Mastodawn

Jon Sterling Jan 27, 2025

I have broken it to my students that I will not be releasing lecture recordings anymore (except in cases where it is warranted—put away your pitchforks!). The reaction is like watching a demon being exorcised... one passes through each stage of grief. By the way, to make up for this, I have made commitments to my students of personal engagement that go far beyond what almost any other lecturer here offers.

This could be catastrophic for my ratings, but in the end, I want to give great and engaging lectures that delight and encourage my students. And the twin evils of (1) being on the record at all times, and (2) having recording policies that make it benefit-negative for students to attend Lecture makes it nearly impossible for me to do that.

So I'm taking a stand.

Boarders Jan 27, 2025

@jonmsterling though I am a critic of “back to office” policies (since I see unwavering corporate policies as rigidly implemented and exclusionary of women from participating in public life), I do believe the collective unconscious will, and is, shifting back towards understanding that we are physically embodied and being in a lecture course with your fellow students and instructors is actually not going to be replaced by watching on YouTube (we are years out from the MOOC fantasy, and yet it remains like a living zombie)

Eli 💚 chaos 🌋🎲👾Jan 27, 2025

@boarders @jonmsterling Most universities are not designed for remote learning like e.g The Open University is, which functions very differently from MOOC-type courses or like whatever universities were forced to do during the pandemic. We have small lectures/tutorials where students are actively engaged, we have our own books that are externally reviewed all the time and are very well-made, and most students (esp those who continue year after year) are super motivated. 1/2

Eli 💚 chaos 🌋🎲👾

@boarders @jonmsterling Basically there needs to be a lot of funding to support proper remote learning but the way it was done during the pandemic in regular unis is not it and it's good that we are throwing that out, yet we should be thinking how to make it better and get funding for developing these programs because there are a lot of people who wouldn't be able to study otherwise. Just having lectures recorded and lecture notes online is nothing in comparison to what we could have.

@eli @boarders @jonmsterling i disagree with this - i think that lecture notes slides and notes specifically are one of the most valuable things to make public. i don't think there needs to be much of anything proper about it to get 90% of the benefit.

very frequently when i am trying to learn some topic some professor's lecture notes not only come up but are the only thing that comes up. i think people underestimate the utility of just... information, freely online. for more introductory topics where there are plenty of existing resources online, sure, putting them online without some structure is probably not too valuable. but this is not the case for ex. any linguistics material past the third year.

(and also, personal opinion: i don't think remote learning ever was good over the pandemic...)

Boarders Jan 27, 2025

@jj @eli @jonmsterling I don’t think anyone here is against freely available lecture notes online, certainly not me!* - it is a wider conversation about how learning takes place in community and about what job we expect of lecturers. Should we expect them to also be multimedia producers? If not, should the university hire people to do such work, and if so, how would that look, what is the ideal format in which to run such mixed media classes? etc.

* these resources though are for people who are already self-directed learners which I view as a distinct group from everyone a university is supposed to educate and part of a “liberal arts” education is to liberate one to be free to pursue such ends in such self-directed ways

@boarders @eli @jonmsterling i don't consider myself a self-directed learner and i think lecture notes are invaluable. the point i'm trying to make is: quite frequently learning materials do not need to be processed or have any notion of quality to be useful - they just need to be out there

Jon Sterling Jan 27, 2025

@jj @boarders @eli That's true, and many students will agree — but in the end, this needs to be balanced with the fact that lecturers do not enjoy their unedited performances being available to be watched dozens of times, and maybe even shared. It has a chilling effect on us.

I understand that there's definitely trade-offs here, but as a worker I want to have more control over what I produce and how it is used.

Martin Escardo Jan 27, 2025

@jonmsterling @jj @boarders @eli

If I look at the statistics on Canvas, almost nobody watches the live recordings.

But many more people watch the prerecorded lectures, which are linked from our lecture notes.

Martin Escardo Jan 28, 2025

@jonmsterling @jj @boarders @eli

Oh oh. "hi, i’m watching back the lectures and you cant hear very well when you walk away from the mic, so we miss whats said. i just thought i should let you know"

Jon Sterling Jan 28, 2025

@MartinEscardo @jj @boarders @eli Yeah... Last year I was getting a lot of things like this, and I had to be like, "No, I am not going to change the way I lecture to fit a recording that I'm not even in control of..."

I always wonder what these kids think is going to happen when they say "just thought I should let you know". Let me know so I can do what, really??

