A HISTORY OF STUDENT RATINGS: Meso-Pummel Era
A long time ago, at a university far, far away, there were no student rating scales. During prehistoric times, there was only one university (near present-day Detroit) (Me, 2003), which was actually more like a community college because research and the four-year liberal arts curriculum hadn’t been invented yet. This institution was called Cave University, named after its major donor: Harold University (Me, 2005).
Students were very concerned about the quality of teaching back then. In fact, they created their own method of evaluation to express their feelings. For example, if an instructor strayed from the syllabus, fell behind the planned schedule, wrote faulty test items, or cut class to watch one of those Jurassic Park movies, which he (they were all men) later regretted, the students would club him (Me & You, 2005). This practice prompted historians to call this period the Meso-Pummel Era.
Admittedly, this practice seemed a bit crude and excessive at the time, but it held faculty accountable for their teaching. Obviously, there was no need for tenure. There was a lot of faculty turnover as word of the teaching evaluation method spread to Grand Rapids, which was on the land currently occupied by South Dakota.
That takes us up to 1927. I skipped over 90 billion years because nothing happened that was relevant to this documentary.
References
Me, I. M. (2003). Prehistoric teaching techniques in cave classrooms. Rock & a Hard
Place Educational Review, 3(4), 10−11.
Me, I. M. (2005). Naming institutions of higher education and buildings after filthy rich
donors with spouses who are dead or older. Pretentious Academic Quarterly, 14(4), 326−329.
Me, I. M., & You, W. U. V. (2005). Student clubbing methods to insure teaching
accountability. Journal of Punching & Pummeling Evaluation, 18(6), 170−183.
My next blog will cover the “Meso-Remmers Era,” named after the famous Purdue University professor Peter Seldin. His contributions over the succeeding 32 years will be described.
COPYRIGHT © 2010 Ronald A. Berk, LLC
As a follow-up to my previous blog, I would add one more criterion to the list for Picking the right topic: (c) Fill a need and want in your niche. That can greatly improve the salability of your book. What information does your target audience need and want? The trick is to match your expertise, passion, and your niche’s need on the topic. That magical match will produce a book that’s credible, salable to your audience, and fun to write.
Now let’s move on to the next strategy:
2. How to Create Chapters Quickly and Easily: Writing chapters from scratch or even a detailed topic outline can be excruciatingly painful. Where do you begin? As I’ve said elsewhere, “It’s like eating one of those dinosaurs from Jurassic Park. Once you forklift your filet of T-Rex off your grill, which is the size of Wyoming, where do you take your first bite? Tough decision.”
Fortunately, as academicians, we’re not only required to write books, but also journal articles, chapters for edited volumes, research reports, wedding invitations for our daughters, and parking violations. So we have plenty of writing practice. Here’s the SECRET STRATEGY I’ve used for years (Are you ready? Getting excited? Bet ya thought blogs couldn’t be this much fun!): convert your published articles into chapters. There it is. It takes the guess work out of what to write because you already wrote it. Ah Ha!! Some of you may already do that. As most pastors say, “Let’s unpack this a bit further.”
Here are a few issues to consider:
(a) Write articles on related topics: Most of us generate articles and research publications that follow one major theme or passion of ours. They should hinge together under a common head or rubric. (Personal Note: For example, over the past decade I was passionate about testing new teaching techniques to connect with this Net Generation of students. Almost all students hate statistics, but this generation had other characteristics that made stat more challenging to teach. My research and articles focused on these techniques: humor, music, videos, and improvisation. I also did keynotes and workshops for faculty and administrators on those topics, plus continued to test the effectiveness of the techniques with keynotes to student audiences in the U.S. and overseas. Do you see where I’m heading with this? Me neither. I’m just rambling in the longest “personal note” in history. End of Bloated Note 2.)
(b) Why use articles? Articles test the criteria stated in my previous blog. Does your article contribute something new or better than what exists? Does it fill a need? The review process will answer these questions. Your work also goes through the rigor of peer review, with detailed feedback from reviewers, maybe rejection, maybe resubmission after revision, maybe submission to another journal, and copy editing before publication. After this beating is over, you usually have an article that is appreciably better than it was originally. Given the length of the journal review process, this could take 2–5 years for a bevy of articles to be ready for book conversion. Keep in mind you’re still scoring field goals with these articles or chapters. The book will be the culmination of all of that work, that is, the touchdown. (Note: This is football season, right? You can expect football analogies and metaphors. Watch out!)
(c) Start hinging your articles: Find that rubric that draws your body of work (articles) together. Think about that hinge as you begin to write each new article. You may also write pieces that have nothing to do with that hinge for different reasons. (Personal Note: This will be shorter that the bloated one above. As you may have guessed from my article topics above, my hinge is: “How to NOT Get Whacked by Your Institution!” Haha. A little hinge humor. The topic is: “Teaching Strategies for the Net Generation.” Among the 30+ books on the Net Generation, is there a book on this topic with the content I have chosen? No. Is there a need? No. Does anybody care? No. I hope I’m kidding. End of Semi-Bloated Note.)
These paragraphs should get you started. The next blog will be “How to convert articles into chapters without violating copyright.” Stick around for my next installment.
COPYRIGHT © 2009 Ronald A. Berk, LLC
