Where Creativity Comes From
I have challenged my Visual Literacy students to think about the question of where creativity comes from. What things do creative people do to be creative?
At SXSW Interactive 2008 earlier this year, I sat in on a presentation by Jim Coudal, of Coudal Partners on his personal Theory of Creativity. The reason I’m telling you about this presentation is because it was here that I first began to consider what I do in my classes that I teach, in particular those course in which I expect a degree of creative expression, such as the “Visual Literacy” course.
In the past, I have been diving in with these students, many in their first year of college, expecting them to be creative from the start. Part of the problem, however is that I have been giving assignments that are too open ended. Many of my assignments are very open-ended with very few constraints, but according to Coudal, creativity comes from having constraints and limitations to work within.
There is nothing more intimidating to a beginning artist than to stare at an empty canvas and wonder what to paint. The same goes for the beginning blogger who wonders what to write. Experienced creatives know how to set up their own boundaries and constraints to work within. My students usually lack this experience and need to have some of these put in place for them, and need to be taught how to make their own boundaries and constraints within which they can work.
Coudal also suggests that creativity comes from finding a connection between the known & unknown. This is a fundamental principle of learning. Students learn by connecting their known experiences to the new information. So too, creativity does not materialize from nothing; it must have a foundation from which to arise.
Fill your tank
I encourage my students to read all they can and to see as much work of other designers as they possibly can. For my own personal reading this past summer, I began working through a list of books suggested by Chris Crawford in his fascinating book On Game Design. I find it interesting that Crawford recommends to would-be game designers to seek higher education outside of the USA, because American schools are much too narrowly focused to prepare for the work of game design. Thus comes his voluminous recommended reading list, in case you cannot for some reason swing a well-rounded European education. Last year I worked with the librarian at K-State at Salina to make sure we had most of Crawford’s recommended reading available to K-State students. Now if they will only take advantage of it.
Our library also has begun subscriptions to several exceptional periodicals dealing with creativity. Two of my favorites are Communication Arts and Make magazines. I will be encouraging my students to check these resources out as well.
No, this semester we won’t be diving in to being creative right off the bat. I think the students need to fill their creativity tanks up first before they attempt to do anything creative. In the words of the Monty Python doctor replying to the pregnant woman asking what she should be doing, “You’re not qualified!”
Students who haven’t yet examined where creativity comes from, and who don’t have an understanding of getting inspiration and ideas by exploring the work of others are simply not qualified to be creative.
For me, I am at my most creative during times of great stress and/or oppression. After my grandfather died in a tragic accident, I created a digital postcard of a girl playing cards and entered it into a contest in which the juror selected to be included in the Kansas Artist Postcard Series. When I was in the Navy and feeling put-upon, I would often write little sarcastic songs or poems to make me feel better. One time, I created and sold an entire line of t-shirts mocking the weapons officer’s attempts to drive away all enlisted happiness from the ship. They were a popular item for a time with my shipmates. (I hope I am a bit more mature now, but sometimes my orneriness persists!)
Of course you cannot always expect to wait for adverse conditions to be creative. That is why you always must fill your tank with new inspiration. You never know where ideas will come from, but one thing is certain– they do not come from nowhere. Being creative is hard work. Creativity comes from taking talents and abilities that you are born with, and then while exploring the ideas of others, expanding and connecting with new ideas to come up with something entirely new.
Why do kids start loving Math & Science but wind up hating it?
Summertime is a great time for kids to get outside and experience the world around them. As a youngster, I was very interested in science and experimentation. Around middle school and junior high when the science and related mathematics became more challenging, I sadly gave up on trying to learn in these areas. I can’t point to any specific reasons, but I don’t think my experience is uncommon.
Many people dislike math and science, and it is really starting to show. Fifty years ago when the Soviets launched the Sputnik satellite, cold war fears fueled a boom in math and science education. Government spending poured into efforts promoting this kind of learning, and many young people became scientists and engineers as a result. Twelve years later, the United States landed a man on the moon and we have been benefiting from the resulting space-age technological marvels ever since.
However, the popularity of technology careers has faded, and many people in them are approaching retirement age or have already retired. It is no longer fashionable to become a scientist or engineer. Compare these two lists I found online this week. The first is a list of college majors most in-demand by potential employers and the second is a list of the nation’s most popular majors as chosen by college students. What’s wrong with this picture? In many cases college students are not choosing majors that align with the career paths that will provide them with the best opportunities!
