Learning and Ideas – The PolyBlog

Psychology lecture 4: This is your brain, this is your brain on its own drugs

January 31 2025

I mentioned in an earlier post about the psych lecture series I’m taking (The Great Courses’ Introduction to Psychology) that I was a bit surprised (I guess?) about the more biological and physiological aspects of the course. Surprised is a little strong of a word, I suppose. I know that the biological and physiological aspects of the body can affect the brain, of course. I just never really thought of that work as part of “psychology” which I see as mental health rather than physical health/medicine, which is where I would put the other stuff.

Lecture 4 talked about the early knowledge and the realization in the 1800s with advances in medicine and the scientific study of the brain that different parts actually do different things aka the “localization of function”. More recent work can use EEGs or MRIs and functional MRIs to do better monitoring.

But I was surprised (there’s that word again) when the lectured covered three different parts of the brain:

The hindbrain, including the medulla (carrying messages to the spinal cord), the pons (messages within the brain) and the ever-popular and more well-known cerebellum (for fine muscle movement and balance);
The midbrain, including the reticular formation (for consciousness) and the substantia nigra (for providing dopamine); and,
The forebrain, including the limbic system (for emotions and memory with amygdala and hippocampus), thalamus (switchboard for sensory info from the rest of the body), hypochalamus (for temperature, basic motives and drives), and cerebral cortex (thin surface layer for more complex behaviours and high mental processes).

Of that long list, I only recognized medulla, cerebellum, thalamus and cerebral cortex, but probably would have only correctly identified the function of the cerebral cortex. I’m not even sure I would have understood the cerebellum and cerebral cortex were different, to be honest. In defence of my ignorance, I never took biology or anatomy; my focus was on physics, so sue me. The lecture also covered the hemispheres and lobes, but I wasn’t that interested until it started talking about neuroplasticity.

I love the idea of the brain fixing itself or rewiring lost connections. For my son, with cerebral palsy-like symptoms, the general medical diagnosis for CP is that there is a break in wiring somewhere. As such, muscles get told to “flex” — and they never get an off signal. They are CONSTANTLY on. So, people with full CP can be diagnosed with an MRI that can point to the actual breakage, and they do physiotherapy, surgery or drugs to treat the symptoms. One of the surgeries goes into the spine and snips a wire so that the signal to the legs is “cut”, no more “on” signal being sent. Of course, that’s pretty major, and you have to restart learning how to walk, but it “corrects” the first problem by giving a second problem that they CAN solve. But the original pathways never change…you don’t have CP and suddenly stop having it. The wires don’t reconnect in that instance (and wouldn’t help my son anyway as that isn’t what he has).

Yet neuroplasticity is the ultimate idea of a cure for a lot of broken connections in the brain. On its own, the brain will repair itself. Physical damage from an injury that affects memory can sometimes be self-repaired as the brain finds a new connection pathway to the old area. I’ve read about it before particularly where it has affected personality, which seems almost bonkers from a purer-psychology perspective. The metaphor is simplistic, but it’s the idea that if you’re trying to get from the living room at the front of your house to the kitchen at the back of the house, and there’s something blocking your way in the dining room, you could theoretically go through the second floor if there are front and back stairs, or out the front door and come in the back door (although the metaphor breaks down). Alternatively, if you’re in an office building and have to get from one office to another, there is a direct way down Hall 1, or an indirect way down Hall 2. Neuroplasticity is the name given to the brain’s ability to heal itself, to find another hallway to get to the same spot and re-establish a link. That repair happens with some medical conditions, but it doesn’t happen with some others. And there isn’t necessarily a solid answer of how it works in the first place or why it doesn’t work in similar injuries elsewhere in the brain. It feels almost like “hacking” your own brain.

Nevertheless, I find it fascinating as an idea. Particularly with the idea that perhaps certain drug cocktails could speed up the routing process and help the brain heal faster. We already know the effects of certain drugs on the brain’s ability to access and retain information (both in good ways and bad), often exaggerated as plot devices in movies and books, even though the basic operations are sound. More obvious and less sensational to me is the finding that the brain actually physically changes with use of certain pathways — like learning to read Braille expanding the language centre of your brain.

Fascinating, I admit. But I’m still not sure I’d classify it as psychology unless the elements change personality or active behavioural cues. I’m not ready to embrace the larger holistic view and the ties to the physiological aspects. I want to believe that consciousness is more important than biology.

