Negotiating the Paradox: Adjuncts & Writing

• Adjuncts and Grading Writing

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  30 Mar 2010 /  adjuncts, grading, teaching, time management
  One of the factors defining academic writing, and distinguishing it from writing in the rest of the world, is that it is graded. Grading is an area of ongoing debate in academia, especially grading writing. Do a search on grading and you’ll find discussions of methods, criteria, standards—as well as a steady string of anti-plagiarism screeds and the occasional wincing humorous (or is it “humorous”?) essay on student bloopers and accidental self-exposure. Grading is time-consuming, exhausting, and marked by student resistance in particularly vivid ways.

  One of the more complicated and under-examined aspects of the swamp that is grading is how it is changing as adjuncts make up an increasingly larger percentage of academics. This change shows up in multiple areas.

  I teach for more than one school, and each school wants to serve its students well. However, what “well” means varies according to context. What’s more, several of the schools also want to help their adjuncts teach well, and several of them want uniformity across the curriculum. In practice, this means providing things like rubrics to help adjuncts grade.

  That’s all well and good, but it is another place where good intentions lead…well, let’s just say elsewhere. I’ll focus on rubrics as an example. Each school that I teach for that provides rubrics provides two things: flawed rubrics and standards I don’t completely believe in. Both are understandable. It’s hard to imagine a perfect grading rubric, and it’s equally unlikely that your basic cranky and opinionated composition instructor (me) would agree fully with anyone else’s standards. However…there’s also a third factor in place, and a fourth, and a fifth, and maybe more.

  The third factor is that the rubrics I’m using aren’t just imperfect (that’s the nature of reality). They are someone else’s imperfection, to the point where there are items on the grading scale I don’t understand. My rule of thumb is, if I don’t understand it, my students likely don’t understand it.

  The fourth factor is that these rubrics come from different sources at the different schools, and those sources are often a) collective, b) unknown, and c) likely to change over time. In practice, this means that there is no one to ask if I don’t understand a rubric I’ve been given in most instances, because those handing it on don’t know how it was produced, or know who wrote it but that person is gone, etc.

  The fifth factor is that only one of the schools I teach for (Baker College) has been willing to pay for the time needed for the adjuncts to grade as a group and achieve some degree of uniformity. That means that in practice, even clearly articulated rubrics that I think I understand vary wildly in application. (For example, I’ve been told to fail students for 1 plagiarized line and to not deduct points for anything below 16 percent plagiarism…by administrators in the same school. I’ve also had another administrator tell me that an A in spelling and mechanics meant a paper was excellent, and a B meant it was good, C average and so on…but when I quantified that, I was told that 40 spelling errors wouldn’t lower the grade below A in that category. )

  Taken together, the result is grading writing that is inorganic to the instructor and more time-consuming than allowing adjuncts to generate their own rubrics. It creates the side effects of control (fear of failure, a sense of being watched) without any of the raised quality or uniformity it is intended to produce. It is also, quite frankly, a model of wretched scholarship. These rubrics are written by…someone. Somewhere. They appear and are to be applied, like Wikipedia entries, but with the power to distort your GPA.

  Don’t get me wrong. I had tenured faculty do a wretched job of grading my writing on both the undergraduate and graduate level. Some of those experiences are legendary. But those standards and experiences were not institutionally imposed. They were the result of quirky faculty members.

  This new structure of writing grading creates a kind of weary and bureaucratic hypocrisy for the adjuncts who grade writing.

  Tags: Baker College, grading, Greg Beatty, writing

• Two Writers, One Adjunct, Two Lessons, One Lesson?

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  23 Mar 2010 /  time management
  I received a brief and surprising email today. The first surprise was that the email arrived at all. You see, I’d emailed Elizabeth Strout, whose complex and often lovely novel in stories Olive Kitteridge. (If you haven’t read Olive Kitteridge, I highly suggest it. There’s a reason it won the 2009 Pulitzer for fiction.) I’d contacted her to see if she was interested in being interviewed for this blog, since she had published a number of short stories while teaching as an adjunct at Manhattan Community College (and being a wife and mother).

  The second surprise was that Ms. Strout managed to turn down my request for an interview graciously: she expressed gratitude for being asked, but indicated that her work schedule was “too strict” to take part in such an interview at present. 

  In between classes today, I visited a number of humor sites, for a much needed break. I also visited a blog for freelance writers, the Renegade Writer blog. There I read a post from Linda Formichelli, a nonfiction writer who is a bit of a name as a professional nonfiction writer. She’s published half a dozen books, and regularly writes for magazines such as Wired and Family Circle.

