItIn served as a clear^⁠14 demarcation of the systemic boundaries of plagiarism and similar system features of writing. Particularly in underperforming students, there was a general perception that TurnItIn helped students to detect plagiarism when reading, and subsequently avoid it in their own writing^⁠15. In essence, when given the tools to quickly and effectively become familiar with the process, when systemic familiarity is demystified instead of reviled, students became enthusiastic about their own erudition and literacy. I can think of nothing more that a teacher could want.

Works Cited

Engstrom, Ellen, “Reading, Writing, and Assistive Technology: An Integrated Developmental Curriculum for College Students”, Teaching Developmental Reading (2nd Ed), 2014, 146-159

Meditative Marketing, “The Evolution of Google's Search Results Pages & Effects on User Behaviour” (2014), http://pages.mediative.com/SERP-Research

Jakob Nielsen, “F-Shaped Pattern for Reading Web Content” (2006), Nielsen Ratings, http://www.nngroup.com/articles/f-shaped-pattern-reading-web-content/

Ackerman, Rakefet; Goldsmith, Morris, “Metacognitive regulation of text learning: On screen versus on paper.” Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, Vol 17(1), Mar 2011, 18-32.

Graham-Matheson, Lynne, and Simon Starr, “Is It Cheating or Learning the Craft of Writing? Using Turnitin to Help Students Avoid Plagiarism." Research in Learning Technology, 21.1 (2013): 1-13.

¹ An absurdity outside of totally immediate and isolated assessment. At the very least, any cheater can resort to crowdsourcing to outrun any authenticity or anti-automation measures. (Ostensibly, one could isolate a student after project submission, and grill them on their acquisition process until the guilty confess. There are some minor moral quibbles with this method)

² I have had a number of English and Composition teachers and professors who encouraged students to read whatever they wanted for the semester. In one class, this resulted in twenty book reports on various books in the Twilight saga. While there were certainly other factors that led to such a sub-optimal outcome, an assignment with so much variance results in an unreliable product.

³ This is Engstrom’s preferred word. I choose to abstain from the discussion of terminology on this topic.

⁴ Engstrom, Ellen, “Reading, Writing, and Assistive Technology: An Integrated Developmental Curriculum for College Students”, Teaching Developmental Reading (2nd Ed), 2014, 146-159

⁵ A teacher can choose to reject this trade, insisting that the exchange is for a performance, rather than a photograph of the results. The student could potentially offer a counter to this, and the negotiation continues until specific parameters of acceptance and rejection are laid out.

However, in order for this rejection to occur, a teacher must first be aware of the distinction between what they are requesting and what they are trying to request. If a teacher misidentifies an objective request as a performative request, there is no reasonable objection to any results that match the requested objective criteria.

⁶ The problem could also be solved by removing the expectation of having read the book. However, such a response does not solve the problem of a lack of reading.

⁷ And if the knowledge they are gaining serves the student’s purposes in the trade being made, do teachers have the authority to rewrite a person’s will and needs?

⁸ “F-Shaped Pattern for Reading Web Content” (2006) Jakob Nielsen, Nielsen Ratings, http://www.nngroup.com/articles/f-shaped-pattern-reading-web-content/

⁹ Sponsored Links are indexed into their own separate search functions. In effect, an advertiser is paying for priority indexing in a prime reading location.

¹⁰ “The Evolution of Google’s Search Results Pages and Effects on User Behavior”, Meditative Marketing, 2014

¹¹ And, of course, it is not simply a matter of continually shifting the goalpost. If Google made the entire first page of results into Sponsored results, there would be a publicly available program that skipped you directly to the second page within the hour.

¹² Is the person who skips reading the advertisements on a crook or a savvy reader?

¹³ Graham-Matheson, Lynne, and Simon Starr. "Is It Cheating or Learning the Craft of Writing? Using Turnitin to Help Students Avoid Plagiarism." Research in Learning Technology, 21.1 (2013): 1-13.

¹⁴ There are certainly a number of serious issues with TurnItIn and other digital assessment methodologies, but for the sake of focus, they will be overlooked here.

¹⁵ The major caveats of this study, as confirmed by Graham-Matheson and Starr, are largely grounded in the lack of focused, blinded, and long-term trials. Based entirely in the self-reported answers from teachers and students, the results were oddly binary. Students who had used TurnItIn reported roughly the same level of benefits, largely independent of duration of use.

