Access to Congressional Bills as Social Capital

In my last blog post I talked about the historical tradition of political discourse among Americans and the current debate on health care reform. Today, I want to talk about this same topic in the context of an article written by Wise and Schauer entitled "Legal Information as Social Capital."

Social capital theory posits that the network of relationships formed in organizations has inherit value much like human capital or physical capital. For example, the relationships formed in a local neighborhood watch group can be leveraged to organize an efficient response to a local natural disaster. Similarly, a dense network of intertwined social relationships can promote the development of social norms and self-policing that facilitate the formation of trust and knowledge-sharing necessary for collaboration. Interestingly, Wise and Schauer suggest that social capital can be developed as a result of access to legal information.

Wise and Schauer argue that "[o]ne of the various mechanisms that can be used to produce social capital is shared knowledge, especially shared knowledge about government and its operations. Legal information, the written record of society’s shared official efforts, can, if widely known, serve as the knowledge base for collective effort and thus as a causal agent for the development of social capital."

Which brings me back to the current debate regarding the proposed health care reform bill. Wouldn't it be nice if we all could actually read the proposed bill for ourselves instead of relying on information (and in some cases misinformation) from the media as our primary source and, after reading the bill, have an intelligent civil discourse regarding the bill with our fellow Americans? Well, that's the intent behind OpenCongress.

OpenCongress is "a free, open-source, not-for-profit, and non-partisan web resource with a mission to make Congress more transparent and to encourage civic engagement." With OpenCongress you can track bills through the U.S. Congress and discuss them online, line-by-line, with others. I encourage everyone to sign up and read the actual text of H.R.3200 - America's Affordable Health Choices Act 2009. Then, armed with knowledge, share in that great American tradition of discourse and tell your senators, representatives and other fellow citizens what you think about it. Our nation will be better as a result of the social capital you help create.

Reference: Wise, V. J. and F. Schauer, "Legal Information as Social Capital," Law Library Journal, 99(2), 2007.

The American Tradition of Discourse

Though written by Alexis de Tocqueville in 1834, it just as easily could have been written in 2009:

"Scarcely have you descended on the soil of America when you find yourself in the midst of a sort of tumult; a confused clamor is raised on all sides; a thousand voices come to your ear at the same time, each of them expressing some social needs. Around you everything moves: here, the people of one neighborhood have gathered to learn if a church ought to be built; there, they are working on the choice of a representative; farther on, the deputies of a district are going to town in all haste in order to decide about some local improvements; in another place, the farmers of a village abandon their furrows to go discuss the plan of a road or a school."

"Citizens assemble with the sole goal of declaring that they disapprove of the course of government. To meddle in the government of society and to speak about it is the greatest business..."

And so it is today in town hall meetings all across the nation: the prospect of health care reform in the United States has engendered much discussion; some of it fruitful and some simply mean-spirited, some of it motivated by conviction and some motivated by political maneuverings. Yet despite all of its shortcomings, it is the very fact that we can have such open discourse that makes our nation great. So what one man saw and perceived as "meddling" is, in fact, a bedrock of American greatness—the opportunity to participate in self-governance; it is the opportunity to let one's voice shape one's destiny.

I'll try to bring some research relevance to this topic in the next installment.

Three Paths to Better Teaching

I read a recent article in The Chronicle of Higher Education entitled 3 Paths to Better Teaching, and When to Stray From Them by David Glenn. The three approaches really resonated with me and I am trying to incorporate them into my undergraduate Probability and Statistics course. Perhaps you will enjoy learning about them too. After all, we are all teachers in some context.

The first approach is to introduce course material in a manner that requires students to think critically and integrate course concepts. I would add to this that the material should be presented in a manner that allows students to build upon what they already know, in a constructivist manner. Good teaching always connects what is unknown with what is already known. The article goes on to say that while this approach results in students’ deeper understanding of the material in the long-term, the approach may also reduce students’ short-term performance. I find this fact particularly interesting. I actually have an NSF Grant focused on this very topic and will be analyzing the data this fall. I can't wait to see the results!

The second approach is to organize learning experiences in a recursive manner such that concepts are repeatedly encountered and re-encountered throughout the semester. Such purposeful redundancy helps students synthesize and master the material. Such redundancy also requires a lot of upfront planning. The goal of this approach is to increase students' long-term retention of facts. In an era where we try to cover so much material in each semester, effectively implementing this strategy can be a challenge. But which is more productive: 1) to cover 80% of the course material and have students retain 75% of it, or 2) cover 100% of the material and have students retain only 25% of it?

The third approach is to help students take ownership of their personal learning experience by becoming more self-aware of their learning styles and study habits. The Learning Connections Inventory that I intend to use next year is designed to accomplish this very objective. The results obtained by other organizations that have used it have been very encouraging.

So the new semester is only two weeks away and I am armed with new approaches. But as in war where "no detailed plan survives engagement with the enemy", none of my best laid pedagogical plans seem to survive engagement with 90-plus USF undergraduates. Thus, as the article suggests, in addition to my role as facilitator and mentor, I must add the role of “pedagogical ecologist” and remain observant and flexible. Sounds exciting. We'll see how it goes. I love my job!