writing

Examination or not

Well right now I am sitting supervising my eCommerce & eGovernment class while they sit their final exam. In most cases I would not have to do this myself but since I did not book via an examination hall I had to resolve the problem myself.

The actual examination is three short essay type questions to be answered in 3 hours. In addition to this the students are given four questions and they get to choose the three they want to answer. They have all been sitting working intensely for two hours and the early leavers are beginning to drop off.

I am not a big fan of the written exam as a form of examination. Mostly because all the exams I have sat for have only had the impact of me studying and cramming up until the last moment and then promptly forgetting everything within weeks from the exam.

So in some cases essays are a good solution. They allow the student to dig much deeper into a specific topic and develop necessary research and writing skills. The problem with the essay, however, is that the students tend to read less of the course material and focus on their chosen topic.

Naturally there are several different kinds of examination but they all either allow in-depth studies of smaller parts of the material or require the students to cram everything into their brains for a short intense burst of regurgitation.

So what to do? Not a lot. I keep tampering with my courses in order to find a good balance between forms of teaching and examination but no matter what is done there is always something to be gained and something else will be lost.

Posted on by mklang

Last Lines

The opening lines to any work are obviously of great importance. Many writers spend a lot of time and effort to get the line just right. One of my favourite opening lines is from Camus “The Stranger”. The confusion and sadness in the opening lines both sets the stage and sums up the confusion of the character.

Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I donâ??t know. I had a telegram from home: â??mother passed away. Funeral tomorrow. Yours sincerely.â?? That doesnâ??t mean anything. It may have been yesterday.

Closing lines rarely recieve the same amount of attention – which is strange. The importance of opening and closing is not limited to fictional works. Academic works also attempt lift their work with opening and closing lines. Here are a few examples:

Democracy and its critics (Dahl 1989): Yet the vision of people governing themselves as political equals, and possessing all the resources and institutions necessary to do so, will I believe remain a compelling if always demanding guide in the search for a society in which people may live together in peace, respect each other’s intristic equality, and jointly seek the best possible life”

Water Wars (Shiva 2002): The struggle over the kumbh, between gods and demons, between those who protect and those who destroy, between those who nurture and those who exploit, is ongoing. Each of us has a role in shaping the creation of the future. Each of us is responsible for the kumbh – the sacred water pot.

A Theory of Justice (Rawls 1971): Purity of heart, if one could attain it, would be to see clearly and to act with grace and self-command from this point of view.

Free Speech: A philosophical enquiry (Schauer 1982): There will always remain some hard cases, but many of them are not as hard as they may at first sight appear.

My own last line: Discarding the technology entails a limited, regulated use but will fail to recognise the full potential of disruptive technologies as an agent of change within the participatory democracy.

Some last lines attempt to sum up the whole work, some attempt to sum up the last chapter, others simply finish of the final chapter. Obviously there must be a last line in a book and this line need not have any particular function in itself – but it seems a bit of an anti-climax when the last line of a good book has no other desire than to end the book.

Posted on by mklang

Writing a masters thesis

The lecture I am preparing for today is on how to write a Masters Thesis. The lecture is in part a discussion on how to structure a thesis and what parts need to be there (and which things not to include) but the lecture also contains practical elements such as how to plan your time and being prepared to be sick to death with your own work. Recent additions to this lecture include a larger focus on plagiarism and how to avoid it â?? or at least not to get caught.

Aside from the plagiarism part many of the students become reasonably fascinated with their essay as a cultural artifact rather than a scientific report. This means that they tend to become more poetic and flowery in their language and presentation. In some creative cases students try to rework their essays to a fictional whodunit format. Trying to create an air of suspense rather than telling the reader from the go that this is scientific report â?? no surprises, not too much esthetic work, just keep it simple and straightforward.

Many students have not read a thesis before they try to create on of their own â?? this leads to a slight problem since they do not really know what the end product is. In addition to this they often get confused about who their readers are. The latter is particularly common when they are collaborating with industry and they feel a need to produce something that their industrial partners find acceptable.

Then there is the whole area of argumentation that seems at times to be totally misunderstood. I usually recommend Anthony Weston’s Rulebook for Arguments (the second edition used to be online but I cannot find it) and for those who cannot read there is always the amusing Monty Python “Argument sketch”

So I guess that I have my hands full after lunchâ?¦

Posted on by mklang

Open Access Petition

Have you signed the “Petition for guaranteed public access to publicly-funded research results”? No? Well there is still time. The purpose of the petition is to register support for free and open access to European research and for the recommendations proposed in the EU’s ‘Study on the Economic and Technical Evolution of the Scientific Publication Markets of Europe‘.

Read more about the petition and sign it here. Over 18000 have already signed but there is always room for more.