More Speculative Thoughts on Meta Meta Work

I'm not sure this is fully on the right track, or where I'm going to go from here, but I'm finding this interesting so far.

In my last post, I talked about how I wanted to look at how “the market” influenced reading and writing. That use of phrasing was mostly a deliberate set-up, to justify spending my time here talking about the 2014 work, “The Evolution of Google's Search Results Pages & Effects on User Behaviour” by Meditative, a digital Marketing company (you can see the source in the original post).

By itself, the document is an absolutely fascinating piece of text. Published on Mediative’s own website, it is freely available to any inquisitive souls, simply requiring a name, email address, and “purpose” of acquisition.

Under the standards of traditional academic rigor, the document is also rather problematic. There are no references to any works outside their own, rigor is somewhat lax, and advertisements are featured in the tail-end of the document. It is, for all its decorations and flair and research, a work of adverting. Considering the nature of the discussion, I figure it is also important to note that the article also comes as part of a larger conversation, something of a response to the results obtained by Nielsen and other researchers in the mid-2000’s. 

Moving forward from those issues, the implications of such a work are rather intriguing. As I discussed previously, I have my suspicions that humans are exceptionally clever when it comes to devising methods of being lazy. Though, perhaps “lazy” is something of an ungenerous term. What I am trying to describe is the way that humans will attempt to avoid unnecessary work through a balance of metacognitive awareness and social maneuvering. In this case, advertisers figured out which Google links were most likely to be clicked on. Originally, this largely mirror the way that people would read a traditional book or newspaper, and links in the upper left hand corner were given a higher degree of attentive priority. When advertisers figured this out, they proceeded to inundate that area of the Google search page with targeted advertising. However, what this research by Meditative indicates is that rather than simply accept and read the advertisements they are presented with, humans develop new patterns of reading. It seems that the majority of users had developed a new reading heuristic system, in which priority of attention had shifted from the upper left corner of their reading space towards the upper-middle-left, almost an exact bypassing of the standard advertising space on the Google webpage.

Unfortunately, one problem with delving into this topic is that there isn’t much money in researching general reading patterns. Although it is established that Google is read in this style, it appears that marketing researchers (aka: the ones funding and propagating this work) don’t have much interest in decoding processes that are profit-free. Despite this, I believe that Google occupies such a position of influence on reading and discourse that we can probably carry over some of the influences and lessons from this work. On a personal level, I certainly have felt these effects on myself. I have recently noticed that I have begun instinctively skipping my reading process down a few inches (or even lower) for most texts, and only returning to the top of the page once a text has justified looking up. The implications for this are confusing and frustrating, and I guess my next efforts should be to explore what effects this has on comprehension.

Blog Four: The Amnesia Blog, Beginning to Think

My apologies for the lateness. I completely forgot to post this last week.

For a lack of better phrasing, at least currently, I have always been interested in the way that “market” forces influence the ways that we read and write. Blandly coming down on one side of the nature/nurture debate, I believe that human nature is fairly stable and that societal influences are what serve as our most tangible way of adjusting expressions of those traits. In this way, I see research as a form of faith in social adjusters. When somebody examines whether or not images influence our reading of a text, there are implicitly asking the question “should society adjust the way that we present texts and images?”

To reattempt diving into this topic, I will switch my jargon up here, and say that I am interested in the meta-discourse surrounding the way that our attempts to manipulate our social systems actually end up playing out. As far back as the Elementary School years of my childhood, educational indoctrination pushed forward the idea that the metalinguistic discourse was ultimately beholden to populist ideals and market forces (Clements, 1996). Therefore, it seems only appropriate to examine what effect the effort of self-examination and reflection actually has on engagement with systems.

Based on my initial research and examinations, my suspicions are that our efforts at meta-adjustments are often thwarted by the simple reality that people are not wholly blind to these meta-manipulations, and will inevitably adjust their behavior around these manipulations, rather than in accordance with them. As with any meta-meta-discussion, there is a risk of recursion when delving into ideas such as these, but I still feel this is fertile ground for some compelling information to be discovered.

“The Evolution of Google's Search Results Pages & Effects on User Behaviour” (2014), Meditative Marketing, http://pages.mediative.com/SERP-Research

“F-Shaped Pattern for Reading Web Content” (2006) Jakob Nielsen, Nielsen Ratings, http://www.nngroup.com/articles/f-shaped-pattern-reading-web-content/

“Frindle” (1996), Andrew Clements, Aladdin Paperbacks, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frindle

Metacognitive regulation of text learning: On screen versus on paper.