Psychology lecture 3: A science of happiness

January 27 2025

As I mentioned earlier, I’m taking an intro to psych course through The Great Courses. The third lecture starts a recurring theme in the series from the professor who is very interested in the “positive dimensions of psychology”, going beyiond the classic “how do we recover from trauma or disorders” to focus more on well-being, aka “a science of happiness”.

There are a ton of books by psych professors out there; some make best-seller lists, others create lists for popular tabloid magazines (“Five things to be happy today!”). The classic summary of almost all the approaches is that happiness depends on a combination of pleasure (a seemingly obvious component), engagement (friends and family), and purpose or meaning. If you look at smaller behaviours to help boost happiness, the advice often focuses on exercise (on the basis of a release of hormones), sleep (for better health), or expressions of gratitude (reinforcement of blessings). And finally, after looking at all of those macro factors for “everyone”, the analysis often goes to the individual for personality type — mainly dividing between optimists and pessimists. Overall, most approaches say the Big Three make up 50% of the equation (including little and big things to improve things) and personality makes up the other 50%.

I confess that I am often very unsatisfied with the first half of that model, including the dozens of tweaks that various pop psych books suggest, like “don’t sweat the small stuff” or “the art of not giving a f***”.

For my own take on the subject of happiness, pleasure seems almost a no-brainer as a starting point. Do what makes you happy, right? And I’m generally okay with that premise. If you do more things that make you happy, you should theoretically be happier. If you spend more time doing things that you enjoy, you should become happier. Yet there are limitations in there that most of the texts NEVER talk about. Some things that give you pleasure may not actually make you happier. Some of this is just a limitation on the phrase, “If you do what you love, you’ll never work a day in your life.” Because work won’t feel like work. And thus, the conclusion is to follow your dreams. Great fodder for a bumper sticker, but it doesn’t pay the bills.

There is a very stong aspect of privilege there that you have a way to cover your living costs while doing all that…I have a much stronger resonance with the idea of first meeting the basics of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, particularly for physiology and safety, before having the room for the more social needs of love, self-esteem and self-actualization. There are a lot of unemployed artists out there who are “following their dreams” with no reality check on their abilities, and they are FAR from happy. You still have to have shelter, you still have to put food on your table. And much of the “self-actualization” advice out there doesn’t often take into account that some people NEED a structure around them to function; not everyone can be a successful entrepreneur, they don’t have the right mindset for it. Not to mention questions of over-indulgence with addiction and the impact of too much of something “pleasurable”. Or people defining something as giving them pleasure that actually doesn’t make them happy, chasing the wrong things. Pleasure is a performance indicator, not a variable to me. I think it can help you know what can help you be happier, I don’t know that pleasure alone makes you happy. There’s still a requirement to understand HOW it makes you happy and WHY, for how long, when, etc.

I also hate the idea of connection as a framing element, or at least how it is presented. The argument is simple…man is a social creature, and thus needs to be part of a community of friends and family. You need connections, you need to engage with others. Otherwise, you stagnate. Or you start to become the crazy hermit or the man from Hobbes’ Leviathan, living a life that is nasty, brutish and short. Overall, I’m okay with the premise. I don’t know if I would tie it to “happiness” per se, more just good mental health. Catalysts to evolve, perhaps.

Yet what I really don’t like is the assumption that more connection is better or that specific connections are required. Phrases like “blood is thicker than water” or “forgive family” or “family is forever” suggests that the most important connection is family. And that such a connection is paramount to happiness. And for thousands of years, that mythos hid a multitude of sins and the reality that not all family connections are healthy. Some are simply dysfunctional, cancers that should be excised, not nurtured. In the last 20 years, there’s been greater recognition that there is such a thing as hurting yourself by maintaining certain relationships just because they’re family, or suffering “friendly fire” that you wouldn’t tolerate from any other person if they weren’t related to you. I find it somewhat antithetical that someone should “excuse bad treatment” from family, because they ARE family, rather than expecting MORE from them. That you would excuse or tolerate rude insensitive behaviour that you wouldn’t accept from a friend. That you should somehow expect MORE from friends and LESS from family? That seems bonkers to me.