Martin Escardo Jan 28, 2025

@jonmsterling @jj @boarders @eli

I just said that I will check if there is a microphone in the lecture theatre, and he said "thank you!". I prefer a less confrontational approach, as it is usually more productive.

Philippa Cowderoy Jan 28, 2025

@jonmsterling @MartinEscardo @jj @boarders @eli If you can get [at university expense] a lav mic and radio unit that's probably a fair thing to use, but otherwise yeah

Peter Sewell Jan 28, 2025

@jonmsterling @MartinEscardo @jj @boarders @eli Our refreshed lecture theatre AV is (shock) really good - it seems to Just Work now.

Jon Sterling Jan 28, 2025

@peter_sewell_ @MartinEscardo @jj @boarders @eli That’s great!! Really glad to hear that. We had a few issues in New Museums Site this week, but nothing that couldn’t be worked around.

ohad Jan 28, 2025

@jonmsterling @MartinEscardo @jj @boarders @eli BTW, I think they are being British when they say that. If I understand correctly, and I could be wrong, this would translate into my language as:
This has happened and I wish it didn't, but because of the power difference, I don't want to make it seem like you don't know this is happening nor to actually ask you to do anything for me, because I'm not in a position to. So I'll phrase it as if it's something that just came into my mind casually, and hint that I think you probably know it already and I'm doing it out of some kind of obligation, in case no one else will tell you about it, because it actually bothers me.

ohad Jan 28, 2025

@jonmsterling @MartinEscardo @jj @boarders @eli You might think: no one in their right mind would spend this much time thinking about what to say and then use such an obscure sentence to say it and also why can't they just say it directly.

And you'd be right and wrong at the same time.

Jon Sterling Jan 28, 2025

@ohad @MartinEscardo @jj @boarders @eli Yeah, I'm taking it as an English-style tacit demand. But the thing that baffles me is not so much the mode of communication, but what they expect me to do about it!

Philippa Cowderoy Jan 28, 2025

@jonmsterling @ohad @MartinEscardo @jj @boarders @eli They're probably expecting "keep talking into the mic" (and if I was looking at a stand with something like an SM58 in it and radio or plenty of cable I'd happily pick up the mic - in my off hand if black/whiteboarding - myself: I sometimes use them even when not recording). But one option is to find whoever is responsible and talk to them about gear?

Playing "who can give the right evidence to budget holders?" is a pain in the arse of course, but it does have some chance of getting something done.

Jon Sterling Jan 28, 2025

@flippac @ohad @MartinEscardo @jj @boarders @eli Well, the issue in my case was something like “You keep moving off camera” and I am certainly not going to change the way I move during lecture to address a camera that I can neither see nor control.

Martin Escardo Jan 28, 2025

@jonmsterling @flippac @ohad @jj @boarders @eli

I provide the lecture recording "as is". It is not a substitute for the lecture, or for the lecture notes (or the occasional prerecorded lectures).

Martin Escardo Jan 28, 2025

@jonmsterling @flippac @ohad @jj @boarders @eli

And our university doesn't require us to do more (at least not yet).

Philippa Cowderoy Jan 28, 2025

@jonmsterling @ohad @MartinEscardo @jj @boarders @eli I've been a little distracted (in about 15 minutes a game unlocks and I'm going to start hunting virtual nazi balls for stress relief), but yeah, fuck that.

If they actually want anybody on camera the least they can do is show you the line it's pointed along and the area it covers!

Philippa Cowderoy Jan 28, 2025

@ohad @jonmsterling @MartinEscardo @jj @boarders @eli It's a stock way of saying it: I mostly use it either with people I trust with their own agency (where it's often at the start of a verbal interruption) or when I want to leave a lot of room to be more aggressive later on.

(The latter doesn't come up in academic contexts for me)

Pozorvlak Jan 28, 2025

@ohad the power differential is almost irrelevant here, though it does somewhat increase the level of politeness required. Simply saying "I can't hear you when you walk away from the mike" would be rude in most circumstances in BrEng; producing (and understanding) the more roundabout version requires almost no thought on the part of a native Brit!
@jonmsterling @MartinEscardo @jj @boarders @eli

theHigherGeometer Jan 29, 2025

@jonmsterling @jj @boarders @eli my lockdown calculus recordings done in my home office, sometimes late at night, have continued to be used in combination with another lecturer's recordings that he gave up on halfway through the following semester. The University will cease to exist at the end of the year and the replacement entity will have a wholly new everything, so finally they will stop using them. As much as I was flattered by some of the feedback in 2020/21 after I stopped, I really wish someone else would have done a better job by now. The department was just so short-staffed they couldn't afford people to actually teach that material afresh...