Posted on by mklang

Empty holes in my diary

A diary is a frightening thing. It comes all filled out with days and months and other relevant information. All that is empty is the actual content of your own time. This means that the diary in itself demands that you fill it with relevant personal information.

An empty diary therefore is a failure. You have been unable to fill the little book with things to do. When I started working at university people would ask me if I was available for a meeting or to give a lecture. I would turn to the relevant page on my diary and see that it was empty. Agree to the appointment and fill in the blank space with a sense of accomplishment. I had done something â?? I had filled a void.

What it took time to realize was that the blank spaces in the diary were not really empty â?? they were (and still are) time for work, time for the craft of research. Reading, writing research takes time and requires empty spaces in a diary. Not just the brief moment between two booked meetings â?? but real time. Time to penetrate a subject and develop ideas, time to record these ideas in the correct format (papers, articles & books).

Despite this understanding, blank pages in the diary still stress me out, and cry to be filled but I must do more to guard my productive time. This will be especially true next term when I am literally going to drown in teaching.

These last two years I tested going completely digital. Maintaining my diary only on my computer and syncing it with my telephone and iPod but this has not really worked well. I like the clarity but there are situations where I would prefer not to pull out a gadget to check my time and to fill in an appointment. So next year will be paper based again.

How do you guard your time? Where are you productive? All tips and tricks appreciatedâ?¦

Posted on by mklang

DRM & Dog Poo

I wrote an article which has been published on the Swedish Green Party website Cogito.nu. The article discusses the dangers to democracy posed by digital restrictions management (DRM). In the article I discuss the way in which regulation works by using an example of picking up dog poo. Strange mixture of DRM & dog poo but I think it works. The article is available here (in Swedish).

Posted on by mklang

Not annoyed

On Tuesday I wrote about being annoyed with a publisher. My annoyance concerned a chapter I had written for the book called Värdet av Förtroende (The Value of Trust) which has just been published. The reason for my annoyance was that I wanted to include a Calvin & Hobbes strip where Calvin’s father convinces Calvin that light bulbs work by magic. The point was to show that trust in authority is not always justified.

The publishers would not let me include the strip. First they stated that permission was too complicated to get. This was not a good excuse since I had already obtained permission (and payed for the privilege). Then they stated that the strip could not be published for technical reasons. This was silly but I realised that I would have to accept defeat even if my editor struggled hard on my behalf.

Today I received two copies of the book and imagine my surprise when, there on page 217 was my strip. So all that is left is for me not to be annoyed any more – how annoying!

Posted on by mklang

Book Chapter Out Now

I have a chapter in a book that has come out today. Unfortunately for many of you it is in Swedish… wow! talk about your hubris!  The book is called Värdet av Förtroende (The Value of Confidence) and contains chapters which discuss different aspects of trust. More information from the publishers.
My chapter Förtroende och Teknologi (Trust and Technology) deals with the dangers of becoming complacent and beginning to trust technology without having a deeper understanding of the pitfalls of technology. I base the chapter on the introduction into Sweden of police DNA databases. Much of the article is also critical to the role of the academic since I criticize a law professor for singing the praises of technology she does not understand. My criticism was originally written in an unpublished short article (also Swedish) I wrote in January 2005.

The cover of the book is not too exiting but I guess the publishers really believe that you should never judge a book by its cover.  I am also a bit annoyed with the publishers for not letting me use a Calvin & Hobbes cartoon which I had got permission to use.

Posted on by mklang

In the mood

Actually I should be writing something. Not only one thing but I have promised several (mostly short) pieces. But I am having a hard time getting into the mood for writing. The closer the deadlines the less I want to jump in. Procrastination takes over…

Is the mood really an illusion? Often writers claim that they need to be inspired by their muse (or other artificial stimulants) to be able to create. Others claim that the art of writing is just a humbug and it’s all down to hard work. Pragmatists (or is it salesmen/consultants?) make strange claims such as: writing is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration. Not really sure where I stand on this.

Life would be nice if the mood was ever present. In particular if the mood was kind enough to show up at deadlines. But through experience I know that my mood seldom has the good manners to show up when needed most. So what is left is sad determination. Wish there was a way to create the mood. No – absinthe (Toulouse-Lautrec), opium (De Quincey) or LSD (Morrison) would not be a good idea. These may have worked for others but I somehow doubt that any paper I write would be improved through these means.

What gets you in the mood?

Posted on by mklang

Grey Saturday

Yupp another rainy Saturday has rolled around. While taking a walk around town I managed to pick up Vilém Flusser‘s book Towards a Philosophy of Photography which seems very exiting. Also discovered that the cool exhibition by Mattias Adolfsson (blogged about him earlier and he also has a blog with images) was still available and so was my favourite picture. So I bought the Beatnik Dragon.

Not a bad bit of procrastination – but now it’s back to the the real writing. Or rather as LP would say – the stuff that I really get paid for…

Posted on by mklang