The More Things Change; The More They Stay the Same

            I’d be old-fashioned in the classroom now. Oh, I did innovate. In my last course I used weekly e-mail exchanges to receive and give instant feedback on brief papers. In the 60s, I contributed to a TV course where we lectured on screen and evaluated progress with traditional methods.

            But recently I heard of a web course based on two principles: Socratic method and Games theory -  as in games like World of Warcraft.

            In the 60s, our team entertained classes of 125 students with an assortment of slides and movies displayed on the big screen as we lectured in the traditional way – early version of powerpoint?

            Then there’s SCSU itself. We had no glossy magazine like the college produces now, or “Southern Life,” the campus newspaper, which inspired me to write this.

            What caught my eye was research Bill Sherman (psych department) did with Michelle Vancour (public health) extending her doctoral study of academic moms to the study of men in academia.

            Now here’s where things stay the same. “These men ‘don’t feel the same level of guilt about going to work as moms do.” A father might say, ‘I don’t like to travel because I miss my kids,’ rather than feeling guilty about leaving them, as mom’s do”

            “One key difference in how the men and women in their studies view work/family balance. Dads compartmentalize, saying ‘This is what I’ll do and this is when I’ll do it’ whereas moms try to find bits and pieces of time to fit everything in. ‘Women don’t just turn off one thing and do another,… they multitask.’”

            Guilt and multitasking. Been there; done that. Still trying to train myself to compartmentalize.