Employer Highest Demand Majors: (National Association of Colleges and Employers)
1. Accounting
2. Electrical engineering
3. Mechanical engineering
4. Business administration/management
5. Economics/finance
6. Computer science
7. Computer engineering
8. Marketing/marketing management
9. Chemical engineering
10. Information sciences and systems
Most Popular Major Choices: (Princeton Review)
1. Business Administration
2. Psychology
3. Nursing
4. Biology/Biological Sciences
5. Education
6. English Language and Literature
7. Economics
8. Communications Studies/Speech Communication and Rhetoric
9. Political Science and Government
10. Computer and Information Sciences
Right now the United States graduates only a fraction of the engineers that India and China do each year, and there is no sign of a change in that trend. But there is no cold war to fuel the interest in these areas like there was fifty years ago.
Technology guru and Internet founding father Vinton Cerf has called for renewing national interest in the sciences as in the days of Sputnik to respond to the current threat of global climate change. However, this threat has not struck the fear into the hearts of average Americans that Sputnik did, simply because it is a slow and creeping change rather than the instant change that Sputnik represented. Likewise, the threat of terrorism has spurred great interest in national defense and technological advancement as the cold war threat did. The terrorist foes we face are not perceived to threaten our way of life, and even our very existence as the Soviets of the cold war did. It seems that we need a crisis, rather than a dull but persistent need to encourage change.
I mentioned earlier that I lost interest in Math and Science when those subjects became difficult, yet those two subjects are precisely the areas needed for careers in all of the engineering fields that are so much in demand. I think this pattern is pretty common, with initial interest in the early grades only to lose interest as the subjects become more challenging. What can be done to keep the interest alive in our children? Just watch some young kids for a while and you can easily see that problem-solving, experimentation and wonder is innate in human beings. So where is the disconnect? What happens that so few people wind up in technical careers that directly depend upon human curiosity? Something happens between early childhood and adulthood.
I think that part of the problem might be a general fear of Math and Science among primary grade educators. Of course, this is a generalization and not true for everyone, but if teachers in the lower grades are not enthusiastic about these subjects, it’s unlikely their pupils will be. I also think that upper level Math teachers can compound the problem. Students often move from teachers who dislike or fear Math in the lower grades to upper level teachers having such a love of Mathematics it is difficult for them to relate to people for whom Math does not come easily. Moving from Math fear to Math zeal is not an easy transition.
Personally, I didn’t find a Math teacher I could relate to until I attended community college. I’m sure much of it had to do with a more mature attitude, but some of it was definitely the teacher’s style of teaching. I believe it would be helpful if we had more Math teachers who struggled and still chose to teach the subject!
Parental support is critical. Teachers cannot do it all alone. There simply is not enough time in a school day to meet the needs of each child at the level of his or her needs. I believe parents can help, even if they are not strong in these areas. This summer, my daughter and I made a video about the summer solstice. My daughter made observations, collected data, and thought about why she saw what she saw; she did the basics of scientific inquiry. Not bad for a kid just out of kindergarten. It was nothing that was terribly difficult. All it took was some time and effort.
On August 9th, we are planning a Science Day camp for kids in grades K-4 in our city park. We are planning to do some physics experiments with the playground equipment, as well as the famous Diet Coke & Mentos geysers and other related science fun. We hope to get the kids thinking about experimentation and the scientific method of discovery. I will plan to share some photos and information about how the day went with you when it becomes available.
Summer technology experience
I have only been blogging for a few months but I have noticed that I have been less inclined to post since I am working a non-teaching job this summer. Perhaps I have less to say, but I think it is mostly that my thinking has not been as much in the educational realm as I want this blog to be.
My thinking has been very much in the technology realm, however. You could say that much of what I’ve been doing is working as a software engineer/analyst and technical consultant. Officially, I am a faculty intern at the local telecommunications company. I’ve never been that hung up on titles as long as the work I am doing is interesting.
You would think I would have plenty to write about, and I have learned a great deal this summer. Mostly I’ve been re-learning things I’ve gotten very rusty on. I’ve been so busy learning, I haven’t been keeping up with writing about it. I thought I’d take a moment and update you on some of the things I’ve been working on, and how they might be of benefit to a teacher interested in technology.
One of the first things I did was take an old eMachine pc and turn it into a Linux box I could experiment with. I had used primarily Red Hat Linux in the past, but also some Mandrake Linux. It has been over eight years since I have worked with these OS’es. I wanted to try something new, and I’ve heard a great deal about Ubuntu Linux so I downloaded that and gave it a try. The install was easy and friendly, but it had more of a feel of an end-user machine than a server, which is what I was after. Ubuntu looks like it would be an excellent place to start if you’ve been curious about Linux but afraid to take the plunge.
