#reading 7

Put simply, the Banking model of education works by a rule of three, “receive, memorize and repeat.” This is a method in which students must act as robotic containers that must then be filled with information by their teachers, information that if questioned or argued against, will cause the student to be deemed a ‘bad’ student. In the Banking model system Freire describes, teachers fill students with specific ideas and information and the students must absorb and retain this information without question, before robotically spewing it back out again in a formal setting. The more meekly the student accepts the information given them, the ‘better’ the student. In this system, the oppressors (in this case, the teachers) consider the knowledge they provide to be gift given to the oppressed (in this case, the students). Here, the teachers consider themselves to be superior in their knowledge and consider the students to be the epitome of ignorance and that any questioning or contradiction of said knowledge is wrong. The will teacher enforces their choices and the student must comply.

This method of teaching can be found within the majority of educational facilities throughout the UK and it is therefore probably not unusual to have experienced the Banking model of education first hand. I personally find this method very limiting and that the feeling of repressing it deals to a student can have a lasting effect on the students who experience it. It can limit one’s belief in their own abilities and even their own validation on things that truly inspire them, leaving them with a lack of confidence to express themselves in ways that they, as an individual, see fit. I personally have encountered many situations in which things that truly inspire me have been invalidated or dismissed as being worthless in a ‘contemporary society’. Things such as particular art forms, that I personally hold very close and wish to peruse within my studies, have even been dismissed as ‘selfish methods of expression’, sometimes through the use of harsh and obscene terms of phrasing by theorists that, as a student, are supposed to be regarded as role models. From a student’s point of view who must look to their educators for guidance, to hear these things from those whom they must look up to can be deeply saddening as well as dangerously discouraging. However, for the sake of ambition in gaining a meaningful qualification, a student must often speak and write in praise and false agreement of teachings that demoralize, or harshly invalidate them by openly shaming them for their personal forms of self expression. Naturally, to be placed in such situations can be very distressing. I feel this method of teaching can be very harmful as it can limit a student’s potential to a very subjective field that may not speak to them personally, as the Banking model of teaching that Freire describes with it’s invalidation towards what truly inspires a student, can cause a loss of confidence towards the field in which they are naturally drawn to by making them feel ashamed of what inspires them by attaching to it a label of apparent worthlessness, thus squashing their unique and personal sense of creativity and capacity for forms of self expression that come naturally to them as an individual. This can have a harmful and lasting effect on a student by implanting the fear that their own methods of self expression are worthless and will not be listened to, thus leaving them feeling limited and incompetent with regards to their own abilities towards their natural fount from which they draw their creativity.

Regarding the general theory on the situation of the oppressed, Boal and Friere both seem to agree on the idea that work must be formed with and not for the oppressed in order to ensure that the oppressed are properly represented. In these texts, Boal and Friere both present the theory that solidarity with the oppressed does not just require a self-realization on the oppressors part, but that the oppressor must also fight beside the oppressed in order to make themselves an ally and reform their role as the oppressor. In order to truly become their ally, the oppressor must stop placing the oppressed into a category of a mass that is need of pity, but instead regard them as persons who are on an equal level as themselves, but have simply been unjustly dealt with. Mere guilt that is appeased through sentimentality and talk of sympathy simply will not do. Freire and Boal also both look into the concept of the oppressed becoming the oppressor, sometimes through the oppressor’s example (by which, such as in the teacher/ student relationship, the oppressed know no different), or by way of the oppressed overthrowing the oppressor and subsequently becoming the oppressor themselves by way of punishment for their former oppressor. However, both Boal and Freire agree that the only way to overthrow an oppressor is not to punish them, but to find solidarity and common ground with them and therefore break the cycle in its entirety, rather than the two roles merely trading places routinely.

The seventh read-through of Much Ado About Nothing! 

Many of you are double or triple cast, so double check which lines you have to read. You can look up the lines of the characters here, but beware the differences in names. The names listed below all go with the Folger Edition. If you’re in any doubt, please ask. 

Also, we recast some readers; we hope you don’t mind reading a smaller part now!

