Call for Papers: E-Learning in Dialogue: Innovative Teaching and Learning in Philosophy and Religious Studies

Thought this might be of interest to the readers of ISW.

Subject: First Call for Papers- E-Learning in Dialogue: Innovative Teaching and Learning in Philosophy and Religious Studies- Leeds/York (exact venue tbc)- 14-15 March 2008.

Dear Colleagues,

An early date for your diaries.

The Higher Education Academy, Subject Centre for Philosophical and Religious Studies (PRS), is organising an international two-day Conference on 'E-Learning in Dialogue: Innovative Teaching and Learning in Philosophy and Religious Studies' to be held in Leeds/York (venue tbc) in 14th-15th of March. Academics in Philosophy and Religious Studies, who are interested in enriching their practice through innovations in technology-enabled teaching and learning in Philosophy and Religious Studies, will find this two day event a most creative and fruitful way to meet other academics with experience in this area and exchange views with them on ways to enhance and apply, embed and enhance e-learning in their discipline.

The Conference will include presentations and lectures from leading figures in e-learning in the Humanities (from UK and other European countries), who will present both traditional and pioneering approaches to e-learning. There will also be specialised workshops for a hands-on approach to e-learning and to confront the challenges of transferring a traditional approach to dialogue in the humanities to a VLE platform and other forms of e-learning.

Dialogue has been frequently discussed as a major challenge for e-learning in the humanities (and especially philosophy). The innovations presented at the Conference will attempt to challenge this myth and they will present creative and novel ways of applying dialogue in teaching and learning, building on the existing use of dialogue as a teaching and learning strategy in the humanities and religious studies, which has a history of more than 2000 years, starting primarily with Socrates in philosophy and Buddha in religious thought).

All philosophical and religious traditions are welcome and there will be co-operation with and contributions from other Higher Education Academy Subject Centres. We would also like to extend the invitation to attend this conference to teachers in primary and secondary education. Interested researchers and practitioners of e-learning in the humanities, who would like to present their work and provide a platform for exchange of ideas in avant-garde and state-of-the-art innovations, are most welcome to contact Dr. C. Athanasopoulos, 'Costas', at the PRS Subject Centre (c.athanasopoulos@leeds.ac.uk,
costas@prs.heacademy.ac.uk) and send their proposals for papers/workshops (deadline: end of January 2008).

There will also be a prize study case competition for academics using innovative e-learning in PRS, the prize for which will be presented at the Conference.
More details about the Conference and the prize competition will be posted by the end of July 2007 on the Subject Centre website.

With best wishes,

Dr. Constantinos Athanasopoulos- 'Costas'

E-Learning Project Officer

I will probably be going to this since for me it is relatively local, it would be good to hear if other ISWers are interested and might be attending.

Blog bling and Steppin' up to the mic, parts 3-5

Just a note to announce that I've added both e-mail and RSS subscription options for ISW (at the bottom of the right hand column). These will enable our readers to keep up with ISW goings-on more easily.

Also, we have three new contributing members: Chris Panza, Adam Potthast, and John Alexander. I know they'll have many lively contributions to offer.

Do moral philosophy courses encourage 'easy' moral skepticism?

Daniel Callcut very kindly made me aware of his paper 'The value of teaching moral skepticism' (Teaching Philosophy 29 (2006): 223-235). Here's the abstract:

This article argues that introductory ethics classes can unwittingly create or confirm skeptical views toward morality. Introductory courses frequently include critical discussion of skeptical positions such as moral relativism and psychological egoism as a way to head off this unintended outcome. But this method of forestalling skepticism can have a residual (and unintended) skeptical effect. The problem calls for deeper pedagogical-cum-philosophical engagement with the underlying sources of skepticism. The paper provides examples of how to do this and explains the additional benefits of teaching moral skepticism.

I imagine many philosophy instructors have Callcut's worry, namely, that students already inclined toward skeptical views about morality will conclude that the inquisitive give-and-take of philosophical ethics simply confirms their skeptical position (whether the position is egoism, simple subjectivism, nihilism, relativism, etc.). If students are to be moral skeptics, better that this be the product of critical engagement with skeptical and non-skeptical positions rather than an easy dogma.

Callcut's suggestions as to how to forestall this easy moral skepticism strike me as levelheaded and sensible:

• to evaluate the merits of skepticism in comparison with other positions so that skepticism is not treated as "the default position"
• to communicate"a sense of just how extreme a claim is involved in the denial of any ethical knowledge" (226)
• to emphasize that skepticism at the level of moral theory need not diminish our confidence in our well-established first order views (e.g., that torturing children is wrong)
• to point out that 'piecemeal' justifications of our moral claims are not necessarily infirm (Here Callcut observes that many student skeptics are disillusioned foundationalists; so perhaps some headway can made against their easy skepticism by drawing attention to their foundationalist assumptions.)
• to acknowledge the possibility of theoretical moral pluralism
• to insist that the desire not to impose one's values on others is not, appearances to the contrary, a value-neutral strategy

I'd only like to add that while students' moral skepticism can be "unwittingly" confirmed in courses on ethics, my own experience is that it is at least as likely that students will reject moral skepticism as a result of studying moral philosophy. In these courses, what I hope to convey above all else is that philosophy offers a tradition of serious, reasoned argument about moral questions. This is, I think, a shock to many students: The cultures from which they come, to the extent that have 'moral argument' at all, don't tend to treat moral questions as amenable to rational discussion or progress. The choices available in the wider culture are easy dogmatism (sometimes though not always religious in origin) or easy skepticism. What I intend they discover in a moral philosophy course is that there are other options. The students need not hitch themselves any one of them, of course. But the overall message is that moral knowledge is not hopeless. Indeed, moral philosophy presents us with an overabundance of plausible theories and options, rather than a meager menu of self-serving dogmas or theoretical non-starters.

