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What is the fate of academic practice, where knowledge production is a slow, resource intensive process, in an age of fast-moving, fragmented, and free information? How can emergent technologies be put to effective use in learning to engage students in their learning when students – so-called “digital natives” – are primarily socialized as technology consumers…
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This next installment begins with my personal intellectual curiosity about big data, offers resources for using the Contingent Faculty Index, and concludes with a practical how-to about extracting data from pdf tables into csv format (for use in Excel, SPSS, Google Fusion Tables, etc.) How to Get a Humanist-Sociologist Excited about Big Data Wendy Hsu,…
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In this second installment of this open research process series I will more closely examine the 2006 data from the AAUP’s Contingent Faculty Index for what it has told us, how the data have been used, and what else the data can show. [Go to the beginning of the series on contingency] What the AAUP…
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On February 7th, I attended a panel on the future of K-12 education and the role of the liberal arts, particularly of Occidental, in creating that future. Since I’m teaching a course about the crisis in higher education from the perspective of threats to the liberal arts approach to knowledge, I wanted to share the…
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My dissertation research focused on the obstacles that young aspiring musicians faced as the labor market shifted away from formal institutions toward contingent and freelance action supported by emergent technology. As a former adjunct, labor sociologist, and faculty support professional, I have become obsessed with the parallel forces I’m observing in higher education and how…
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Last week I had the opportunity to hear Prof. Lewis-McCoy, of Sociology and Black Studies at CUNY, speak to Oxy faculty on the topic of Educational Inequality in Well Resourced Settings. The short title of the talk was “Together but Still Unequal,” a reference to the Separate but Equal laws of the racially segregated US…
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I’m currently working with a data set from the Adjunct Project that began from a simple, brilliant, idea – use social media to ask adjunct faculty input their pay and benefits into a collective Google Spreadsheet. Over a couple of weeks the spreadsheet was populated with nearly 2000 responses, providing up to date information from…
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At our upcoming Digital Scholarship Institute, my colleagues and I will explore the theme of alternative argumentation. At our institution, Occidental College, all frosh are required to take an interdisciplinary cultural studies seminar that focuses on honing argumentation skills. Traditionally, the curriculum has focused on text-based argumentation (reading texts and writing about them), but CSP…
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Check out this Google Doc where adjuncts across the US are compiling data on what they make, whether they have contracts, and whether they have benefits and retirement. Super creative use of digital media to gather important data cheaply and quickly. Kudos and thanks to Copy-Paste for building our knowledge of the labor conditions adjuncts…
jacob alden sargent 