Ackerman, Rakefet; Goldsmith, Morris

Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied, Vol 17(1), Mar 2011, 18-32.

Blog #3: Response to Kathleen McCormick (Sort of?)

Preface:

To be honest, I'm not exactly sure what to make of this post. I'm sure readers will notice I brought up some of these points in class already. I was reading from the notes that would become the basis for this post. I've been studying a lot of linguistic and programming stuff for my other classes, so my mind has been fixating on metaphors from those ideas and concepts. Since it was helping me sort of wrap my mind around the ideas from both topics, I decided to go with writing this, although it's rather wonky, to say the least. At this point, my understanding of all these concepts has already developed beyond the explanation I presented here (I finally figured out how to nest functions, which is essential for avoiding the ridiculous string you will see below). Either way, as I believe the process of working through these thoughts helped me, I figured I might as well present them here.

Inter texts, Chapter 2, Kathleen McCormick

Cryptology /Linguistic Thoughts

Form, coding, deciphering, substance

I.A. Richardson managed to stump students with poetry, as the unconventional format made the text indecipherable. This made me wonder “how far can a poem alter the form of a text before we no longer consider it writing?” For example, what do we consider a valid canvas space? If I scatter 12pt letters at random locations in the universe, can I call the results a textual poem? How about a poem written in a set of different letters, one outside the realms of human knowledge? Or, is it the observer that makes a poem a poem? In which case we descend into the problem of solipsistic usefulness, in that such questions seem to inevitably evolve into arguments on whether “everything is subjective or nothing is subjective.”

However, this does serve as a nice segue into a question raised by McKormick, which is whether the binary nature of the 1/0 programming language known known as “binary” leads to binary dichotomized thinking. Here, I think McKormick is getting the order of operations wrong, and therefore misattributing the cause of dichotomized thinking. 

I read this wonderful article on Walter Pitts a few weeks ago. In addition to being an engaging read, the article has some interesting lessons on the origin of binary computation and the human brain. I could spend a lot of time trying to explain the intricacies (and indeed do so a bit further on in this post), but to wildly oversimplify everything: it explains how computer programming, and binary in particular, were actually modeled off of the structure of how scientists hypothesize neuron networks would work. From what I understand, the core of this research and the subsequent results still stand today, albeit with significant refinement and adjustment.

http://nautil.us/issue/21/information/the-man-who-tried-to-redeem-the-world-with-logic

If this is the case, then I believe it is fair to assume that the dichotomous binary thinking of modern humans is not a reflection of digital technology, but a reflection of human nature on something of an overwhelmingly ingrained scale. As McKormick notes, it is possible to become critically aware and blur these lines, but it seems like these corporeal forms are inherently destined to certain limits of creativity.

When McCormick mentioned that “…bourgeois conceptions of individualism can […] impede students from being receptive to larger ideological critique,” I was reminded of Christopher Langan. Mr. Langan likes to call himself “the smartest man in the world” (when measured by IQ), and has produced a grand theory of everything called “The Cognitive Theoretic Model of the Universe”. 

http://www.ctmu.org

The theory, presented on a website fresh from 1998, is ostensibly an extremely sophisticated and well-developed work. Yet, most likely, the most you’ve heard of him is an anecdotal references to the fact that the smartest man in America mostly works as a bouncer to pay his bills. This is largely credited to the fact that respectable scientific and philosophical institutions have laughed off the brunt of the theories, due to Langan’s lack of awareness of developments in fields. In essence, the entire thing is regarded as a really impressive attempt at independently rediscovering a number of the theories and philosophies of people from hundreds of years ago. Which is, of course, a truly impressive feat. But nobody remembers the guy who can count to 5,000 decimals in pi either, because stupid feats don’t get recognition until after you’re already famous. For the most part. The internet is trying its hardest to fix that, but I don’t really have an opinion on whose stupid feats we should care about. Stupid pet tricks are stupid pet tricks, be it Letterman or Youtube. Were Langan to have an openness to the development in critiques and awareness in recent times, he would be able to update and correct the flaws in his theories. Anyway, those were my thoughts on associating individualism with blindness to larger ideological critique.