  Today’s post discussed Ms. Formichelli’s recently commitment to cutting back her writing time while maintaining her income, so that she could spend more time with her young (one-year-old) son. She did this in part through stopping her visits to an online writers’ forum (which she found too addictive), as well as stopping her visits to…some of the online humor sites I’d visited today. Hmm.

  To be fair, eliminating her Web habits weren’t the only changes she made. Formichelli also recruited help in changing her habits and increasing her level of focus (from her husband and a writing buddy). However, the synchronicity of the two writers made for a message even I couldn’t miss, dense though I may be.

  Having young children—as Formichelli does, and Strout did—is one of the more universally acknowledged ways to disrupt both your focus and control over your time. New York, where Strout lives—is a city seemingly designed to seduce one away from plans with its explosion of temptation, and I can’t imagine living there on adjunct wages. (Ye gods!). That said, Strout managed to make major strides towards being a writer who would win top prizes in American literature while still an adjunct, while Formichelli managed to cut her work week back markedly while maintaining her income…at a time when the magazine publishing world is imploding.

  I therefore thank Elizabeth Strout for turning down my request. I’d rather have another page written on her next book than an interview with her—and her lesson for adjuncts is as clear as any one could want. Adjuncts can write. Adjuncts can write great things—if they take control of their schedule. And though she’s a freelancer rather than an adjunct, Linda Formichelli would agree.

  Tags: adjunct, Elizabeth Strout, freelance, Greg Beatty, Linda Formichelli, Manhattan Community College, Olive Kitteridge, Renegade Writer, time use, writing

• Writing and Time

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  19 Jan 2010 /  publishing, time management, writing
  If you’re an adjunct, scrambling to make ends meet, how do you find time to write? Well, if you look Jill Carroll’s advice on time management for adjuncts in The Chronicle from 2001 , you’ll see all kinds of solid tips…and no mention of writing. Well, that’s not quite true: the word “writing” shows up in the biographical note on Carroll at the bottom. Since Carroll is an adjunct who manages to publish, this suggests that time management tips may free up time to write.

  This is no surprise. In fact, that’s old news…to writers, anyway. Anyone who wants to freelance, or to write creatively, must either let the grass go uncut, get good at time management, or both, in order to find time. For many of us, though, the time isn’t enough. Unlike, say, someone working in an office or with a set schedule, adjuncts find their schedules shifting around. I know one of my biggest frustrations is with the X factors in grading. I’m thinking in particular here of the student or project that blows up: plagiarism, combined with grade appeals, pleas over X (visas, illness, etc.), that leads to more time spent on one problem student than the entire rest of the class. It’s easy enough to plan what to do, but some institutions have requirements that fight time management. As one easy example, the institutions for which I teach require that all student emails be answered within 24 hours. One student sent 96 lengthy emails over grades, plagiarism, and emotional distress. I could group some of my answers, but that’s still quite a number, and hard to schedule.

  Again, this too is no surprise, either in academia or outside of it. In Born Digital, their recent study of the recent generation who grew up online, John Palfrey and Urs Gasser note that one of the defining characteristics of our age is “information overload.” They argue that previous generations suffered from an information deficit, and were continually seeking more information to enable them to make better decisions. We, on the other hand, need new skills: we must learn to sort, or even triage, the flood of data washing over us every day. This is producing new techniques for time management. David Allen touts his Getting Things Done system as designed for these new challenges.

  Some people are generating alternatives. I’ve tried workshops by life coaches (with limited success), and others are now doing online writing coaching specifically for academics. What’s striking about this pitch for the Academic Writing Club is how it blends the tone of an infomercial with extreme rationalization: The cost per day is spelled out.

  If hiring someone to keep you writing and help you get the tools you need to do so seems too strange, consider the tactics suggested by Palfrey and Gasser—use filters, as often as possible—or by Dan Poynter, an longtime freelance writing teacher: use a clock or timer. Break your project into component parts, estimate how long each will take, set the clock and force yourself to work. Other freelance writers I know take more severe versions of these steps, such as blocking themselves from addictive websites until a writing project is done.

  Though the focus was different, this discussion reminds me of a book by one of my professors when I was an undergraduate, Evan Watkins’ Work Time. I’m also struck again by how much things have changed related to writing, even in my brief time in academia. Throughout graduate school, the message was strongly communicated that taking one’s time on writing was a good thing—acceptable, even desirable. There was a sense that good scholarship took time.