Jon Sterling Jan 29, 2025

@highergeometer @jj @boarders @eli God.... what a nightmare...

theHigherGeometer Jan 29, 2025

@jonmsterling and I haven't been employed in the maths department for three years, and haven't been employed at the university at all for a year (I have an adjunct affiliation for research purposes only)

@jj @boarders @eli

@boarders @eli @jonmsterling these sorts of discussions bother me more than a little bit also. sorry if it's coming across in my tone. please don't take this as a slight though! i think it's valuable to have them.

i think that it is easy to discount how much the university acts not only as a bastion of but as a gatekeeper of knowledge. the pandemic - despite all its downsides, generally and for everyone and for my learning specifically - i hoped it would provide for a shift towards open access of knowledge. much in the way i hoped for generative ai, despite it all, to provide for a dismantlement of the broken system of copyright (rather than reenforce it)

and to see professors pushing back against open access to learning materials and flexible learning environments provokes a bit of a knee-jerk reaction in me regardless of how good-intentioned or well-reasoned it may be

@boarders @eli @jonmsterling and also: i think it is easy to overgeneralize and have these discussions without discussing what sort of content is being taught. maths? recorded lectures are useless to me. i have to be in the room to engage in the content enough to retain it. computer science? recorded lectures are excellent. i can put one on and listen to somebody explain ex. complexity classes of algorithms while cooking. linguistics? recorded lectures are moot because all upper year content is in the form of seminars. but published, indexed lecture notes are amazing for when i want to learn ex. the difference between irrealis and nonveridicality

but i am very sympathetic towards professors for their job slowly taking on all the previous responsibilities of university administration... this is especially apparent at my university and i don't really have thoughts on how to fix it besides sympathy (and support for unions)

Jon Sterling Jan 27, 2025

@jj @boarders @eli

Just to respond to this:

> and to see professors pushing back against open access to learning materials and flexible learning environments provokes a bit of a knee-jerk reaction in me regardless of how good-intentioned or well-reasoned it may be

There is a reason why I have created all these publicly available lecture notes on my website [https://www.jonmsterling.com/jms-00JB.xml], and densely hyperlinked them in order to make them a viable learning environment for those who don't have access to our courses. Keep in mind that our recorded lectures have *never* been available to the public, so the change I have made has only increased rather than decreased the open access to learning.

Jon Sterling Jan 27, 2025

@jj @boarders @eli I think we are in agreement about the importance of open access learning that goes beyond the unfortunate gate-keeping of the university. There may be those among us who disagree, but I am not one of them — and I have (1) put dozens of hours into creating publicly accessible educational materials, and (2) *hundreds* of hours into building software that other instructors can use to create similar open educational materials.

So I agree with your knee-jerk reaction, but I want us to be careful about where we aim the knee.

Jon Sterling Jan 27, 2025

@jj @boarders @eli Lastly, if I ever create videos for my students, I will absolutely make them public-access. I am just asking that my faffing around at the blackboard, which can be part of a complex interaction between me and those present, not be made part of the permanent record.

Boarders Jan 27, 2025

@jonmsterling @jj @eli I think Lawvere’s two masterful (and still somehow under-appreciated*) books show that allowing the full, unfettered development of ideas in front of the board like this, and seeing and responding to the resulting confusions, bad lines of thought, or genuine new insights; is ultimately more valuable towards true worthwhile educational material than a thousand video captures

* that these books are easily available and yet not widely read by those wishing to learn category theory shows something important regarding the current limits of a mere philosophy of open access

@jonmsterling @boarders @eli i greatly appreciate this! and it's excellent to hear an inside perspective, too. thanks for the conversation :-)

Eli 💚 chaos 🌋🎲👾Jan 27, 2025

@jj @boarders @jonmsterling I agree with you completely. I wasn’t good at getting my point across: remote learning, as demanded from unis during the pandemic and letting lecturers carry all of the weight, was bad because it couldn’t have went better since there was nothing to support it, but that’s the reason why so many lecturers are completely burnt out *and* institutions are throwing out the idea completely. Info being available freely is beside the point.