There's lots of great ideas and suggestions in this piece. A short conclusion section that sums up key ideas would help tie it all together.
26 Matching Annotations
- Sep 2020
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murmurations-journal.org murmurations-journal.org
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We can teach them about the influence of their votes on such issues as educational funding, employment, civil rights, andthe overall political climate. Asa result, they may beencouraged to understand their valueswithout being swayed bycampaignplatforms, one-sided messages, or biased media coverage.
The tone throughout the piece seems to bounce around between different roles for faculty -- as one responsible for imparting knowledge or otherwise changing students, to mentor or guide supporting student's path towards self-discovery. In the first model, faculty have power and responsibility. In the second model, students hold power and responsibility. Which model is more aligned with your thinking for this work? Which do you think would be more accessible to faculty and more valuable for students?
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One of our goals is
would most faculty agree that this is a goal, or is this aspirational? If aspirational, perhaps this sentence might read "one of our goals should be to..."
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I found the transition from the desired outcome (civic engagement) to the call to action (college and university educators, administrators and advisors as guides to civic engagement) to be a bit abrupt. Would you consider inserting the description of barriers between these two components? Then your organizational scheme would flow from intro to challenge to barriers to proposed strategy/call to action.
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Participating in the electoral process by votingor registering others to vote is an example of civic participation that impacts health. A study of 44 countries (including the United States) found that voter participation was associated with better self-reported health, even after controlling for individual and country characteristics. In another study, individuals who did not vote reported poorer health in subsequent years(U.S. Department of Health and Human Service, 2014).
I'm very curious about this information. Is this causation or correlation? What are the individual characteristics that were controlled for in the study? Does this suggest that the act of voting somehow improves health? How can that be? Is this related to empowerment?
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access students
This term is unfamiliar to me. I wonder if a definition or alternative phrasing could be included to help readers from diverse backgrounds better understand the meaning?
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Value:
President Obama consistently talks about the importance of civic engagement for all people, but especially for young people and traditionally marginalized people who have a longer term stake in the results of policies and practices enacted today. It seems that colleges and universities can play an important role in helping student build cultural capital inherent in civic engagement. I think this speaks to the role of colleges and universities as institutions of higher learning -- as opposed to job training programs. I wonder if your value statement might be expanded a bit to give more context for the importance of this work?
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- Jun 2020
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murmurations-journal.org murmurations-journal.org
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We professors may have been energetic and eager about discussing the issues in our classrooms
or maybe not? Do you think it's common for faculty to want to engage students beyond their discipline? Is this interest more common among faculty teaching certain disciplines (e.g. history, political science, philosophy) as opposed to faculty in other fields (e.g. science, engineering, education)? If faculty aren't inherently interested in teaching about civic engagement, should they be? Why?
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Fostering Civic Engagement across the CurriculumNow that media coverage has waned, it is the time for reflecting on last year’s highs and lows as we make improvements for the future. Extensively covered in the media, the midterm election cycle was a 2018 event for the history books. These developmentsstill presenta unique opportunity for teaching civic engagement to students. We professors may have been energetic and eager about discussing the issues in our classrooms. On the contrary, some of our students might have lacked the same enthusiasm. Othersmay have expressed outright anxiety regarding the political process. What can we do to help with such issues in the future?
This is a timely and important topic. The piece is currently written through the eyes of a professor and is addressed to other professors. I think this is absolutely fine, but it may limit the potential audience. Is it only faculty that have the opportunity to help students gain a better understanding of and appreciation for the election process and the role of civic engagement? Would any of these strategies be useful to others, such as advisors, administrators, ...
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No matter the discipline or educational level, we are charged with inspiring and motivating our students to make a difference in our nation. Government officials, employers, and higher education professionals increasingly recognize educators’ significancein fostering civic learning.(Torney-Purtaet al. 2015). Democracy flourishes when eligible voters recognize the meaning of being knowledgeable and involved in the political process. Embracing our essentialroles in empowering, informing, and exciting students as voters helps strengthen Americandemocracyand maybe one of our most importantteaching and learning goals ahead of the 2020 election.
I think this is a very strong paragraph and sets the tone for the entire paper. It's great as a conclusion, but it would be wonderful to include some variation at the beginning of the article to let readers know the author's purpose in writing.
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A teach-in is an informal presentation and discussion or a series of lectures aimed at educating the public on criticaltopics.
I love this idea, but I wonder what will motivate faculty to take on this type of volunteer role?
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shapetheminto engaged citizens
Is it the professor's job to "shape" students, or to provide students with the knowledge skills they need to become engaged citizens?
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We canalsoinstruct students in becoming familiar with the processes and procedures of voting in an election
I would guess that many faculty may feel uncomfortable or unqualified to instruct students on the specifics of voting -- although many might be comfortable talking more generally with students about the process or informing students about on-line sources for information about local races and polling information.
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On the contrary, some of our students might have lacked the same enthusiasm
This might be a good place to add some statistics about the percentage of young adults participating in elections to add weight to your argument.