Debian Linux
After a little research, I learned that Ubuntu is a derivative of Debian Linux. The thing that impressed me right away about Debian is it’s lack of corporate affiliation. Back in 1999, my wife’s mother gave us $500 to invest in the red hot tech stock market, something I knew little about. I put it all in Red Hat stock (much like putting it all on Red-7 at a roulette wheel.) I quickly turned that $500 into about $10 when tech stocks tanked. (I learned a good lesson about investing, and no longer buy single stocks of any kind.)
Anyway, I found fully Debian very refreshing in that it is run by volunteer effort in the true sprit of the open source software movement. So I downloaded the installer and went to work building my system. I was after an automatic method of backing up router configuration files, and I had discovered RANCID, the Really Awesome New Cisco confIg Differ. (Anything with “Awesome” in the name has to be good, right?)
After getting my Debian system set up, I went to work getting RANCID working on it. It was a process of trial and error, reading everything I could find on the web about running RANCID on Debian. I’ll admit it wasn’t a simple process, but I was able to finally get things working properly.
Web Server
So, if you aren’t into backing up multiple Cisco router configs, what else with Linux might be of interest to an education technology person? One great thing you can do is set up a web server, which I did on my machine. I installed Apache web server with PHP and MySQL. PHP allows me to write server side scripts (computer programming) and MySQL is a relational database (MS Access is also a relational database, but it’s not free!)
With these tools, I began working on a project that involves looking up addresses in a database and allows potential customers to sign up for the different services offered by the company available to that address. I’m still working on this, but it works pretty slick.
If you want your students to learn about the technology driving Web 2.0, a great place to start is with a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP) installation. All of the software you need for free is hard to beat!
Java
I taught Java a couple of times about eight years ago, and then also in the fall of 2007. I had a project this summer that allowed me to write a Java program to automate a task. I wrote a program that read through all of the e-mail accounts on the mail server, finding the ones that have not been accessed for a specified period of time and deletes them, saving a lot of manual administration time.
Newtek Video Gear
I spent a significant amount of time reading up on video gear, since the company provides IPTV video to it’s customers and wants to begin producing local content. Probably the most exciting thing I found was the Newtek Tricaster video studio in a box. If you want your students to have access to some amazing video technology, you might look into a Tricaster. This thing is a video mixer, compositer, editor all rolled into one. I think the live virtual sets is what amazed me the most. If you have ever tried to render a green-screen matte using Adobe Premiere or similar editing software, you will appreciate the live compositing available with the Tricaster. The software in this thing can make it look like you are standing on a million dollar set, when you are really in a small room. That’s the power of a virtual set. I’m hoping my school will purchase one of these things, it’s that amazing!
Teaching
One of the most fun things I did this summer is give one of my networking lectures to the telecom technicians. Most of them have no background or training in computer networks, but they are installing cutting edge FTTH (Fiber to the Home) in all of the communities they serve. It’s amazing technology, and I had a great time explaining an overview of the seven layer OSI model that shows how what they do fits into the larger picture of computer networking.
If you’ve ever had a lecture on the OSI model, you know how painfully dull that can be. I go to great lengths to make my talk funny, interesting and relevant. It was great practice for me as a teacher to make a presentation to this audience. There is another group of techs in another city and I may get the chance to practice with them as well.
It has been a fruitful summer for me, and I’m eager to get back in the classroom next month with stronger technology muscles.
Summer Science Video
Here is the “highly anticipated” Summer Science video that was promised. I hope you enjoy it.
Celebrating the Summer Solstice
My daughter Emily and I welcomed the summer season together last Saturday. She asked me what kids usually do to celebrate the first day of summer but looked downtrodden when I told her they usually go swimming because she is currently fighting an ear infection and can’t swim right now.
I promised her that we would do something special to celebrate in another way. I have been wanting to make some science videos with her this summer, so we took the advantage of the summer solstice to do just that. Starting at 11:00 am on June 21st, we marked with sidewalk chalk where the shadow cast from our basketball goal onto the driveway every ten minutes for over three hours.
I helped her measure the distance between the pole and the chalk mark with a tape measure. I had her write down the numbers she read from the tape measure in a little notebook. She was surprised to see how much the shadow moved in ten minutes.
I recorded all of this with the camcorder, and I plan to edit it into a short video about doing science with little kids. For a six year old, she actually did a very nice job of collecting data. We only missed one measurement in a three hour experiment.