  Now, I not only find myself pressing in the opposite direction—what can I get done as fast as possible—but also continually calculate the expense of an action. In that I am no different from the folks at the Academic Writing Club (I sound like I’m about to say, in the best infomercial fashion, “I’m not only the president, I’m also a client!”). In that I must state the obvious: being an adjunct has taken all the liberal arts out of being an English teacher. It’s made it rational, goal oriented, and time bound. The core idea there—that liberal arts are freeing—seems to have been reversed. As an adjunct, time is my master, and my writing its…victim? Monster?

  Tags: Born Digital, Dan Poynter, David Allen, Getting Things Done, Greg Beatty, Jill Carroll, The Chronicle of Higher Education

• Ch-ch-changes…

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  12 Jan 2010 /  publishing, time management, writing
  Recently I had two experiences that made me realize how much I’d changed, and how much things have changed. (Stay with me—this really is about adjuncts and writing.)

  Both of these experiences came when interacting with one of the schools for whom I’m an adjunct.

  Experience #1 came when working on a course design for the school, which provides standardized course materials for its online courses. I agreed to revise a literature course for them, only to learn that I had to work with their newly established Course Development Process, which included required two hour “teleconferences” (phone calls).

  I was baffled as to exactly what these conferences were for. It turned out to be a multi-person reviewing process, in which everyone had to follow along as the person running the meeting reviewed my course materials, made a few minor comments, and then signed off on them. Let me be clear: a few small areas of the course were improved. Let me be clearer still: that was not the primary purpose of the call, which was CYA, as everyone ritually agreed to the work. And let me clearest yet: we had different agendas. All of the other people on the call were on salary, and so if the phone call took an hour (which it did, thankfully), or two, they were paid the same. As an adjunct, though, and a freelancer, an extra hour spent farting around in a meeting was an hour I wasn’t getting paid for work somewhere else.

  When I first started writing academic works, I did so to learn, and for the joy of it. Now, after so long as an adjunct and freelancer, those seem…insufficient. As does that word.

  Experience #2 came from the same school. I was invited to write articles on my area of expertise that would be shared with the whole school. These articles were intended both to build community and to help raise the level of professional discourse. I did such things when I was first working as an adjunct. I wrote up handouts, contributed to lists, etc. Now, though, I felt vaguely like I was being scammed.

  I don’t think that traditional academics in tenured positions feel this, though I’ve known any number who felt too busy, or like it wasn’t the best use of their time. However, it wasn’t the unpaid nature of the writing they objected to, it was the specific focus: they thought their time was better spent writing formal articles in their discipline than articles for the general community.

  I did not set out to change my attitude toward writing and the academic community. I set out to pay the rent. But change happened, all the same…

  Tags: academic writing, course development, Greg Beatty, time management

• Updates, Links, and Two Sour Grapes

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  14 Dec 2009 /  teaching, time management, writing
  Blogging is a lot like teaching. You start with one project, and then you add another and another, until you’re juggling one more topic than you can track, and you hope that whoever is watching is enjoying the show, or at least paying attention.

  Along those lines, some follow-ups on earlier topics. First, I’ve touched on adjuncts working in the law; those interested in this field might look into the Legal Writing Institute’s upcoming workshop for adjuncts on December 4, 2009 (in both Chicago and New York).

  Second, still no word about the results of the adjunct writing faculty survey. I’m expanding my net.

  Third, and more locally, the adjunct writing conference I reported on earlier continues to bear fruit: faculty are more involved in discussing curriculum at Baker College, and there’s more discussion related to how to improve writing than before. On a related note, other schools who use adjunct faculty extensively have been having such conferences for a longer time. Consider University of Maryland University College (UMUC), who regularly hires adjuncts for online, domestic, and overseas positions. They have had several years of annual summer conferences on writing. You can find a brochure here, and a discussion of the experience here. I’ll also note that this last discussion is found in UMUC’s DE Oracle, an ezine dedicated to instructional quality. Yes, lots of schools have them; this one seems more genuinely committed.

  And now, the grapes.