Times and time zones:

Euro: 20:00-24:00 EST: 14:00-18:00 CST: 13:00-17:00 MST: 12:00-16:00 PST: 11:00-15:00

Leader: runecestershire

Cast:

Listener: @greenleaves-never Balthasar & Friar: hello-delicious-tea Beatrice & Boy: annathegreenwitch Benedick: boldlygoingalittlecrazy Borachio: smallscreensidekick Count Claudio & First Watchman: @inarduisfidelis Dogberry: theresultof100notes Don John & Sexton: thecircusofme Hero & Conrade: @thewindysideofcare Leonato: thelovelyanathema Leonato's Brother/Antonio & Messenger: 2b-or-not-2b-ld Margaret & Seacoal: strange-goodfellows Prince Pedro & Second Watchman: runecestershire Understudy: cinnamonbeferre Understudy: thejotunsdrankian Ursula & Verges: altchar

Please send an ask to confirm! 

Read the Guidelines. To avoid the differences between editions that make for confusion and missed cues, please use the Folger edition of Much Ado About Nothing during the read-through.

1) The first reading was a sample Usability Test Report, with guidelines for what to put in each section and what sorts of questions to ask users. The second reading was called "Stats: We're Doing It Wrong" written by Judy Robertson for Communications of the ACM. Robertson claims that researchers often analyze attitude questionnaires with likert scales incorrectly. She states, "For ordinal data, one should use non-parametric statistical tests," which apparently the majority of people are doing wrong. Researchers fear that non-parametric tests will fail to catch the problems that parametric tests may find. Robertson pushes forward the use of robust modern statistical tests and the idea that authors must publish effect size results in addition to significance results. To quote Robertson again, she describes the difference between these two results:

Significance testing checks to see if differences in the means could have occured by chance alone. Effect size tells you how big the difference was between the groups

Researchers often forget to report on effect size. The third reading, written by James Carifio & Rocco Perla, also addressed the topic of likert scales and items and was called "Resolving the 50-year debate around using and misusing Likert scales." This reading basically stated there was nothing wrong with using parametric tests to analyze these scales. This article closed with: 

Treating the data from Likert scales as ordinal in character prevents one from using these more sophisticated and powerful modes of analyses and, as a result, from benefiting from the richer, more powerful and more nuanced understanding they produce.

To be honest, I found this article (and the one that came before it) hard to understand because I was not really familiar with the terms that they were discussing, and I think that the authors assumed that the readers already knew what they were talking about. But I believe that this reading is disagreeing with Robertson and saying you should not treat the data from Likert scales as ordinal. The fourth reading from the Nielsen Norman Group describes how to execute a heuristic evaluation. It discusses the differences between heuristic evaluations and traditional user testing. Heuristic evaluations allow more participation in by the observer and more freedom by the evaluator on how to proceed with the evaluation. It does not provide "perfect" results, as the article states, but is considered a "discount usability engineering" method and can potentially offer incredibly useful results. The last section of this reading discusses how to find the right number of evaluators, and even provides a formula that predicts the number of problems found based on the amount of evaluators. The final reading was called "The 1984 Olympic Message System: A Test of Behavioral Principles of System Design" and  talked about the success of the OMS and why it was so successful. The designers of this system that was used for communication with Olympic athletes valued three principles: early focus on users and tasks, empirical measurement, and iterative design. The success of OMS taught that following these three principles can help make other designs successful, and it does not have to take an extreme amount of time or cost a lot of money.

2) One thing I'd like to discuss in class would be the section from the reading about OMS entitled "So What? First Impressions." Often when I am reading a lot of the materials for this class, the guidelines for good design and usability seem like common sense, and it almost seems obvious that someone would have to write that down. But this article makes a good point of recognizing that these principles are not always obvious to everyone and in practice are not always followed for one reason or another. First of all, this article proved that the extra time put into planning ahead saves you time managing usability problems in the future, so it is clearly important. Also, if these principles were truly common sense, then design would be an easy task and we wouldn't need all this literature on it.