As a way of trying to understand the ways that a binary system can evolve into a multi-branched exploration of sophistication and complexity, I decided to try producing a manifestation of my understanding of how the situation strings together. I’m pretty sure my metaphors and examination here don’t do any of the topics justice, but it’s a lens that I’m choosing to use here, and one that I think provides possibly useful insight (assuming I didn’t accidentally grossly misrepresent something, heh).

One of the features available in some programs and coding languages is the “If-Then” function. The “If-Then” function is what would be a dichotomous situation- comprehension is either totally perfect or totally nonexistent. However, any system that has “If-Then” functions will also typically have “If-Then-Else” functionality (…somewhat obviously enough, I suppose). This is the important part, the part that McCormick treats as alien- expanding solutions to a variety of answers. “If-Then-Else” functions can easily be strung together to produce exactly the kind of critical heuristics that McCormick seems to be seeking. “If-Then-Else” functions can be more or less precisely tuned, depending on the source materials they are set to work with. For example, say I wanted to analyze the color of this text. As an “If-Then” function, I would say “Is this text black? If it is, tell me!” As an “If-Then-Else” function, that concept can be expanded to “Is this text black? If it is, tell me. If it isn’t, tell me that it’s not black.” This, of course, is not particularly more useful to a human observer, who would be able to intuitively discern from the lack of reply in the first situation that the color was indeed “not black”. This process can be extended in a different direction however, stacking, as seen in something like this: “Is this text black? If it is, Then tell me that it’s black. Or else, if it’s not black, If it is red, then tell me that it’s red. Or else, if it’s not red…” continuing ad infinitum to whatever level of precision you wanted to look for.

Here, McCormick does seem to address something of a problem in the “If-Then-Else” functionality system, which is that it is only as useful as the database that is being used to parse the commands. If the system is lacking a type of proper referential awareness of what makes black “black” or “not black”, the process will fail no matter the level of specificity of detail, as the “If-Then-Else” functions would either being to loop in on themselves, or just end up hanging on a dead end, when all known referential executions are exhausted. At this point, the only possible option is to allow for a total reorientation of framework. One potential option is to simply add the parameter for what the color “black” are, if you know them and are confident in your ability to transmit the details clearly. Another potential option is to create a function that completely discards the original patterns. For example, continuing the bolded “If-Then-Else” function above would eventually result in going through every single color that is known. If no color comes up, it is possible then to amend, after the final color has been addressed, “…If it is [final color], Then tell me that it’s [final color]. Or Else, If it’s not [final color], Then, If it is a color, Then tell me that it is a color. Or Else, If it is not a color, Then tell me that it is not a color. If it is not a color, Then tell me if it is a [whatever category you’ve set to question about next],etc…” 

In these strings, the greater the level of specificity, the greater the level of depth of the function’s search. Likewise, the looser the specificity of a string, the greater the level of depth of a function’s search. In either case, a well-designed string is likely to have overlap/reuse of terminology and functions, reducing the overall memory load of the process.

It’s a shame, then, that McCormick’s example of this flaw/problem is demonstrated by, from all accounts that I’ve heard, a misstatement of fact. Galileo was never ostracized for his theory of gravity. Galileo’s problems with the Catholic church were almost certainly related to the rhetorical stylings under which Galileo presented his theories on astronomy. Rather than simply explain the theories and concepts that he had researched, Galileo chose to present his evidence in the format of a socratic dialogue, functionally acting out a conversation between himself and an continually incorrect buffoon named “Simplicio”, the Italian term for a simpleton. This wouldn’t have been a problem, had Galileo not made Simplicio quote wide chunks of the Pope’s own statements. Some people would contend that the validity of a claim should override the way in which it was presented, at least in terms of concession of truth. For those who believe this, I encourage you to send a similar style of paper, as accurate and factual as you can make it, about your boss, teacher, or some other authority figure who can have an impact on your life. I certainly wouldn’t be expecting a positive response, regardless of how hard you tried.

What’s particularly funny about this disparity in the actual series of events is that the truth of the situation is equally rich for cultural examination, if not even more so. Every student who hears that story can likely relate to an understanding of that situation- most people have offended an authority figure with their “true” statements, paying an “unfair” cost as a result, and those who haven’t offended are typically fully aware that they are not supposed to directly and/or publicly insult their superiors. Of course, there’s probably just as much depth in examining the actions and motivations behind using bureaucratic functions as a mechanism of executing personal grudges, as the Pope and Catholic Church did with their heresy charges in order to unfairly punish Galileo’s insulting caricature.

