MbShea@PWP@English@UMCP

Hello there. (Wrapping up grading/reflecting on the coffee cup memos.  Thank you!).  I want to reflect quickly on a teaching approach that you can use at work and your personal future.  Do not use a deficit model.  Google's AI (cringing a bit about doing this) says (11/4/24):

The deficit model in education is a theory that students' academic performance is due to their own internal deficiencies, rather than the school's structure or other factors. The model assumes that students lack skills, knowledge, or experience, and that the teacher's role is to provide the missing knowledge. 

 

The deficit model can lead to teachers assuming that students are lazy, unmotivated, or underprepared. It can also lead to low expectations for students, and students may not be set up for real-world success. 

 

A more inclusive approach is the asset model, also known as the strengths-based approach. This model focuses on what students already know and their strengths, and can help students feel a sense of belonging and be motivated to succeed. 

Spitballing on the CAIN seven openings:

1. Tell a short story/be visual and clear about characters and actions.
   1. Case that is real (patient)
   2. Composite case that you reveal as not real but highly plausible
   3. Use a widely know lit/media event
2. Use a current event.
   1. Professional meeting
   2. Political event
   3. Cultural event/phenom
3. Capture the size of the problem (very large but sometimes very small works too).
   1. Rate of illness in a population (like diabetes or COVID infection numbers)
   2. Number of Goldilocks planets
   3. Depth of sea flow and number of heat vents
   4. Estimates of insects globally
   5. Financial cost of cod fishery collapse.
4. Open with huge social problem, perhaps a wicked problem.
   1. Can geo-engineering address carbon capture in practical, short-term ways?
   2. Drones may play a role in distributing vaccines in remote areas.
5. Use a smaller question to open a document.
   1. Does ultra high resolution mammography improve the problem of false positives in breast cancer diagnosis?
   2. Can Josh Silver's 2009 TED talk on spectacles be scaled in Amazonia?
6. Quote a respected thinking, related to your problem/research question.
   1. Pick someone you admire.  I suggest looking at Nobel Prize speeches but also the annual cohorts of MacArthur genius winners.
      1. “The power of a theory is exactly proportional to the diversity of situations it can explain.”
         ― Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action.
      2. ‘As birds form flocks and ants carry food to nests using bottom-up principles of communication and collective action, people can solve their own problems.’
      – Ruth DeFries, 2020. What Would Nature Do?
7. Use statistics (related to number 3).
   1. Protein folding operations are very small and very fast. For example,  very small single-domain proteins ( up to a hundred amino acids) typically fold in one  step. 
   2. Time scales for protein folding are typically at the millisecond level. Indeed, the very fastest known protein folding reactions conclude with one to five microseconds.

How does this help you write paragraphs now?  Try writing am opening paragraph using two of these strategies -- all the while honoring the cognitive wedge. Now, try using those strategies -- with some of the excitement (pathos) about why the article is important -- to close your document.  You can revise later but let's get in there and play ball!

Next paragraph that is very easy to work in concerns establishing the ethos of your first (and perhaps last) author.  Huzzah, we can do this (did with Davis and with either Moore or Hocking). In an author-ethos paragraph (within the first three paragraphs/on the ramp of the cognitive wedge),

• give expertise/specialization and 
• both the PhD/MD or other degree-granting institution AND the current institutional affiliation.

Caution: Do not focus overmuch on undergraduate study.  Note:  PhD are earned, rather than obtained. Sample-->

Kaspari earned a PhD in pharmacognition from the University of Illinois.  He leads an interdisciplinary team at Wexler Institute of Plant Based Technology, which is part of the University of California at Berkeley Plant Science Department.

Here is a thoughtful NCBI/NIH article on first author conventions. Two additional resources are this 2010 open access piece at Science and this 2012 Nature short guidance article.

Tonight PLEASE complete your ER REVIEWING TASK. Help each other move the knowledge and document forward. Be afraid. Very afraid. Comply!