  Sour grape #1 is standard for academics for hundreds of years: This has been a hard week as far as the relationship between grading student writing and completing my own. This week I had to deal with a complaint from a student that her paper wasn’t that heavily plagiarized, and so shouldn’t get so low a grade, a complaint from a second student that she didn’t know what she was doing wrong…that let me know she couldn’t find my comments on her paper, and a complaint from a third that I had corrected too many grammar errors on his paper and not told him how he could make his writing clearer. (Oh, the irony.) All this came while my own writing projects sat untouched on the shelf…

  Sour grape #2, is standard for adjuncts right now, and a great example of the elephant in the corner. I’m serving on a committee for one of the schools I teach for. It’s a paid gig, which is good, and it allows me access to some of the planning discussions, which is useful if disturbing. In the most recent discussion, one issue that was raised was how to make our students better writers. Another was how to retain more students through the introductory course sequence.

  I was literally speechless at the time, because the school in question has been raising class sizes. The introductory course sequence used to be insulated from this, and so have fewer students in those classes. Not any more. What’s more, the course design process puts a cap on the maximum number of pages students are asked to write, and forces a specific design on assignments, often producing bad and confusing assignments. The school has also been pushing instructors to treat the first instances of plagiarism as accidental. Finally, the school has become more arbitrary in scheduling, making it harder for adjuncts to know if and when they’re teaching.

  I was left saying “Bad and rigid assignments…free passes on plagiarism…much larger classes…scared teachers entering classes with only a little notice…and you want to know what we can do to help students write?”

   

  Oh, the humanity.

  Tags: blogging, Greg Beatty, Legal Writing Institute, University of Maryland University College, workshops

• How Do You Write Productively (Installment 1)?

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  17 Nov 2009 /  publishing, time management, writing
  This week I thought I’d shift gears a bit. Assuming that the folks who read this blog write, or want to write, I thought I’d share a bit on writing productively…and what it means for an adjunct.

  Assume that you have established a solid mastery of your field, and that you want to contribute to the body of knowledge making up that field. Take these as a given, and further, take as a given that you’re not blocked: ideas are flowing, you see debates you want to enter and questions you want to explore. For a professional scholar, the task then is not just to have these thoughts, or even just to share them with your students, essential though these two steps are. A professional scholar must share them with their field and may wish to make a name for him or herself by doing so regularly. This means writing productively: writing regularly, and bringing works to completion. What do you need to do?

  In her article “Becoming a Productive Academic Writer” Susan Johnson suggests recreating the sort of environment one might find on a plane: minimize distractions, gather tools to you, keep refreshments handy, etc. She also suggests writing regularly, rather than engaging in “binge” writing, tracking your output, and making writing only a moderate priority. This last was striking, given writing’s centrality in academia, but Johnson sketches in her reasoning, which draws on attempts to reach goals in other areas: raising the priority of something too high tends to lead to perfectionism, which in turn leads to people not completing their desired actions.

  Johnson also includes a sidebar summarizing the work of Robert Boice, a psychologist who focuses on how academics work productively. Boice has given special attention to beginning faculty, looking at those who start quickly up the academic ladder vs. those who don’t.

  Boice has found that the few faculty (5=9%) who are “quick starters” share certain characteristics: they write 3+ hours per week, limit course prep time (and link teaching to research), left time in classes for student involvement, and ask peer help on both teaching and research. By contrast, most faculty over prepare for classes, teach “defensively,” and experience academia as isolating. (Those interested in Boice might view this reader’s guideas an introduction.)

  My first conclusions seem obvious: adjuncts are pushed by the structure of the system to share characteristics of the majority, rather than the “quick starters.” We are isolated. We are more vulnerable to student complaints, since we may not get rehired, and that very real increased vulnerability may well lead to defensiveness.

  My next conclusions are somewhat less obvious: 3 hours a week seems like nothing, so it would be relatively easy for a focused adjunct to become a productive academic writer. While there is certainly no guarantee that doing so would help one make the leap to the tenure track, 3 hours equates to 36 minutes, Monday through Friday (or 26 minutes seven days a week). Most of us waste that much time and more.

  What’s more, while the isolation of the adjunct is real (and again, fostered by the system), it does not have to be permanent. Online forums exist, office hours can be shared, labor organizations can be joined, and so on.

  My final conclusions for the day are emotional. I want to push back against Johnson’s advice, and maybe shout a little. How the heck can I control my time when I spend too much of it grading? How can I control my space when sharing office cubicles? Hey, there’s a little anger left to snip at Boice. Yeah, I feel isolated—I am isolated.

  Whew. I feel better. No, life isn’t fair, and life as adjunct has special stresses. However, at the risk of sounding all pop psychology-ish, there’s a lot I can do to make things better, and to become more productive.

  And I’ll share more of those tips in weeks ahead. 