Equally, when you overlay personality types for things like introversion and extroversion, or an overlay of emotive/intuitive vs. analytical, you find that certain personality traits do NOT in fact all need or create the same types of interactions with a community. I feel like “not being alone” is valid as a potential contributor to happiness or absence of unhappiness, but beyond that, it is more like the goal should be “enough community connection for you.” For certain types, myself included, over-connection leads to negativity, aka unhappiness, not simply that more is better. Put differently, there’s a calibration aspect to connection that I don’t see mentioned very often, unless focused on introverts. You need the right kind and level of connections that is right for you. It’s definitely not one-size-fits-all.

Finally, when I turn to purpose or meaning as the third element, I’m not sure it’s a valid variable. If you look at philosophy, you often see references in Puritan ethics and elsewhere, almost every religion perhaps, that you should do good deeds for others. In almost all modern psych references, they talk about that purpose or meaning almost universally as service to others. Making the world a better place somehow for the rest of mankind. Yet, I can’t help but wonder:

If you define service to others as “doing good”
If you equate “doing good” as being rewarding/pleasing to you too
If you equate doing things that are rewarding/pleasing to you as increasing happiness
And then you conclude “increasing happiness” means meaning / purpose in the form of service to others

isn’t that just a circular definition? If you assume serving others is good, and that good things make you happy, is it a surprise that you’ll be happier if you serve others?

Which isn’t to say they’re completely wrong. For a large number of people, serving others MAY give them a sense of purpose which is better than being directionless, AND the act of service itself can be rewarding. But I’m not sure it’s a component. At best, I see it as a possible tool, a contributor. Just as pleasure was an indicator, not an actual component on its own.

Finally, where I often go off the rails of their line of argument of what “leads to happiness” is that most of the approaches are looking for evidence of something that leads to something they can call happiness. So, if you have X, it will lead to an increased quantity of happiness Y. It makes sense. If X, then increased Y. A positive value for X is assumed.

But is the positive value of “X” actually required? Could it be simply the absence of negative X? For example, for pleasure, instead of something giving pleasure, could the absence of acute or chronic pain be an equal or even stronger motivator? Or perhaps a fundamental prerequisite? I often think so, until I see people in pain who are quite happy overall. Negative X is present but they’re still happy. Or if I look at connection, is it connection that is important or the absence of isolation? If you eliminate the sense of isolation, or chronic pain, does that take you back to the idea of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, however outdated, and let you return to climbing the pyramid? Is there richer fodder to be found in Amartya Sen’s work on human and social development, instead?

Or should we turn the notion of “purpose” inward and make it less about service to others and more about service to whatever goals you set for yourself, as long as they aren’t destructive? Some people set goals like visiting all the countries in the world or running marathons. And it gives purpose and meaning, or direction at least, to their lives, without any sense of “service to others”. And they are happiest when they set a new personal best or are in the throes of a run. No benefit to anyone else. No service. Just a purely selfish goal for themselves that gets them up early in the morning, that gets them out in their Nike’s saying “Just Do It” even when it’s raining at 5:00 a.m.

I can’t help but feel with all the research and thought on happiness, we’re still missing some base elements in the definitional framework. I like aspects of the big 3, and I believe strongly in the aspects of personality determining “happiness”, but I don’t know what the real variables/components are…for some, in philosophy more than psychology, that search for meaning is the real source of happiness. Finding the answer isn’t really the goal, just working on the questions.

Psychology lecture 2: Everyone’s a little bit racist

January 26 2025

As I mentioned in an early post, I’m taking The Great Courses’ “An Introduction to Psychology” (AITP) hosted by Catherine A. Sanderson, Amherst College.

The second lecture focused on “How and why psychology matters“. It has a decent opening with an overview of main descriptive methods such as surveys, case studies, and naturalistic observations (real-world examples), etc., as well as the limitations such as generalizing from small sample size to larger population, observational influences (Schrodinger!), wrong / inconsistent answers, and/or underreporting (much of the same research limitations for performance measurement and goal-setting). The lecture ended with an overview of indirect observation (mainly using technology), neuroscience, (controlled) experiments, natural experiments, behavioural genetics, and ethical concerns. Overall? The message is it matters because it tells us about ourselves, not earth-shattering.

Interestingly, though, when it was talking about the problems with studying people’s responses, it gave a link to the famous Harvard Implicit Association Test that I realized I had actually never done, even though I’ve seen references to it dozens of times over the years. It’s a great simulation, and I had to try.

The IAT was classically about race relations, at least originally. It starts off asking you to sort words as positive or negative…joy is positive, hate is negative, for example. You press the E key or the I key to sort the words into one of two buckets. Then, it has you sort pictures of white people and black people into two buckets. Totally unrelated, you’re just sorting them the same way, left or right.