Even I learned something in the project. For some reason, probably from old westerns, I thought the sun would be directly overhead at noon. With the data we gathered, we learned that the sun was overhead not at noon, but sometime around 1:30 on the 21st. I didn’t try to explain the next part to Emily, but I also figured that the sun was at a very high 73.25 degree angle on the first day of summer using our data using ATAN(113/34). (The pole is 113″ and the shadow was 34″)
Math has never been one of my strengths, but I don’t want my little girl to be afraid of numbers. After working on this project, I can see that she thinks this kind of stuff is fun. The next day, she asked me what we could do with all of the numbers we wrote down. So I had her read the numbers to me while I typed them into an Excel spreadsheet. Then we made the following graph that shows how the shadows got shorter and shorter until they finally started growing longer again.
Solstice Data: Shadows cast from a 113″ pole.
| Time | Inches |
| 11:00 AM | 74.5 |
| 11:10 AM | 72.5 |
| 11:20 AM | 68 |
| 11:30 AM | 63 |
| 11:40 AM | 59 |
| 11:50 AM | 54 |
| 12:00 PM | 51 |
| 12:10 PM | 48 |
| 12:20 PM | 44 |
| 12:30 PM | 42 |
| 12:40 PM | 40 |
| 12:50 PM | 36 |
| 1:00 PM | 36 |
| 1:10 PM | 35 |
| 1:20 PM | 34.5 |
| 1:30 PM | 34 |
| 1:40 PM | 35 |
| 1:50 PM | |
| 2:00 PM | 37 |
| 2:10 PM | 40 |
| 2:20 PM | 42 |
For a little girl, I think she did a great job! All of the marks and measurements were hers, I just coached her. This experiment in data collection that Emily did is very similar to the very first science experiment I did in college taking measurements of objects in the Physical Science classroom. A 6 year old doing college level work! I just hope she will continue to be curious and wonder how things work. I’ll be glad when she’s feeling better and can go swimming, but I’m glad we spent the first day of summer doing something together that was fun and educational.
Well, I guess I had better get busy and finish editing her video now. I’ll let you know when it is finished and available.
***Edit*** The Summer Science video is now uploaded and available for viewing!
Intersection of Art & Science
I am always fascinated by stories that tell of people operating at the junction of two different fields of thought, particularly those of the fields of art and science. Somehow, we have a notion that the thinking of artists and scientists is completely different, rarely if ever overlapping. I love stories that demonstrate the falsity of this notion.
For example, on NPR recently I enjoyed the story of Brian May, rock musician and astrophysicist. Dr. May was a physics student when the band he played in “Queen” became a smash hit and his studies were interrupted. He recently completed his Ph.D. in astrophysics after being away from school for 30 years. He epitomizes what I am talking about. Scientists can and many do have an appreciation for the arts.
I was watching CBS news this morning which showed a story of ant biologist Walter Tschinkel. Dr. Tschinkel makes molds of ant colonies by pouring plaster or liquid aluminum down ant hills. After the liquid hardens, he unearths some of the natural world’s most beautiful sculptures. Tschinkel appreciates the beauty of the ant colonies, suggesting that there is more art in science and nature than people realize.
I want my students to see these connections and to realize that working on one of these fields does not mean excluding out work in the other. Stories like these help to reinforce my point.
Pointillism and the Digital Camera
One fun project I like to have students do from time to time helps them to understand both how a digital camera captures pixels of color to create digital photographs, and also how that technology relates to Pointillism paintings from over 100 years ago. If you look at a Seurat painting close up (go ahead and click on the example, I’ll wait…)
Georges Seurat - The Side Show - 1888
Source: http://www.artchive.com/artchive/S/seurat/paradetl.jpg.html
… Ok, you’re back… (That was pretty cool, wasn’t it?) you will see thousands of little distinct colored dots of paint. That is Pointillism. Painting with dots. Working with the example of the Impressionists who did not completely mix colors on their canvas either, Seurat knew that the viewer would mix the discrete colors optically when viewing from a distance. The same thing happens today with our digital displays. The computer monitor you are viewing this on uses discrete dots of color called “pixels” in order to present an optical illusion of color. Check out the zoomed in version of the above image. (Go ahead, click it to enlarge it too.)
