DaveShearon

Computer facilitated learning

In an article in  Washington Monthly entitled Transformation 101, Kevin Carey makes a case that colleges are simultaneously driving down the cost of teaching through computer-facilitated instruction and increasing tuition.  I'm not focusing on the "universities are wasting money", but in the middle of the story is a great description of one particular computer facilitated course -- the Math Emporium at Virginia Tech.  Located in space leased from a bankrupt department store chain for $3 per square foot and using "modules" developed by the university and available either through the Internet or on computers in the Math Emporium, this program is proving very successful.  Upperclass math majors, graduate students, and professors provide a human component, but much of the learning is done through these self-paced modules.  Here's a key paragraph:

"Once the module materials are completed, students can take randomly generated practice tests that draw on a central bank of thousands of potential questions. If they get questions wrong, the computer refers them back to the appropriate materials, and there’s no limit to the number of practice tests they can take. When they decide they’re ready, students come to the Emporium to take an official, proctored test that’s generated in exactly the same way as the practice quizzes. Then they move to the next module. Instead of marking progress by time—the number of hours spent in proximity to a lecturer—Emporium courses measure advancement by evidence of learning.

The article goes on to describe how the University of Alabama doubled pass rates and eliminated a large white/black disparity in freshman math through a version of the approach exemplified by VT's Math Emporium.

Schools sell work to students.  Getting students to buy more work, and higher quality work that better helps them acquire necessary knowledge and master relevant skills is what improvement is about.  Technology can help.  Let's use it.

Lawyers looking for non-law jobs

From the ABA Journal

Finding a nonlaw job is even more difficult for lawyers who have practiced law, Seckler told the NLJ. "The longer you've been practicing, the harder it is for people to picture you in some other role," he said. And legal training could be a negative in business because it teaches caution rather than risk-taking.

“If you want to be successful, you have to think more like an optimist," he told the legal newspaper. "There is a change in thinking that has to go on.”

Winston Churchill said, "I am an optimist.  It does not seem too much use being anything else." 

The idea that lawyers are pessimists, or that pessimism, either expectational or explanatory, is beneficial in the practice of law has been widely suggested, but I have not run across reliable evidence that this is so.  If in fact, lawyers are pessimists, and even more importantly if good lawyers tend to be more pessimistic than average (in either sense of "pessimsim"), then the question will be whether it is the pessimism that causes the success or some quality associated with pessimism. 

For example, pessimists may expereince more neutral or negative moods as opposed to the somewhat happy state most people experience most of the time.  Since a neutral or negative mood facilitates close attention to detail, problem-spotting, etc., then the neutral or negative mood while engaged in lawyering tasks might be beneficial.  Negative emotions could motivate successful lawyering behavior in zero sum conflicts, and emotional numbness would assist lawyers engaged in "Necessary Evils."  If habitual, however, these emotional states would account for the high levels of depression, anxiety, alcoholism, and relationship problems suffered by lawyers.  Then the question would be whether lawyers could learn to manage emotional states without adopting an overall pessimistic stance toward the world, and if in doing so they would be better able to assist clients.