But then it tests for a possible / implicit bias — they mix the two samples, and sometimes you see a picture of a person (white or black) or a word (positive or negative). The first time through, you are pressing E for bad OR black people and I for good OR white people. Note that it isn’t a picture of a white person with a good word, it’s a picture of a white person or a black person or a good word or a bad word being sorted into shared buckets. But E is associated with bad OR black and I is associated with good OR white. They do it twice. Then they reverse the combination — now E is associated with bad OR white people and I is associated with good OR black people. The test works by seeing how long it takes you to sort the people and the words into the right bucket (E or I).

In the end, the premise is that if it takes you longer to associate JOY as a positive emotion when the bucket also means BLACK people than when it also means WHITE people, you might have an implicit bias against black people…as it is taking more time for your brain to associate black people and positive emotions when they’re paired.

I confess that I was nervous about taking the test. Would it undermine my own beliefs about my biases? Would it somehow reveal that thinking I was “okay” and not a slave to my physical and emotional genetic contributions from my parents was in fact all a lie? That I actually was a raving racist and didn’t know it? I am, after all, one of those people who has used the phrase “I don’t see colour” without realizing what I was saying. What I really meant, and it’s no better, is that I, of course, see it but it appears no more important to me than cosmetic issues like colour of hair or earrings. I had never realized how potentially disrespectful that was … that it wasn’t relevant to me in how I chose to interact with you, so it didn’t seem relevant to me at all, but was still relevant to you and our interaction.

And yet, I don’t ever remember interacting with colleagues where my reaction was negative and they were all black, for example, but if the bias was implicit, I wouldn’t know. I feel like thinking about it is a Ted Lasso moment…I care that someone is gay or black or transgendered in the sense that it is important to them to be themselves. I don’t “not care”, as Ted says, I care very much. But there is part of too that it isn’t important to me in terms of how I’m going to interact. I hope.

But going to the goal of the test, maybe that muted sensitivity is not simply ignorance or lack of experience; maybe there’s a deeper bias hiding as a result of generally growing up in a white community with very little exposure to black people, and most people in the community were probably at least a little bit racist through ignorance at least. Wow, now I’m having an Avenue Q moment…

After doing the test, it’s interesting that it also collects data on what you THINK the results are before you see the actual results. In my case, I said likely a small/light bias…I’d be hard-pressed to expect anything else based on my background. And that is the exact result it found.

Whil that is somewhat reassuring, I found doing the test disturbing. I found it harder during the second and last part of the test, when I had to switch from E=bad/black to E=bad/white. I made more errors and took longer to classify the answer.

I was also fascinated to see the classic black/white test has expanded its offerings — gender vs. STEM; young vs. old; gay vs. straight; cisgender vs. transgender; abled vs. disabled; gender vs. career choice; Arab/Muslim names; white/black vs. things that look like weapons; fat vs. thin people; religions; skin-tone; and nationalism. Fascinating ideas.

The lecture was relatively basic, nothing revelatory. But the IAT was worth the time investment alone.

A 2025 goal: An intro to psychology course

January 26 2025

I often have substantial learning goals that are so amorphous that it’s hard to focus on any one aspect. Cooking more things requires me to learn more about cooking techniques. Making things with a 3D printer requires me to learn how to use it, fix it, maintain it, and swear in complete sentences. Plus, there are regular learning goals like French on Duolingo. And that doesn’t even include actual courses.

I have long lists of courses from Coursera or The Great Courses in my retirement plans, where I would love to go through numerous topics. I’ve previously completed a massive open online course (MOOC) on MetaLiteracy through Coursera and one on Understanding Video Games. In part, it was a result of the realization several years ago that while I’m interested in continuing to do courses and things, I don’t actually need a degree or even a grade at the end. I’m fine relying on a professor’s professional curation to spoon-feed me an intro; let me get what I get out of it, and then I can move on. A course structure gets me the desired curation; more targeted online stuff gives me additional access. Over the years, I’ve dabbled in courses on photography and astronomy, too.

I recently hit some work and personal milestones in my French learning. And it made me wonder…what would/could/should I focus on in 2025 that would give me a boost?