Digital images are actually a combination of three colors, Red, Green and Blue. Just as we mixed paint or crayon colors together in elementary school, we mix dots of red, blue and green light together to achieve millions of possible color combinations. The pixel is the smallest graphical unit that can be recorded or displayed, and each will be a variant of red, green or blue. A digital camera sensor records the pixels, and later we can view them on a computer display device or print them on paper.
To simplify things for my lesson, I like to eliminate color information altogether and simply have students record different values of light & dark pixels. I have done this exercise with computers and also using only paper and pencil. I create a pixel puzzle in which each student will recreate a portion of the final picture. The end result looks something like these two examples. (Click to zoom)
How to make the puzzle
Simply take your source image you want to base your puzzle on into Photoshop. On PS CS2 I use Filter->Pixelate->Mosaic, then adjust the square sizes so they are large enough to create pixels, yet small enough the image is still recognizable. Then I print this pixelated version and cut it into numbered squares. It helps to print a key, with corresponding numbers so you know how to reconstruct the image from the puzzle pieces.
If I’m using the paper & pencil method, I also like to print pages with square outlines in which my students can shade in the different values with a pencil. Have them squint at the puzzle piece to get an accurate reading on how dark or light the individual squares are. Then have them shade in the corresponding squares. If students reproduce their puzzle piece fairly accurately, you can reassemble a compelling and recognizable image of the original.
I am always surprised at how even though students can use a different stroke or shading style, yet the image manages to come together quite nicely.
If I’m using the computer graphics method, I still print the puzzle pieces for them, but instead of a pencil, I let them use Adobe Illustrator to draw the different value squares, then print their work out on a laser printer. Same idea, but less mess and usually less time to complete.
Hope you like this idea… my classes seem to enjoy the activity and they appreciate learning a bit of art history and it’s relevance to modern technology.
Why I Blog: SXSW and Wakonse
Well, I have been blogging for a month now. It is a little embarrassing that it took someone with my experience to take so long to get a clue, but the demands of life and career have kept me away for far too long. It’s not like I was unaware of blogging and other Web 2.0 technologies. For example, in March of 2007 my wife & I met with Michael Wesch for lunch in Aggieville to talk about digital media and his recent success with the YouTube video “The Machine is Us/ing Us“. I really started becoming aware of Web 2.0 at that point; even inspired to upload some of my own Navy videos to YouTube. After that little burst of inspiration, I went back to business as usual, not contributing much of anything to the machine.
I guess I always thought that blogging was sort of narcissistic and self-centered. Now that I’ve given it a try, I believe it goes far beyond self satisfaction. It is a great way to organize and add permanence to your thoughts. I love that I can write about whatever I’m thinking about at the moment, and refer back at some point in the future if I need to. People have been doing this for ages in journals, but I always start out journaling with the best of intentions, only to let it fall by the wayside after a while. This is different because it is interactive. I guess at this point, I don’t really care if anyone reads these posts, but it’s nice because I do get an occasional comment once in a while.
The other thing that I didn’t really understand that blogging is not only about posting. It is about networking. It is about reading what others write and responding to that as well. I’m really jazzed to be finding people with similar interests as my own.
I really owe my change of viewpoint to attending the SXSW (South by Southwest) Interactive Conference in Austin Texas this spring. I thought that all of those folks “Twittering” at the conference had lost their mind. I brought my laptop computer, but left it in the hotel because when I attend a conference, I want to experience it, not dink around with a computer while someone is offering good information. I didn’t realize that they were actively engaged in a discussion about what was being said, perhaps even more engaged in thought than I was.
Blogging was discussed at a number of the panel sessions that I attended. I was amazed to learn that corporations pay professional bloggers to create buzz about products and services. I still didn’t fully understand it all, but I sensed there was more to blogging than I had realized. I began to explore educational blogging, and soon discovered http://www.edublogs.org. I am continually learning something new each day, and I’m truly just as excited about the promise and potential of the Internet as I was the day when I hooked up my Packard Bell to Prodigy, and soon after, America Online.
Soon, I will be attending the Wakonse Conference on College Teaching in Michigan. I attended that conference a couple of years ago, and really started getting excited about scholarship of teaching and learning. The biggest thing I learned at that conference is to start having more fun in my teaching, and to be myself. I realized that I was too worried about being serious and respected, without understanding it is possible to be fun and respected (much closer to my true nature.) My classes are going better and my students are learning more when I’m being myself. Now that I’m engaged in blogging, and aware of what teachers are doing with Web 2.0 technologies, I wonder what I will learn, and what I myself can share with other college educators. Anyhow, stay tuned… I’ll keep you posted how that conference turns out.
