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Berea College
Matt is passionate about the design and development of usable languages for embedded control. You can some of his work at concurrency.cc, a rallying point for parallel programming on the popular Arduino platform. However, most of the time Matt keeps himself busy as a member of the faculty at Berea College.
Authored Comments
From a faculty perspective, you're (sadly) right: scholarship, at many institutions, is the measure of success. If your teaching is "good enough," you'll make it. (In fact, at some larger institutions, you're discouraged from doing too well in your teaching, as some members of the evaluation committee will see it as an indicator that you're not serious about your research; I've heard this first-hand from colleagues.) At smaller institutions (in the US, anyway), it is not uncommon for them to say that excellence in teaching is the <em>sine qua non</em> element of advancement, meaning "it is essential." So, it does vary from institution to institution, and what that institution values.
<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boyer's_model_of_scholarship">Boyer</a> presented an interesting piece in the early '90's titled <a href="http://www.hadinur.com/paper/BoyerScholarshipReconsidered.pdf">Scholarship Reconsidered</a>, wherein he suggested a new model for considering and evaluating scholarship in the academy. From some poking around, it <a href="http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2007/10/02/wcu">seems like few institutions have truly embraced his model</a>.
I'm not yet convinced we should all flee to MOOCs and online forums, as I don't think they're actually a substitute for good, interactive learning in a dynamic classroom. But, in the absence of that kind of interaction and engagement, they might be a better option. For example, if you're sitting in a lecture hall with 150 other people, and the majority of your marks come from exams you sit at the end of the term... well, yes. It is possible you could do just as well online.
I thank you for your comment, and I'm sorry you feel that way.
When politicians spin educational policy without experience actually working with students, we tend to see radical departures from processes and practices that work. For example, we know (from years and years of research and experience) that excessive testing does not help young children develop. Yet, when a child comes to school hungry, and unable to focus and learn effectively, we still claim that the teachers should "be held accountable." Cutting one set of social programmes and expecting more from another has never been an equation that makes sense to me.
But, this is the nature of policy and politics. I suppose that's what I was trying to say, and said poorly: we cannot dictate education through policy and politics. Politicians pandering to corporate interests (in hopes of being reelected) and talking heads on TV are not the people you want driving the agenda for the education of a national or global populace. For example, I've never understood why we allow politicians to drive the process in education, but we don't let them dictate how to carry out open heart surgery? Educating children (or adults, for that matter) effectively is not any easier.
A quick look around the web suggests that Ireland is having many of the same debates that the rest of the world is: an understaffed educational system, struggles with inequity (and education that serves those who have better than those who have not), and so on. It's a hard problem, and I stand by my comment that I don't like it when someone waives their hand at it and claims the problem to be simple.