Plans for 2025

I initially thought of taking the daily engagement momentum with DuoLingo and boosting it to see if I could do the same with a lecture. Maybe a full lecture a day for the whole year? 365 lectures would be incredible. Probably 10 courses in total. Except DuoLingo lessons are 5-10 minutes, while lectures range from 15 to 60 minutes. I set up apps on Apple TV to make some of the coursework more accessible, and I tend to watch TV late in the day, so it is not impossible that I could do a lecture a day. Do I actually want to, though? I like the engagement, but I am doubtful about the duration per day, particularly at the end of the day if I’m too tired to focus on the content. I am playing with the idea of 10 minutes a day. Pick a course, watch 10m of video every day, keep going. For a total of 3650 minutes as my goal for the year. As the year started, I was in the DR, and not feeling much like learning, so it was a bit slow of a start.

I watched a couple of videos to test different subjects and decided early to combine my goal with something that interests me — an Introduction to Psychology option. I have read a lot of psych stuff over the years, ranging from pop-psych interpretations of goal-setting behaviour all the way to case studies of trauma recovery or ADHD diagnosis and treatments. I dabble in a lot of topics. My main interest is behaviour modification for positive change, but I’m also prone to reading deep dives into the minds of serial killers. 🙂

Ultimately, I committed to The Great Courses’ (TGC) “An Introduction to Psychology” (AITP) with Catherine A. Sanderson, Amherst College.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with TGC, the premise is basically finding great teachers from around the world — you know, the ones that students rate highly at various universities and give awards to — and hire them to do a version of their favourite course in front of a video camera. The best teachers, their favourite course, as rated and identified by students. It’s not unusual, online offerings like MasterClass and Coursera have tried to do the same. Other online sites went for quantity, taking any course from almost anyone, while TGC, MC, and Coursera often wanted the “best”. Coursera isn’t as rigid as the other two, often having multiple professors teaching similar course offerings, sometimes going for expertise or simply different perspectives.

This isn’t my first foray into online psych courses. Back around 2010, I looked into a MOOC offered by Carleton University. I committed to it a bit more in 2015, downloaded the texts, bought the textbook, and geared myself up to watch the lectures. I was intending to formally audit the course. Then life intervened and I didn’t really get going on it. I still have the first 10 printouts plus the textbook.

Lecture 1: Psychology, you, and your world

The AITP course for TGC by Professor Sanderson is different than I expected. As an intro course, I expected her to present an overall framework for psychology, delineate major streams of work and thought, and then start to work through the landscape. Instead, it seems a bit more like “hey, let’s look at this topic.” I have always been impressed with TGC for the quality of their video lectures, not quite TED Talk quality but close. But I had forgotten that almost all of their courses come with an online guidebook, too. AITP is set up for 36 lectures of about 30 minutes each, and there is a 382-page guidebook complete with a quiz that you can download/print/read online. I’ve watched the first five lectures, and while I won’t try to summarize them, I will try to see what I get out of the course as I go.

This lecture is basically what you would expect at the start of an introductory course. It starts with a definition of psychology as the scientific study of mental processes and behaviour; a layman’s focus on how we think, feel, remember and act; and an overview of the goals of psychology (description, asking why, predicting behaviour, and making change). Standard stuff, nothing revolutionary or surprising, I knew all of that already.

However, I was intrigued by how she describes the nature of psychology as a combination of clinical science, a biological science tied to neuroscience and physiology, a social science of behaviour, and even an applied science (with experiments). While it is easy to see them all linked together, I never really thought of the biological component as really being “part” of psychology, as my interest is more the description and social sciences side, with a tinge of clinical therapy. It’s obvious from her description that the bio component is equally psychology too, but as I said, I’m less interested and knowledgeable about the physiological/biological aspects.

I’m less enamoured with the ending of the lecture where she talks about the modern focus on positive psychology and the links to “how do we increase happiness?”. One of the examples she gives about the components of happiness, which shows up later in a separate lecture, is highly suspect to me in its diagnosis. For me, it’s more definitional…if you define happiness as being X, Y, and Z, it’s not surprising that you will find people “happier” if they do Z. But was Z valid to begin with? I’ll come back to it, but for me, it fits more in the realm of philosophy and ethics than psychology. I’ve spent some time over the years reading a lot on the positive aspects aka “happiness and well-being”, and while I don’t discount the approach completely, it doesn’t resonate with me.

But it’s an interesting start. And it’s a long-standing goal to start chipping away at. That makes ME happy. 🙂

Curation: A liquid syllabus at university?