Harkin and Sosnoski take exception to Gerald Prince, a “Structuralist”’s idea that “readers make meaning by processing instructions that are embedded in a text.” Their conjecture is that the ability to interpret an idea through a lens creates a skill that a structuralist framework is incapable of incorporating. I would argue, however, that such a structuralist concept can still work exceptionally well in expressing the concepts they’re demonstrating. Again, I would like to return to my example of the “If-Then-Else” color analyzing function stack. Indeed, everything that I discussed there can be mapped onto an idea of “making meaning by processing instructions that are embedded in a text”. To elaborate- as I mentioned as one of the key points of the code, it is possible to vary the output of the code by altering the parameters that work as a frame of reference. As demonstrative, but not necessarily inherently mutually exclusive roles, let us look at a highly religious Christian individual and an individual who has a strong faith in modern medicine. In this case, let us say that both of folks will be presented with an identical piece of text: “Every First-Born Child in San Francisco found dead.” In both these cases, the readers made meaning by processing instructions that are embedded in a text. They both used similar functions to process patterns, but already stored data influences how the instructions are read by these theoretical characters.

The Christian individual’s parsing, primed with their religious leanings, leads to something akin to “If every First-Born Child in San Francisco is found dead, Then does it have something to do with God? If it has to do with God, Then what does it have to do with God? Or Else, if it doesn’t have to do with God, Then what does it have to do with? Etc…”

Meanwhile, the character with the love of modern medicine would be more likely to posit a reflection along the lines of “If every First-Born Child in San Francisco is found dead, Then does it have something to do with bacteria? If it has to do with bacteria, Then should I be concerned about it? Or Else, if it doesn’t have to do with bacteria, what does it have to do with? Etc..”

With enough instruction, parameters, and limitations, it would theoretically be possible to force each individual to output identical (or functionally identical) results. However, on a pragmatic scale, such a course of action would be rather inadvisable and impractical. It makes more sense to keep the processors individualized, in order to establish a "best-fit" system for inputting instructions. 

Post for February 20th, 2015: Returning to Old Questions

When I started planning out this blog post, I ran into a serious stumbling block. In my previous blog post, I disobeyed the rules a little bit. Rather than pose one question, I chose to pose multiple questions, across multiple genres and levels of meta-communication. This left me with the problem of “Which question should I focus on for my blog post?” After careful deliberation, one question stood out as the obvious choice.

I now present…

“Can anybody explain the ghosts?”

Yes, somebody can explain the ghosts. I can even do so, now. They were poetic license on the part of Friere.

More seriously, I decided I should look at an actual legitimate question, and proceeded to the next one, a question regarding James Gee’s piece on what literacy is.

“So, my question regarding this piece would be- where should we draw these boundary lines [of formalized schooling]? Is our learning system useful enough to warrant the multi-trillion dollar infrastructure we’ve devoted to it? If not, what needs to be adjusted in regards to acquisition skills and finances?”

This was definitely something of a loaded question. I mean, I threw in the word “trillion”, I was definitely trying to provoke some kind of response with this question. Unfortunately, none of the past six or so readings have addressed the issue directly. Part of this can probably be attributed to the fact that most of these essays were written before the massively bloated ecosystem that defines our university network was fully cemented. The closest thing I can find to an answer comes from Louise Rosenblatt’s 1988 National Center for the Study of Writing report, “Writing and Reading: The Transactional Theory”. Although Rosenbaltt doesn’t directly address my question, she proposes a vision of school that heavily promotes adaptability of student knowledge, rather than prescribing precise answers.

Lastly, I had the somewhat off-topic question regarding…

“If so, did that mean I was implying different gender-normative standards of writing on the authors? Were the others doing so? How would I be able to read such characterizations one way or the other without a broader context and base of knowledge? Thoughts?”

As was revealed in class, people had varying reactions to this question. Some people actually found them reconsidering how they reacted to the text, while others said it had no effect on them. Realistically, this was always going to be the most likely answer. People vary in the mindsets that they bring to the work, so of course their reactions aren’t going to be identical. It would be a pretty boring class if we all had the same reactions, anyway. Personally, I think I brought up the question because it did influence my reaction somewhat. When I saw the author as a woman, I was more reticent to criticize the ideas. However, I felt more comfortable being more aggressive, once I recognized his full situation. In a way, I feel some disappointment at this. However, I also wonder if part of this is cultural expectation- if men are conditioned to be more pacifistic towards women, it might be that an equal level of aggression would culturally be viewed as over-aggressive. I’m not sure. I could probably speculate on the problem forever. Maybe I should just try to be less aggressive in general.