  Tags: Greg Beatty, productivity, Robert Boice, Susan Johnson, time management, writing

• A Science Writing Star: Interview With Marcia Bartusiak

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  10 Nov 2009 /  publishing, research, time management, writing
  This week I had the opportunity to talk with one of the stars of science writing, Marcia Bartusiak. When she won the AIP Science Writing Award in 1982, she was the first woman to ever do so. Since that time, she’s won that award again (in 2001, for Einstein’s Unfinished Symphony , and, in 2006, won the Andrew W. Gement Award from the American Institute of Physics

  Ms. Bartusiak is also an adjunct faculty member at MIT (though she was careful to explain how that differs from most adjunct positions, as you’ll see below). She was also kind enough to share her experience with me.

  AA: Why do you write?

  Marcia Bartusiak (hereafter MB):In the classic 1952 movie musicalSingin’ in the Rain, Gene Kelly has a number called “Gotta Dance,” which provides one way to frame it.  I often have that feeling, but in my case responding, “Gotta Write, Gotta Write.”  And, for me, it’s always been linked to a love for science and the mysteries it uncovers. Science (particularly astronomy and physics) was a fascination to me from an early age.  But I was perplexed as a child that few of my friends shared this passion.  I usually found I could get their attention if I explained some fact or idea in an entertaining way.  This desire (obviously) never left me. I find joy in the search, trying for the perfect metaphor or analogy that can make someone at least get the “feel” of a scientific concept.  I want them to realize they don’t have to solve a mathematical equation to be fascinated and intrigued by nature’s laws. 

  AA: How does your academic writing relate to your teaching? How about writing that doesn’t qualify as traditional scholarship?

  MB: Everything I do as a writer is related to my teaching, given the position I have as an adjunct professor in MIT’s Graduate Program in Science Writing.  My very job is to take the expertise I have built up over my thirty years as a science writer and pass it along to my students: how to interview, craft a snappy news note (important when they first start out), extend their writerly skills into longer features, and even start them thinking about tackling book-length topics. 

  AA: How do you find time to write as an adjunct?

  MB: I have been teaching at MIT over the last six years in a half-time position.  (Previous to that I was a fulltime freelance writer.)  So, while I have time to write, my adjustment has been to the reduced schedule.  Where in the past I could devote fulltime to, say, a book project, I now have to squeeze it in and around my classes, along with strategically using the summer months.  I just had a book come out last April, which I spent about two-and-half years researching and writing.  For the first nine months, I conducted my library research when not in class and scheduled two months of travel around the country for archival research during the summer months.  Upon returning, I wrote up my manuscript, again, whenever I had the time outside of classroom responsibilities.  There were lots of weekends lost to the project as well. 

  AA: How have the institutions who employ you responded to your writing? (Do they support it? Ignore it? Even know about it?)

  MB: The Graduate Program in Science Writing is part of MIT’s Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies, which by its very nature is very supportive of my writing (and certainly encourages its continuation).  Recently upon being named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science for my science-writing contributions over the years, the department paid for my travel to receive the award.

  AA: You’d mentioned that being an adjunct at MIT is different than working as an adjunct elsewhere. Let’s address that issue directly. What does “adjunct” mean at MIT?

  MB: This can be confusing outside of the MIT community, as it is different from what adjunct has come to mean in academic institutions across the nation.  In the mid-1990s, I was an adjunct at Boston University for two years, where I came in to teach one course during the spring semester.  I was paid a flat fee ($3000 at the time) to teach a graduate-level course in science writing.  I had no other benefits or links to the larger university community.  At MIT, on the other hand, adjunct really means “professor part-time.”  In fact, I was vetted in almost the same way as if I were coming up for tenure at a university.  It was a year-long process that involved a complete assessment of my work over the years and letters of recommendation from scientists and writers.  Upon acceptance, I received a five-year contract, which is renewable upon review.  My salary is commensurate with fulltime professors in my department, adjusted for my halftime hours. MIT also includes me in their pension plan, matches my 401K contributions, and provides full health-care benefits.  Here is how MIT’s Policies and Procedures describes it: “Adjunct Professors are equivalent and made only to practitioners who have developed a high level of expertise in fields of particular importance to the MIT academic program and who also demonstrate a deep commitment to teaching and research. Responsibilities include, but are not limited to, teaching and conducting and supervising research. Each appointee should teach at least the major part of one subject per academic year, may be the instructor in charge of subjects of instruction, may supervise theses with departmental permission, and may be principal investigator on research projects.”  I am a non-voting member of the Faculty and am encouraged to participate in university matters. 

