Hi Matt, "Worse" is probably not the right word, but in addition to what Titus outlined I was also thinking of the scholarship expectations for tenure. As you know, but maybe some of the non-academics here may not, scholarship generally means publishing papers in 'appropriate' journals and conference proceedings-- where 'appropriate' is determined largely by one's institutions and one's peers. If the demands of incorporating FOSS into one's course takes time and effort away from one's (sometime unrelated) scholarship activities, this could have negative effects on one's tenure review.
I don't want to overstate this, but in my experience tenured faculty can afford to be more experimental both in the classroom and in their scholarly pursuits. An untenured colleague might view what Heidi described as taking too much time away from working on that journal paper or that grant proposal and be more likely to conclude that it is not worth the extra effort. That's why it's crucial that we develop resources and expertise to support the teaching effort. Best, -- ralph On Mon, Sep 5, 2011 at 11:04 PM, C. Titus Brown <c...@msu.edu> wrote: > On Mon, Sep 05, 2011 at 10:58:07PM -0400, Matthew Jadud wrote: > > Hi Ralph, > > > > 2011/9/5 Ralph Morelli <ralph.more...@trincoll.edu>: > > > widespread acceptance of this approach.?? If experienced faculty, such > as > > > you and Allen and I, have problems incorporating FOSS into our courses, > > > it's even worse for young faculty who have to worry about tenure. > > > > Could you explain more, for this community, why it is "worse" for > > untenured faculty attempting to integrate FOSS projects into their > > teaching? > > Hi Matt, > > because generally us untenured schlubs are more susceptible to negative > student reviews like "this prof had no idea what they were doing". For > tenured profs, the consequences are generally not so bad unless performance > is consistently bad; for untenured profs, bad performance is (or can be) > factored in to promotion, raises, and teaching assigments more strongly. > > If you have to worry about whether or not your ability to compile *this* > version of the Linux kernel on the fly in front of class is going to > have consequences, along with simply trying to get it to work in the > first place, life will be stressful. > > Personally I've found that my students are pretty happy to watch me fail, > and that they learn the right lessons from it -- that every success is > founded upon many failures. But it's something I work hard to convey, > and if I failed a lot in class I suspect it would make its way onto > evaluations and hence be a subject of my annual review. > > cheers, > --titus > -- > C. Titus Brown, c...@msu.edu >
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