Finally, I didn’t feel completely satisfied with the way my questions engaged with the readings, so I felt the desire to produce some thoughts and responses to those readings.

Thoughts about the Readings

This has been an interesting couple of weeks of readings. While I’m not fully sure I understand everything that was said, I feel like I have a grasp on where the course will move, going forward. Regardless of the differences between the texts, almost all of them seem to agree that reading and writing and simultaneously interlocked, and can’t really be separated from each other as processes. Therefore, any reading teacher will always be something of a writing teacher, too.

Post for February 6th, 2015: The Nature of Reading

The Importance of the Act of Reading (1981)

I love Paulo Friere. I respect his work, and his writing (albeit translated) is always beautiful and fascinating. That said, I’m not exactly sure what the point of this particular speech/article was. After reading through it multiple times, the only real substantial knowledge I’ve been able to glean is that Friere encourages a reading of the world, and a democratic interaction of the classroom with the student, in order to encourage creativity and growth. Unfortunately, this doesn’t particularly expand my understanding of Friere much beyond what I already knew. Can anybody explain the ghosts?

What is Literacy? (1989?)

Anybody familiar with my academic career here at SFSU is likely familiar with my adoration of James Gee (I once dressed up as him for a class presentation, although I suspect nobody even noticed that particular event). Luckily for me, Gee’s framework of “Discourses” is fairly popular within our composition studies, leading to a number of opportunities to examine his works. In this case, Gee addresses the nature of my fundamental opposition to formalized schooling. Although Gee takes a far more tempered stance than myself, he still notes that formalized schooling (“learning”) and meta-languages have more of an impact on meta-analytical abilities than they do on performance and skills. Some would perhaps scoff, but I consider myself an academic. I revel in the meta-discussions, and deranged over-analysis of minute details is my life’s blood. But, I’m a obsessive-compulsive geek who idolizes linguists and actively seeks out learned knowledge. But, this is because I am the kind of person who is interested in deliberately and actively measuring and shaping the discourse around discourses. Were I to enter another profession outside of the field, all of my Discourse-specific language would be a cheap novelty, at best. I find this to be evidence that formalized schooling should be limited to individuals pursuing specific learned knowledge. This is, of course, where my vision departs from Gee’s, as he still heartily encourages the use of formalized schooling, just a schooling system that puts acquisition at the forefront. So, my question regarding this piece would be- where should we draw these boundary lines? Is our learning system useful enough to warrant the multi-trillion dollar infrastructure we’ve devoted to it? If not, what needs to be adjusted in regards to acquisition skills and finances?

Postscript: As something of an aside, I laughed a bit when I came to “So-called Black Vernacular English is, on structural grounds, only trivially different from Standard English by the norms of linguists accustomed to dialect differences around the world (Labov, 1972a).” (p541). This statement called to mind one of my own experiences with “acquisition” and “learning”, an experience that occurred in one of my early Comp MA classes here at SFSU. Across varying dimensions, Black Vernacular English was referenced fairly frequently in the majority of the classes I was taking. Due to the somewhat hushed and concerned tone that discussions of the dialect took on, I assumed that it was some drastic, nigh-incomprehensible shift away Standard English Vernacular, and that I wouldn’t be able to decode it. Therefore, I was rather shocked when I actually looked up Black Vernacular English, and learned what exactly it entailed. It turned out that I already was already capable of speaking Black Vernacular English, as I had acquired the majority of its rules and structures, which were encoded in various forms of pop culture that I consume(d). These differences were so simple and easy to comprehend that it had never occurred to me that anybody would find aspects of the dialect problematic.

On the Importance of Reading (2006)

Within the opening paragraph, I’m not sold on the narrative that Gioia is presenting, for a number of reasons. He emphasizes that the survey is 20x the size of a traditional survey, leading to an improvement in margin of error. Although impressive-sounding initially, anybody with experience in statistics would admit that it’s a largely irrelevant change. The traditional statistical sampling size, while certainly flawed, is used for a reason- the accuracy is more than valid enough for assessment purposes.