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This is a test annotation.
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- May 2018
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murmurations-journal.org murmurations-journal.org
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Thank you for this very thought provoking paper. I found the discussion of possible connections between educational approaches and physical changes in the brain to be very interesting. The potential ramifications of these connections, and their implications for engineering education -- and education in general, is quite provocative.
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As engineering educators, how are we ensuring the balanced cognitive development necessary for theessential social and moral reasoning required of our profession? Have we out-sourced thisresponsibility to colleagues in liberal arts? If so, is the result as intended? Is it our responsibility toprovide the means for self-awareness and balance? Can integrating Phenomenal activities withPhysical serve holistic developmental aims? Can we envision integrative alternatives to presentincarnations of engineering curricula?
Great questions that speak to the basic function higher education (and perhaps all education) in the 21st century. What does it mean to be "educated" in today's society? Do Universities exist to prepare students for a particular job, or do they aspire to develop broad knowledge and thinking skills? In this time of increasing calls for efficiency and accountability, colleges and universities are moving towards focused, stripped down curricula that include only those subjects most aligned with the student's major field of study. Further conversation about the cost of these decisions is warranted.
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It is the possibility that developing a robust Physical stance for engineering simultaneouslyundermines the neurological development needed for social and moral reasoning that gives us pause
Yes! This is alarming!
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To be sure, these conjectures are provocative. However, is it possible that laboratory science isenabling us to see weak signals of the dynamic interplay between our cognitive actions and our state ofbeing? Do these conjectures explain anything of the patterns we see, such as an observedoverrepresentation of engineers in terrorist cells (Gambetta & Hertog, 2007), and decreased interestand capacity for moral reasoning observed in engineering students as they progress through theircurricula relative to their non-engineering peers (Cech, 2013)?
This is certainly provocative and worthy of conjecture and further study. The evidence to date, while insufficient to show causality, none-the-less suggests grave consequences to narrowly-focused education.
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f we connect the dots of these separate studies, and consider their implications for engineering, onepossibility is that practices of chronically and disproportionately activating the neural networks of thePhysical stance, as typically required in fields like engineering, strengthen the Physical stance neuronalconnections while simultaneously weakening the cognitive abilities of the Phenomenal stance--Moral,emotional, and social reasoning. (“Neurons that fire together, wire together”-Shatz, 1992).
Perhaps this is an argument for T-shaped approaches to education?
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The learning process can therefore be inhibited by other chemicals,such as cortisol, which the body releases when under stress or in a state of fear; the bottom line--stressor fear can inhibit learning.
I find this interesting in light of our current reliance on high stakes testing. Could the anxiety and stress of high stakes testing be physically inhibiting students' ability to learn?
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In turn, structure determines behavior--greater muscular strength produces a greaterability to do things that require muscles. Structure and behavior exist in a reinforcing relationship to oneanother, as shown in Figure 4. In biological terms, this relationship represents a self-replicating systemor an autopoietic system.
Our social science colleagues may draw on motivation and other theories to explain this phenomena.
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With so many assumptions and inferences required to go from raw data to a brightly colored image asseen in Figure 3, it is useful to keep in mind that fMRI results are highly massaged representations. Andthere are cases when the same neural image was used to as evidence to bolster opposing argumentsabout the condition of a brain-injured patient (Koch, 2012). Additionally, while our best science candiscern the signs of neurological activity presuming the accuracy of the BOLD model, it cannotdifferentiate between the type of activity--whether it is functioning to inhibit or activate the particularbrain region (Owens, 2017). somethin
important limitation
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Science Foundation.This letter, entitled “Growing Convergence Research at NSF,” outlines a vision for “the deep integrationof knowledge, techniques, and expertise from multiple fields to form new and expanded frameworks foraddressing scientific and societal challenges and opportunities” (National Science Foundation, 2017)
In essence, it seems that this may not be so much a new idea, but a renewed recognition of the importance of holistically developing the mind and employing expansive thinking. Many of our most famous scientists and engineers (e.g. Einstein, Galileo, Tesla) were also artists or musicians.
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Primer on fMRI
This is a lovely and very informative introduction to fMRI. I assume that the authors included this section to help the reader understand the power and limitations of fMRI data. While I appreciated this information, I found the primer distracting from the overarching discussion. I wonder if this information could be included as an appendix and replaced here with a brief summary of the cogent information?
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Second, we wish tocatalyze a conversation in the engineering education community, and education community moregenerally, on possible neurological implications of educational programs that focus predominantly onmathematics and science and contain implicit judgements regarding the relative (lesser) value of“softer,” social aspects of students’ professional formation (Cech, 2013).
This is a very important and timely conversation. Education at all levels is increasingly focusing on teaching skills in limited areas (e.g. math and science) at the expense of arts, music, social science, and other disciplines that are deemed less relevant to current high stakes testing or preparing students for narrowly defined careers. It is important to consider the unintended consequences of this approach.
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