Comments on: Prof. Pushbutton to the rescue!

By: (Re-)inventing the educratic wheel : Historiann : History and sexual politics, 1492 to the present

Wed, 28 Sep 2011 14:56:59 +0000

[...] member who “doesn’t really interact” with the students are complete drags. Professor Pushbutton to the rescue! There are also two types of professors at UMR. One group’s only responsibility is to work [...]

By: Dr. Virago

Dr. Virago — Sat, 23 Oct 2010 17:29:32 +0000

truffula – Are we by any chance at the same university? Oh no, wait, my training wasn’t online, it was in person. But yeah, we now have to make all of our plane, car rental, and hotel purchases on a university purchasing card rather than getting reimbursed, and we had to get training to use it, sitting around the room with a dozen other people with entirely different budgeting (coaches, profs with huge private grants, profs with measly college travel funding, department managers, etc.). I *wish* ours had been online.

By: Historiann

Historiann — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 17:18:04 +0000

Ha. I had to do an on-line sexual harassment training program pushbutton thingie last year, along with every other faculty and staff member of my uni. It was so easy to game–just assume that the most severe, most draconian answer/action is the right one at all times, and you’ll get 100%!

I only got 89%, because I kept thinking like I was a department chair dealing with real people and sometimes ambiguous situations.

By: FrauTech

FrauTech — Tue, 19 Oct 2010 17:12:20 +0000

I learned more through my company’s LENGTHY drug training than I had ever known about drugs. Sometimes you got to wonder who puts this together (this was provided by an outside company) when it comes off more as a sales pitch than as a warning.

By: Bing

Bing — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 23:38:24 +0000

Nobody but nobody is going to take away my electronic friend box.

By: truffula

truffula — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 23:34:11 +0000

Prof. Pushbutton is kind of the ideal state in the “banking method” of teaching, is it not? I think what Emma wrote about Rosetta Stone is appropriate for Prof. Pushbutton, et al.: But it’s not really a “language learning” course, more of a phrasebook learning course.

By: Historiann

Historiann — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 20:52:46 +0000

Heh. For realz, Notorious!

I’ve never done a Rosetta Stone course, but I think Emma’s point is a good one. WE know our work is varied and valuable beyond teaching–and that much of our teaching goes beyond what Rosetta Stone/Prof. Pushbutton can do–but that’s not how our work is presented in public discourse.

I’m not sure it will make all that much difference in terms of countering the “public employees are leeches on the body politic” rhetoric, but it might be a useful exercise to see if we could come up with a brief but useful description of our work. I’m just looking forward to better economic times, so that we can go back to being insulted by the free marketeers as lazy underachievers who “settle” for $50 or $70K, instead of being seen as leeches on the system. That would be progress, I think. (I ask for so little!)

By: Notorious Ph.D.

Notorious Ph.D. — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 20:40:49 +0000

Why does nobody talk about Associate Vice-Provost Pushbutton? Because that, IMO, would save us tons of cash.

By: Emma

Emma — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 19:36:44 +0000

Has anybody here ever done an online language learning course like Rosetta Stone? I’m taking one for Hindi right now and it’s really great within its limits.

Anyway, that’s exactly Prof. Pushbutton and I wonder if academics would find it useful to talk about the limits of that kind of learning when talking about de-skilling universities. It’s a great program — for what it is. But it’s not really a “language learning” course, more of a phrasebook learning course.

By: Historiann

Historiann — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 18:20:19 +0000

Gotcha. Sorry–low on caffeine this a.m.