  AA: Wow. That’s both impressive in itself, and great for the MIT adjuncts. I am officially jealous. One more MIT-related question to close, if I may. What writing-related challenges and/or opportunities do you see MIT offering?

  MB: Having the connection to MIT has already opened many doors for me.  Since I have been on staff, I have had many more invitations to serve on conference panels and give lectures at other universities.

  AA: Thank you!

   

  Tags: Greg Beatty, Marcia Bartusiak, MIT, science writing

• The Plagiarism Problem: One Adjunct’s Experience

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  23 Jul 2009 /  plagiarism, teaching, time management
  Last week I gave an overview of the issues involved in the plagiarism question. This week I’m going to share a personal narrative of one adjunct’s experience dealing with plagiarism.

  Like many adjuncts, I teach for more than one school. Like many adjuncts, I do so for money, which is to say, less greed than making enough to cover bills and pay my own health insurance.

  I currently teach for four schools, all online. (I can’t imagine what it would be like to teach for more than one school in the traditional classroom, what with variable commuting time and parking situations. Those of you who do have my profound sympathy.) So that I don’t get fired, let’s call these schools College A, College B, College C, and College D, and follow plagiarized papers through the processing loop.

  A student paper comes in, and before I even read it, I can tell it is plagiarized by the shift in font size and color midway through the paper. Reading it makes the plagiarism even clearer. The writing shifts quality, style, and vocabulary at the place where the font color changed. That’s plagiarism. I’m sure.

  To be certain, I run the paper through Turnitin. I get a colorful report indicating substantial plagiarism. However, it doesn’t tag some of the sections I had spotted on my own, so I copy and paste them into Google. Sure enough, they are plagiarized too. I note the URLs and insert comments into Word indicating where each plagiarized section comes from.

  But what happens next depends on the school.

  Imagine the paper is written for College A. College A’s administration takes a hard line on plagiarism. The plagiarized paper gets an F. We’re done.

  Imagine the paper is written for College B. College B sees its role as guiding students to a better understanding of the research and citation process, so students must be asked to explain the apparent similarities between their work and work found online. Even if there’s a 100% match, they must be asked and given a chance to answer. No guidance is given on what constitutes a sufficient answer beyond “use your own judgment.” No guidance is given on how long to wait for an answer. When plagiarism charges are filed, I’m asked if I’m sure, and if I really want to do this for just X % of a paper. (Different numbers have floated around. I’ve heard numbers as low as 15%, and as high as 30%.)

  All students always have reasons they cheated. (No one ever plagiarizes, even on papers that are 100% plagiarized.) This means the discussion continues for an indefinite time.

  Imagine the paper is written for College C. College C holds to a strict honor code, and reviews each code violation independently. That’s great, but that review takes weeks, and until it is done, those students get incompletes on those assignments. That too is fine, but the school requires midterm notifications regarding students who are failing, and incompletes for pending honor code violations are not to be taken into account.

  Imagine the paper is written for College D. College D says it holds to a strict honor code, and even provides its own plagiarism checker for student and faculty use. However, of all the schools, plagiarism is most common at College D. What’s more, due to combination of faulty understanding of what plagiarism is and a weak plagiarism checker, students regularly respond to accusations of plagiarism not with “But this is completely my own work” but rather “But the plagiarism checker said this was okay.”

  When I explain that a paper can receive a 0% plagiarism report and still be 100% plagiarized by using materials not in the database, students get angry. Some file complaints.

  It gets worse. College A’s plagiarism report form is simple. Neither College B or C have formal forms; I just write up the offense and send it in. College D, however, has a web form with very specific boxes to complete. If incorrectly completed, it is rejected. (I’ve had a plagiarism charge rejected because I used Word’s comments feature to note the plagiarized sections instead of the highlighting feature. I was allowed, however, to re-file the complaint. Whew! There’s another 30 minutes of time spent on the same task!)

  It gets worse. College D gives students roughly two weeks to respond to each plagiarism charge. During that time before the response, any plagiarism counts as the first charge. (I can fail students, but students aren’t punished for those offenses by the school.)

   

  Plagiarism is embarrassing at any school, and it’s freaking tedious. I hate filing paperwork instead of teaching. But functionally, what plagiarism means for me varies incredibly according to which school it happens at.

  At College A? At College A I make darn sure students know what plagiarism is and how to avoid it, since the penalties are clear. Then, when it happens, there’s a spike of pain and pity for the students, and it’s over.

  Time penalty to me of student plagiarism? 5 minutes.