November 11 2022

From time to time, I find interesting articles and link to them from my website. They could cover a whole range of topics, but I generally group them under the heading of “articles I like”, or my new title, “Curation:”. What they have in common is some sort of idea that I found intriguing or provocative. Today’s topic: A liquid syllabus.

The short mechanics of it are misleading, as you could simply see it as a syllabus that a professor has created for their course but which they place on their own personal website rather than on the internal university system. I initially thought what they were really talking about was creating an evergreen syllabus for a course, something that would allow them to update it more easily, or to link to other materials out in the wild that didn’t fit well for links and approvals within a stodgy university computer platform. Just another form of academic freedom, I thought. But I clicked through to the article for two reasons — one was to understand the liquid syllabus but the other was that it talked about improving access for vulnerable groups yet leaving the professor somehow more vulnerable.

How could it help vulnerable groups? And was the professor more vulnerable because it was more innovative and emerging issues? I had to know what the conversation looked like, coming so close to the interests I have in online learning, educational governance, and computers.

Reaching vulnerable groups

The initial elements were fascinating. They noticed that at some colleges, the biggest drop in enrolment happened between the enrolment point online and the first day of school. Some of that could be explained away by the finances of it all, some would easily be able to “register” without paying, but when the tuition bill came due, they didn’t have the money after all. But for many vulnerable groups, there was something else at play too. The university world seemed daunting and mechanical, with few humanizing elements.

A syllabus is often considered a contract between an instructor and their students. It communicates how the course will be taught, outlines how students will be evaluated and promotes the values of an institution or an individual instructor.

…

But a syllabus that is difficult or impossible to access during the vulnerable period between when a student registers for a class and when the student starts the class may never make an impact—positive or otherwise. That’s because students often arrive at college with mind-sets. Those from nonmajority groups, for example, may wonder about whether they belong, a phenomenon known as belongingness uncertainty. Some may also feel at risk of confirming negative stereotypes associated with their identities, known as stereotype threat. Others from varied racial groups and genders suffer from impostor syndrome.

A brief, if imperfect, welcome video as part of an instructor’s liquid syllabus can help mitigate students’ sense of belongingness uncertainty, Pacansky-Brock said. Ideally, the faculty member would film the video in a nonacademic setting, use welcoming language that speaks to social inclusion and offer a window into who they are outside the classroom.

Most important, when the welcome video is part of a liquid syllabus that is accessed via a public website, students do not encounter the barrier that learning management systems, which require usernames, passwords and navigation tools, sometimes present.

Frictionless access to mobile-friendly syllabi supports equity, as Black and Hispanic U.S. adults are less likely than white adults to have a traditional computer and broadband at home, according to a 2021 Pew Research Center study.

“In order for us to really close equity gaps, we have to begin thinking about how students access college materials, especially something as important as a syllabus,” Ortiz said, noting that when she was in college, she found the contractual language on syllabi intimidating. Her students access her liquid syllabi much more frequently than when the syllabi were stored in a learning management system. Many return to the documents throughout the semester, for example, for the hyperlinks she added to campus resources such as counseling, disability accommodations and basic needs.
https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2022/11/11/frictionless-syllabus-access-some-bypass-college

Of course, they still have to provide the formal thing for the official version in the university’s online system, faculty management documentation, etc. But they can provide a more “humanized” version online, including in part, more plain-language context around key factors. It’s more work, but potentially more effective.

Vulnerability

Again, as I mentioned above, I was thinking that the obvious risk was that they would be using material somehow in the liquid syllabi that wasn’t sanctioned by the university. Extreme academic freedom, perhaps. Nope, the risk is more about trolls and safety.

Liquid syllabus websites that stand apart from the college’s learning management system and college website are not without risks. Because the websites are public, faculty who create them could be targeted due to controversial topics they teach or because of their identities.

“I’ve talked to the faculty of color who are concerned about sharing their appearance in video because they don’t want to be judged and discriminated against by their students,” Pacansky-Brock said. “There’s a lot that needs to be untangled. It’s complicated.”

Lisa Paciulli, a lecturer in the biology department at North Carolina State University, generally avoids putting personal information online, but she paid a graduate student with her own money to create her public, online syllabi because she feels strongly that students should have easy access to information about her courses.

Why did it resonate with me?