Abstract Thinking
I frequently think about the connection between Art and other disciplines such as Science and Technology. Yesterday, I took some students on the 1st Thursday Art Gallery walk that is held in Salina, KS on the first Thursday of the month. We were visiting with one of the featured artists and the subject of abstract art came up. I pointed out that studying computer technology (my primary teaching area) requires a great deal of abstract thought. Students often struggle with abstract, indefinite thinking.
I believe that the work and thought of artists and computer scientists are not all that different. A guy like James Gosling, inventor of the Java programming language, and someone like Jackson Pollock, the abstract expressionist painter have more in common than it might seem. Object oriented programming languages such as Java allow software designers to work with abstractions, leaving the concrete definition for whomever or whatever will be ultimately using the abstract program design.
When I taught Java last semester, I had my students write code for a very abstract and open to interpretation concept: a “Monster”. (This was around Halloween.) Well monsters come in a variety of shapes, sizes and abilities. The students had to figure out which characteristics and behaviors that all monsters share and include those in the abstract program. Later, we could create more specific monsters that inherited characteristics and behaviors from the abstract version, thereby saving some time and effort since some of the work was already completed for us. Some students made “Vampires” which is still somewhat abstract and open to interpretation. However when “Dracula” is finally created, the idea is starting to become specific and concrete.
Thinking and dealing with abstraction is a complex process essential to becoming proficient in computer technology. I think it might be time well spent considering how abstract art such as that of Jackson Pollock is related. Look at this Jackson Pollock painting:
(click to enlarge)The abstract nature of the painting allows the viewer to project his or her own interpretation into the piece. What meaning are we to take from viewing this? There are no visible, recognizable forms. It is completely up to the viewer’s interpretation what will be experienced. Object oriented programming languages such as Java indeed begin at this level of abstraction. In Java, all objects inherit from the most abstract idea of all- “Object”. It doesn’t get any more basic than that. What can we do with “Object”? The same thing we do with a Pollock painting… whatever we would like to do. It is all in our vision of what is possible.
PS. Chris Sorensen, the speaker I recently posted about, recommended that I read “Exploring the Invisible: Art, Science, and the Spiritual
Interdisciplinary Teaching
Yesterday, I drove to Manhattan, KS to hear a lecture by Dr. Chris Sorensen, this year’s K-State Coffman Chair for University Distinguished Teaching Scholars. I was attracted to this lecture because the program abstract stated that he would “…examine how we at Kansas State have tried to remove both the disciplinary walls and the spatial walls that fragment us.” I was not disappointed. I have long felt that institutions of higher education have maintained these disciplinary walls to our disadvantage. I am in complete agreement with Chris that the most exciting, most creative thinking happens at the intersection of the disciplines; thus the name of this blog “TechIntersect”.
I am continually exploring interdisciplinary thinking, and ways to connect various disciplines together to enhance student learning. Dr. Sorensen’s talk provided me much more food for thought in this arena. Some of his suggestions were practical solutions that can be implemented immediately, while others were more idealistic.
One example of something I think worthwhile to consider for college educators is his suggestion of offering office hours in a “safe location”. Chris suggested that professors find a neutral location in which to hold office hours. Two or three professors in the same place at the same time, available for help; almost as in a formalized academic tutoring environment. Much less scary to undergraduates than going to a professor’s office. In my own experience, very few students take advantage of office hours, even when they are having serious struggles. It is like pulling teeth to get them to come in. So I like this idea of finding a neutral location. And I like the idea of making yourself available on a variety of topics. For example, a math teacher might be better able to help students solve certain programming project problems than I could. I could offer my own suggestions in visual design to students working on a technical writing project, even though I do not teach in this area. Of course, faculty could always answer questions from their own field and about classes that they do teach, but it might reduce the intimidation factor even more if we make ourselves available to students in other subject areas.
I wonder how this concept would actually work? I wonder if egos, personal feelings, etc. might really get in the way. It might take a very secure person to endorse another teacher’s assistance for their own students. However, it might be having that second point of view on a particular subject that makes the difference to a student. I am thinking back to my undergraduate days when I studied Mathematics, particularly Calculus. My school had a tutoring center that I frequently visited for extra assistance in Math. My Math teacher was very good, but as it turned out, his wife was also a Math teacher who worked in the tutoring center, explaining things from her own point of view. It worked out well for me, because I was able to get lots of help from two different professors. Of course their situation was unique, being married to each other, and naturally inclined to support the efforts of one another. I wonder how a similar arrangement could work for profs who were not married.