  At College B? At College B, a plagiarized paper plunges me into a morass of despair. Why do I have to ask these going through the motions questions? Why encourage lying? (When truth telling is penalized, lying is markedly more likely.)

  Time penalty to me? Unknown and unknowable, but usually about an hour per plagiarized paper.

  At College C? At College C, dealing with the plagiarism is straightforward on my end, but I feel dishonest. I can’t tell students who plagiarize they’re doing badly in the class because the report’s not back? Why?

  Time penalty? About 10 minutes to write things up and explain the incomplete.

  At College D? At College D, the mass of despair becomes some putrid abyss. I resent College B’s approach for the squishy dishonesty, but at this point in the process, I loath College D’s approach.

  Time penalty? Unknown and unknowable, but it starts at an hour per plagiarized paper and may go to several and drag out over weeks or months, depending on student complaints.

  For me, then, what plagiarism means depends on where it happens. And tracking these different approaches means juggling standards, and remembering what the rules and processes are where. And that means plagiarism determines how much time and mental energy I have left for my own writing.

  Tags: grading, Greg Beatty, plagiarism, Turnitin.com

• Write On! An Interview With Dana S. Dunn

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  27 May 2009 /  adjuncts, publishing, research, time management, writing
  This week we’re shifting focus a bit. Dana S. Dunn is Professor of Psychology at Moravian College in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Moravian is a small and selective liberal arts college with a long and distinguished history. Professor Dunn has edited several books on pedagogical practices, published scores of articles, and several of his own books, including A Short Guide to Writing about Psychology. Professor Dunn was gracious enough to share his perspective on adjuncts and writing.

  Adjunct Advocate (AA): What specific challenges do adjuncts face when writing?

  Professor Dunn: The most common challenge the adjunct writer faces is discretionary time. Time to reflect. Time to read. And most of all, time to actually write. Multiple courses, which are sometimes taught on multiple campuses, which adds a commuting time, take a toll. So does lecture and discussion preparation and grading. Factoring in some “down” time for family or leisure pursuits (or possibly additional, non-teaching-related work) leaves little time for writing. So, the aspiring writer who is an adjunct must either be or become a whiz at time management. He or she must also learn to make maximum use of small amounts of writing time. For concrete guidance about writing often but in small amounts, I suggest adjunct colleagues consult the very good works of Robert Boice, who researched effective and not-so-effective strategies pursued by new and junior faculty. (AA: Boice is author of books such as Advice for New Faculty Members [2000] and Professors as Writers [1990].)  

  Having a quiet space to write can be a challenge. Adjunct offices are also usually shared by several adjuncts, which means they are a quick way station for students and the adjuncts themselves for before or after class meetings.

  AA: Do you find that adjunct faculty members focus their writing on different areas than tenure track faculty do? Are more or less in touch with current theory?

  Dunn: I can really only speak for psychology, but my guess is that adjuncts are apt to focus on carving out writing projects from their dissertations simply because the primary research has already been done. For writing in new scholarly directions, it may well depend upon the field. Faculty in the humanities, for example, may be able to continue in their intended area of interest if they have access to adequate library or other archival resources. Faculty in the natural sciences and some social sciences (including psychology) really need access to dedicated lab facilities. Unless a college or university is willing to provide such facilities (and few do), adjuncts in those area will be hard pressed to begin or continue original research. One possible solution is to develop a scholarly collaboration with a colleague who has access to a lab or the equivalent or to continue working with one’s graduate mentor (if one exists).

  Keeping in touch with current theory is a matter of reading journals, monitoring or taking part in online discussions, and attending conferences. The first two options are easier than the last, which requires funding. But even the first two are a challenge if you are teaching 3, 4, or 5 courses a term to make ends meet.

  AA: What could interested institutions do to help adjuncts engage in more writing/write and publish more successfully?

  Dunn: I don’t mean to be flip, but for starters such institutions could pay adjunct colleagues more on a per class basis and/or reward longer term adjuncts with use of institutional resources (e.g., copying privileges, secretarial support, paper and other supplies, a place to work).

  Adjuncts can try to orient writing assignments in class to pedagogical outcomes that might be publishable in teaching or pedagogy journals. Interested institutions could run adjunct training workshops devoted to professional development activities (e.g., time management skills, manuscript preparation, negotiating with editors) in addition to teaching strategies. Everyone benefits if graduate students, new faculty, and adjunct faculty all receive guidance preparing for the classroom and professional/scholarly activities.

  AA: Are there writing-related challenges or opportunities that are specific to psychology as a discipline?