Hello, I'm the APA. How can I help you today?

Starting this year, I'll be a member of the American Philosophical Association's Committee on the Teaching of Philosophy. (Our own David Hunter is already a member). The Committee's charge:

The Committee is charged with assessing trends and needs in the teaching of philosophy and making recommendations for action by the Board. It sponsors sessions on the teaching of philosophy at Divisional meetings, responds to requests from members and others regarding teaching, and undertakes programs for the improvement of teaching. At the direction of the Board, it prepares statements for Board approval regarding instruction in philosophy.

So I'd be curious to know from our readership how the Committee must better fulfill its charge. How can the APA help its members as teachers? Any and all suggestions welcome!

Steppin' up to the mic: David Hunter

As the post below indicates, David Hunter has agreed to be the second contributor to ISW. As you can tell from his post, David has some very keen observations on the teaching art. So welcome David!

Modelling Behaviour: Teaching Broadly and Essay Setting

Thanks to Michael for inviting me on board, it is a pleasure to be here.

This post really follows up on one of the points made by Michael in this post: The teacher and the researcher.

It is common for introductory philosophy classes to be broad survey style classes. There are good reasons for this; we want our students to be broadly grounded, to have a chance to taste different aspects of philosophy and so on. However a consequence of this, as Michael pointed out, is that introductory and indeed other undergraduate courses in philosophy rarely go into any great depth. This often carries over to the specific lectures, so one week in a philosophy of religion class you may cover the argument from evil, the next the ontological argument. The upshot of this is that a lecture can often look something like this:

Proposition X
Argument 1 for proposition X
Why Argument 1 fails
Argument 2 for proposition X
Why Argument 2 fails
Argument 3 for proposition X
Why Argument 3 fails
Argument 4 for proposition X
Why Argument 4 fails
Conclusion: None of these arguments for proposition X work

Yet when we set essays we often, although not exclusively, ask students to concentrate on just one argument. Even if we do not specifically ask them to focus in the question, we usually argue that there is little point them giving just an overview of the area instead they should focus on a small part of that area since that is all they can cover well. The essay that gives 101 arguments for a proposition with little depth or critical analysis, philosophy by bullet point, will usually not do well.ral point is illustrated by this quote from the excellent The gene How to Plan a Philosophy Paper by Jeff McLaughlin, Thompson Rivers University.

“Choose a topic that is ‘do-able’.

Essay topics like "The philosophy of Aristotle", "What is Truth?", or "Science versus Religion", are far too broad. When thinking about your topic it is better that the "pool be small and deep, rather than wide and shallow". That’s a murky metaphor but basically it means don’t bite off more than you can chew. You don’t want to touch on fifty different and disjointed points and say nothing substantial about any of them (or you run the risk of writing a ‘too-long paper’). Instead, you want to pick a manageable topic that allows you some room for an in depth exploration of the particular issue. Are you keen on the topic of euthanasia? What aspect? Voluntary vs. Non-voluntary? Active vs. Passive? The role of non-family members as decision makers? Consideration of potential negative utilitarian consequences of a newborn euthanasia policy? Narrow your focus and develop your exploration of it.”

But there is an obvious disconnect here, while we insist to our students that good philosophy is focused and in depth, we model precisely the opposite when we get up in front of them and teach. It doesn’t seem too far a stretch to think that some of our students knowing that we are philosophers who are teaching philosophy, will probably get the impression that this is how philosophy ought to be done. Then they are likely to get a rude and disheartening awakening when, following the pattern of what is done in class they do badly in their assignments.

I’m curious to hear whether people broadly agree with this analysis, and what if anything they do about it.

I personally try and make it clear to my students that when I am covering huge swathes of material in a short time in a class that I am not doing philosophy, I am teaching them about others who did philosophy. I try and make this clear by occasionally doing philosophy in class, although I usually keep this for the tutorials, trying to make them focused on one or two aspects of the lecture not the whole. Likewise in the talk I give them about essay writing I make the point that lectures and course books perform a very different function than an academic paper. And what we are usually looking for in an essay is much more like an academic paper (not to the same standard of course) than it is to a course book or a lecture.

The teacher and the researcher

One fact that I suspect becomes apparent to most philosophy instructors fairly early in their careers is the intellectual canyon between the climate of philosophical research and the climate of philosophy teaching. Teaching as I do in a large, moderately selective public university with no graduate program, my teaching obligations almost entirely involve introductory courses (either introduction to philosophy or an introductory practical ethics course), historical surveys, or courses that survey a philosophical subdiscipline (e.g., ethical theory). In these courses, it's rare that the course content intersects with my own research in a very direct or substantial way, and I suspect this is true for most of us: It's the exception when our research and our undergraduate teaching inform one another in profitable ways. Whereas in ethical theory courses, I strive to help students understand Kant's categorical imperative and some of the principal objections to it, my research might concern replies to the objections to the objections, etc. So not only is there relatively little contact between our research and teaching in terms of content, but the level of sophistication in research in much higher than in our teaching.

I imagine that those with graduate teaching duties don't experience this. My concern is not that teaching requires 'dumbing down' the material. (I don't think it does.) My concern is that there is a kind of built-in professional schizophrenia to the profession, where two of the main activities — teaching and research — operate in different worlds, whereas it would be nice if these could be mutually reinforcing activities.

So do others share this experience, and have you changed your approach to teaching (or to research) in response? Are there ways of integrating our own research into our teaching so as to bridge the gap between these two ventures?