Going beyond such a basic quibble, the criteria used for “reader” is questionable. By the standards presented, somebody who picks up a Reader’s Digest to skim the jokes is a “reader”, whereas somebody who plays through an expansive video game containing hundreds of thousands of lines of text is a “non-reader”. Pick up a pornographic book, and you’re a “reader”. Read through a literary journal, and you’re a “non-reader”. I could elaborate further, but the facts speak for themselves.

Of course, this embarrassing system of criteria isn’t particularly surprising when you realize that Gioia is an out-of-touch old man who has happily fallen into the trap of “back in my day”. When Gioia was born, rates of illiteracy were 30x higher than they are currently. Across the decades, literacy skills have improved in all demographics of United States citizens, including a noticeable boost in qualitative reasoning. (See the links at the end of this section. I normally would embed them, but I found I actually get better follow-through when I make the links separate.)

Before I start this next set of criticisms, I would like to remind the audience at this time that Dana Gioia is (barring some unknown hideous financial choices) a multi-millionaire who was serving as the Chairman of the National Endowment of the Arts when he produced this text. Criticizing the lack of sophistication in modern culture, Gioia notes that “[he] would see Robert Frost and Carl Sandburg on television — inconceivable nowadays for a network show”. This is a rather useful fact to note, as Sandburg and Frost both died when Gioia was a teen in the 1960’s- over forty years before he made this claim. Assuming Gioia is looking for new content from these poets, I can only recommend that he consider becoming a necromancer. Barring such a situation, it would likely please Gioia to know that archival footage of Frost and Sandburg are broadcast regularly on network television, and that each of these networks also have websites fully dedicated to these authors (and many others).

“If you went into a classroom of high school seniors or college freshmen and asked them… to name one living American painter, sculptor, poet, dramatist, architect, philosopher, historian, theologian, biologist, physicist, or mathemetician[,] you’d get nothing.” Assuming that this hypothetical student had never heard of Stephen Hawking or Bill Nye, it is entirely possible that such a statement might be true in some contexts. This is also somewhat absurd, in that what he is describing isn’t a dearth of intellectuals as much as it is a dearth of living intellectuals. I propose that if you asked one of Gioia’s hypothetical students the same question, but substituted in “living or dead”, you would, on average, get the most comprehensive and well-informed list in human history.

http://nces.ed.gov/naal/lit_history.asp

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literacy_in_the_United_States

Texts of Our Institutional Lives: Studying the “Reading Transition” from High School to College: What are Our Students Reading and Why? (2008)

This paper reminded me of this comic (WARNING: Potentially NSFW (Not Safe for Workplace Viewing), due to some “sexual” language (from James Joyce, actually)) 

http://xkcd.com/1414/

(I may return to xkcd some time later in the semester. If you hold your mouse over an xkcd comic, there is hidden alt-text that typically adds a secondary punchline. In this case, the alt-text is perhaps more important than the actual comic.)

Much like the comic, Jolliffe and Harl’s piece is a brutal indictment of the “back in my day” line of argumentation. The most powerful conclusion I was able to draw from this piece was something the authors seemed reluctant to admit- reading is so overwhelmingly fundamental to our modern culture that it is impossible to be a remotely functional college student without treating reading tasks as so inherently simple as to be inconsequential.

Bonus Thoughts on on gender-normative notions and the nature of assumptions

I am fond of pushing posts all the way to the deadline, especially so for any assignments that allow me to see what other people are saying on a subject. This allows me to adjust and develop my thoughts through their lenses of interpretation. What surprised me this week, however, was the nearly class-wide assumption that Dana Gioia was a woman (if you were one of the folks who made this assumption, don’t worry too much. I checked. Literally every blog that mentioned him made the mistake). Or, more importantly, it shocked me that nobody actually knew or cared who this man was. Honestly, even I only googled his name on a whim, and had originally wrote my draft using “she”, as well. But, then, I realized that I was trying to draw value from this essay, while lacking important contexts regarding the author. However, I also then began to wonder whether or not such a detail was actually relevant to my interpretation of the text*. If so, did that mean I was implying different gender-normative standards of writing on the authors? Were the others doing so? How would I be able to read such characterizations one way or the other without a broader context and base of knowledge? Thoughts?

*To note- I also discovered a lot of worthwhile background on the man by googling him, and I’d encourage others to do so too.