  Dunn: Psychology is a science, which means it is driven (largely) by empirical data. Academic psychologists conduct research, which means they need access to research participants, resources to pay for research expenses, and so on. Research is a big undertaking and not for the faint of heart. The chief writing-related challenge is having data or access to data that can be written up into publishable journal articles. Besides empirical articles, of course, psychologists also write theory and review articles, commentary pieces, book reviews, pedagogy and teaching articles, and so on. However, empirical journal articles are the coin of the realm for new and untenured faculty. I would advise an adjunct faculty member in psychology to complete and defend the dissertation at all costs, and then pull out as many empirical articles from it as can be done.

  The article(s) should be placed in as rigorous a journal as possible through the peer review process. I would then counsel the adjunct colleague to network in order to form a collaboration with a colleague or colleagues who has research facilities. The goal is to continue to produce a record of reasonable scholarship (e.g., co-authored papers or chapters, conference presentations) while being an effective adjunct faculty member and continuing to search for a full-time position (if that is the adjunct colleague’s goal).

  AA: Let us shift focus a moment. Is there a benefit to schools and/or administrators to provide the kind of support you suggest for adjuncts? (What might motivate them to do so?)

  The main benefits for creating such support are to (a) develop some institutional loyalty on the part of the adjuncts (i.e., what is to be lost by treating them well?) and (b) markedly improving the experience for our students (i.e., faculty who are treated well and fairly, whether adjunct or full-time, will perform better in the classroom, take their work more seriously, be more conscientious, and so on). Kindness and decency are always good ideas.

  Motivating administrators is, of course, always a challenge, more so now due to the economy. Still, an argument can be made that modest outlays of resources for adjunct colleagues will pay dividends to the institution where reliability, professionalism, and students’ experiences in the classroom are concerned. If nothing else, trying an “experiment” in this vein is probably a good idea. Perhaps encouraging an administration to do a trial run (say, a year or two) where resources for adjuncts is concerned is one way to learn whether it is cost effective and beneficial to the institution. Again, I don’t see any great risks here, although I am sure that some administrators would worry that creating (positive) expectations can be problematic if the (experimental) benefits are later withdrawn. To deal with this problem, I would counsel candor at the start.

  Thanks so much for inviting me to comment. I hope my observations prove to be useful.

  AA: Thank you! Your comments have been very helpful indeed. 

  Tags: Dana Dunn, Greg Beatty, Moravian College, psychology, publishing, writing

• Ch-ch-changes…

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  12 Jan 2009 /  time management, writing
  Recently I had two experiences that made me realize how much I’d changed, and how much things have changed. (Stay with me—this really is about adjuncts and writing.)

  Both of these experiences came when interacting with one of the schools for whom I’m an adjunct.

  Experience #1 came when working on a course design for the school, which provides standardized course materials for its online courses. I agreed to revise a literature course for them, only to learn that I had to work with their newly established Course Development Process, which included required two hour “teleconferences” (phone calls).

  I was baffled as to exactly what these conferences were for. It turned out to be a multi-person reviewing process, in which everyone had to follow along as the person running the meeting reviewed my course materials, made a few minor comments, and then signed off on them. Let me be clear: a few small areas of the course were improved. Let me be clearer still: that was not the primary purpose of the call, which was CYA, as everyone ritually agreed to the work. And let me clearest yet: we had different agendas. All of the other people on the call were on salary, and so if the phone call took an hour (which it did, thankfully), or two, they were paid the same. As an adjunct, though, and a freelancer, an extra hour spent farting around in a meeting was an hour I wasn’t getting paid for work somewhere else.

  When I first started writing academic works, I did so to learn, and for the joy of it. Now, after so long as an adjunct and freelancer, those seem…insufficient. As does that word.

  Experience #2 came from the same school. I was invited to write articles on my area of expertise that would be shared with the whole school. These articles were intended both to build community and to help raise the level of professional discourse. I did such things when I was first working as an adjunct. I wrote up handouts, contributed to lists, etc. Now, though, I felt vaguely like I was being scammed.

  I don’t think that traditional academics in tenured positions feel this, though I’ve known any number who felt too busy, or like it wasn’t the best use of their time. However, it wasn’t the unpaid nature of the writing they objected to, it was the specific focus: they thought their time was better spent writing formal articles in their discipline than articles for the general community.

  I did not set out to change my attitude toward writing and the academic community. I set out to pay the rent. But change happened, all the same…

  Tags: academic writing, Greg Beatty

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