Analysis Example: Gowen 301

I wrote this analysis essay as a kind of quick rant about our classroom. My goal in it was to describe the classroom as an information system and how it regulates information. I then wanted to critique the classroom relative to the design goals of this course. I definitely achieved the ranting tone, thought at times, it feels a bit too insubstantial, since it just hops from critique to critique without carefully building a broader argument. And there are so many opportunities to link the analysis to research to compensate for this that I didn't take. I think it's a 3.2; it's lack of feedback and polish shows; having a few people read it, and really iterating on it a few times could probably bring it up to a 3.7 or higher.

Gowen 301

Amy J. Ko

Ever since I increased the size of INFO 200 to 200 students back in 2017, INFO 200 has generally been in Gowen 301. It's not that this is the best room for what the course is or that our faculty prefer it. It's just the only option on our aging and growing campus, and so this what we get. 

I could write at length about why this is all we get, but that is a story of taxes and disinvestment in public education. The story I want to tell is one if information. I want to deconstruct all of the ways in which this room regulates information, and how its regulating fails to support learning, framing this room as an information system with exactly the wrong properties for how I teach.

Let's start by explaining why this classroom is an information system. If information systems are people, processes, and policies that enable people to access information, then what are the people, processes, and policies that make up this room? The people are us; the students and the teachers, and the many other staff that help reserve this room, maintain its IT, lighting, and desks. We organize time to meet here in order to share information with each other. 

The processes in this room are numerous: there is the waiting for people in the class before to leave this room, the entering of the room, the choosing of where to sit, the setting up of hybrid devices, the activities I've orchestrated as a teacher. We engage in these processes with the hope that by doing so, I will share what I want you to know, you will learn, and through our interactions, we will become informed in ways that we weren't before.

And then there are the policies, written, and unwritten. You come on time. You leave after we're done. You don't speak while I'm speaking. If I ask for your attention, you give it. You engage in conversation with each other rather than isolating yourself. You contribute to discussions, even though you may not feel psychologically safe, because by taking that risk, you know you'll help others feel safer to. You do the activities that I've designed, trusting that I've devised them well to support your learning. These are the norms that make up this system.

While much of this system is enabled by this physical classroom, I think the classroom mostly gets in the way. Let's enumerate some of the many ways it fails to support the systems goals.

We have a massive projector screen, which should be large enough for anyone to see. But in most years, the projector is so dim, and the light from these massive windows so bright, that even on the best days, contrast is exceptionally low. Anyone who is low vision would struggle to see it, and if we were to close the curtains fully, many of you would fall asleep. The most central infrastructure for conveying information in the room is barely visible.

And then there's the audio infrastructure. For me to teach hybrid in this room, and be audible both in the room and online, I need to wear a wireless mic, but also wear a bluetooth microphone paired with my laptop. If I'm wearing a dress, there's nowhere to clip them. If bluetooth drops, students online can't hear me. If the battery dies in the middle of teaching, I have to stop everything, unlock this drawer, and replace them. And if the internet drops -- which it sometimes does -- anyone online will be immediately excluded from learning. The single most important source of information in this room, my voice, depends on a fragile system of flaky wireless connections.

But in this information system, your voices are essential as well. But the acoustics of this room were not designed for conversation, they were designed for one person speak. Not only do you have to turn around uncomfortably in your desks to create some sensible arrangement for conversation, but you have to listen carefully and speak loudly to be heard. This is just barely possible if you are hearing, but if you are deaf, there is very little space for interpreters to do their work, and they too have to listen carefully to translate and speak. You share your ideas in this room in the worst possible circumstances, in a tragically inaccessible space.

And then there is the scale. All of the problems I've mentioned would be surmountable if there were just 15 of us in a room. We would be able to respond to failures, speak more quietly, move around the space more easily. But with 200 of us in this room, every little failure compounds. You feel a little less capable of speaking up if you don't hear something. I'm a little less aware of when you are confused, because I can't attend to all of your faces, or hands. Some of you are so far away and sit so consistently in the back that I may never meet you or learn you name. All of the learning that might happen by accident in a small space with a small group does not happen hear, because were are so many in number.

When I think about rooms like Gowen, then, I think about how learning is just barely possible. I'm reminded of one meta-review of studies of class size back in the 1970's (Glass & Smith, 1979). Reviewing hundreds of studies, it found a consistent trend that academic achievement in primary and secondary school is strongly negatively correlated with class size. Anything larger than 1 to 1, teacher to student, and the losses begin, leveling off at around 30, but continuing to steadily decline as the class size increases. Perhaps this is just correlation? Or perhaps something magical changes when a student moves from high school to college? 

Or perhaps, and more likely, the public has just decided that effective learning isn't worth the money. Because if we wanted you to learn as well as you could, the would be one of me for every one of you. I'm guessing you and the state would rather not pay that cost. And so here we are, in this large class, in a room that sets the bar so low that you can barely hear or see me. This information system, alas, is the best one I can design, for a regulatory system of public education that wishes to spend as little as possible on the public itself.

Glass, G. V., & Smith, M. L. (1979). Meta-Analysis of Research on Class Size and Achievement. Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, 1(1), 2-16. https://doi.org/10.3102/01623737001001002