The idea is fascinating to me as so much of what is in there is outside my wheelhouse. Starting with the vulnerability side, I blog a LOT. I’m probably closing in on 2M words at this point. So the public risk of putting myself “out there” is one I dealt with a long time ago. But I’m not a PoC and I don’t push a very active agenda on anything. I blog about niche topics, generally explain how things work for those who aren’t in the same realm, or I’m blogging about my own relatively simple life. I’m not out clubbing seals nor saving the rainforests. And I’m a white male. I don’t put much of “me” out there visually, few photos or videos of “me being me”, but I’m also not a professor who stands in front of a new class every year for the first time.

I took a course from two professors online, I was auditing the course so they didn’t “see” me as a student, but i found the one female professor particularly engaging on the topics. They divided up the syllabus a bit between them, and the stuff she covered (identity in games, culture, etc.) was fascinating. If I was on-campus and taking the course in person, I probably would have tried to talk to her after class about some of the topics or attended tutorials she offered. Virtually? I’d have to settle for whatever she had online. But she had also blogged previously about the Gamergate world out there, and how women were subject to trolling at disproportionate rates, etc., and the reaction online was, well, predictable. As a result, she seems to have almost no online presence. Maybe she’s out of that academic world, maybe she’s changed her name, who knows. I’ve been roasted and attacked online a few times, so I have some small inkling of attacks based on gender rather than content, but it’s not the same as what they experience nor likely to ever be so. Which means my risk/reward calculation looks very different from hers or theirs.

But the accessibility stuff also seems alien to me. If I was looking at a course, I’d research the crap out of it. I’d kick in the doors, take names, download every file I could, enter every computer system I could, etc. I would have no qualms at all about whether I “should” be there, or “would” be there. Which is not to say I don’t suffer from imposter syndrome in the other aspects with crippling anxiety that I can’t do something or whatever, but I’m an analytical introvert. I might not show up for a mixer, I might fear being rejected by the cool kids, but online interactions with a syllabus? That poses ZERO friction for me. Hell, I have downloaded syllabi from universities where I don’t even know anyone who attended that university! Free curation of a topic? Hell yeah. I think all syllabi should be available from every university online for free. 🙂 Cuz I’m not the one paid to create it only to risk other professors stealing all my work and offering the same course at their university.

Liquidity in Canada

Which gives me a thought. How public are syllabi in an area I know? What if I search for public administration, Canada, course and the term syllabus? It’s a TERRIBLE methodology, but I’ll give it a go.

The University of Alberta has diploma programs geared towards municipal government, and while they have lots of videos showing a diverse population, none of their content is easily accessible, looks like all syllabi are in the learning management system once fully registered.
Kompass has pages to get you to give them your info and they’ll send you something, but virtually no details seem to be available beforehand.
UBC has some decent course offerings, lots of videos and descriptions, but no obvious details on course content beyond a general overview.
Waterloo has some syllabi directly available online although considerably out of date (2012). Good videos, poor quality images of “striving to show diversity” which was weird since it is already abundantly apparent in their profiles they’ve got it covered.
Dalhousie had a decent syllabus publicly available, just the raw version, recent enough.
USask had a really good one, good resources, but it required a bit of clicking to get through and was very dry and academic looking. Certainly not “liquid” in any way.
York is easily accessible, but no liquid factor at all.
Queens has its syllabus — for its program, not its courses.
Carleton has one available, but out of date.
I had high hopes for Athabasca given that it was “online” before everyone else. Nope, generic website, nothing special.
McGill’s site wasn’t bad, just not enough detail. Their “welcome” aspects were okay though.
Cape Breton U had an okay page, looked welcoming for design, but just not enough info to help me understand their approach.
Ryerson/Metro has an okay program, very business-like in its approach, but again, not much on the actual courses beyond a blurb.
I did find the Atlas of Public Management site. It is really intriguing, so I have set it aside for further perusal. A database of public management courses around the world, lifting a lot of it from individual university websites. A curated overview, if you will.
Guelph was an abbreviated version.
The joint URegina and USask school had great online stuff for their past syllabi, albeit abbreviated versions.
Adler had some interesting stuff, but presentation was a bit odd…Their “liquid” benefits were all at the bottom of the pages.

It took me a really long time to get to a version that wasn’t on official university sites. I found one on a private page of a UofT professor. It’s a pretty static “about me” site, a professional academic’s site so to speak. It’s not a blogging setup, for instance. Does it meet the definitions of “liquid”? I don’t know. It wasn’t as obvious where the pieces were for his courses, Google found them, not me just browsing his site.

I may do some more research on professors with their own sites in Canada, but for now, it was an interesting article to think about today.

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