Yesterday I was making fun of the University of Iowa’s decision to have applicants Tweet instead of write a second college admission essay, and to reward the best Tweet with a full scholarship. But y’know, the more I think about it the more I like the idea.
Proposed changes to the University of Iowa seal...
Part of my academic crisis was admitting out loud what I’d thought for a long time: it’s stupid to make people write in formats they’ll never use in real life. Seriously, how could I say a long-form research paper would get you ahead in the world? I mean, look where my dissertation got me. So I was all for making students put together websites and blog posts. That way, I could honestly tell them they might use this knowledge someday, and maybe there would be less crap on the internet. Bonus!
Also, I know from experience reading bad essay after bad essay means you’ll eventually zone out; I guarantee you the University if Iowa admissions office is secretly throwing darts to see who gets in, and I suspect that this contest is a way to soothe their guilty conscience.
And I think they should hire me as a reader. After all, I’m a connoisseur of what Freud called “economy of expression” and Shakespeare called “the soul of wit.” It’s challenging to make those 140 characters compelling. It’s takes editing and artistry, as does any other writing, and skilled Tweeters can capture an overhead conversation, compose a Twitter haiku, or write a great joke.
Still, I think I might require the potential awardees to do multiple Tweets. I mean, you might be able to produce one brilliant thought, but I’d look for applicants who could maintain a decently edited Twitter stream — you’ve gotta have standards, right?
The varsity basketball players I follow on Twitter use “whom” correctly in their tweets. I’ve always considered this to be confirmation that they deserve their scholarships.
And, frankly, it’s easier to write a research paper than it is to be interesting and creative. If you’ve done the research, at least, a research paper just proves that you know grammar and possibly structure. The creative projects are hard. And I tweet every day and produce a really good one…um, rarely. So the first essay is to prove grammar skills, but the second “essay” is to prove you’re a person people might want around. Plus if administrators were evaluating the whole feed, all those times you got drunk and thought it would be a good idea to tweet stuff from the bar…would be available.
Gotta quibble with one of Eileen’s points: a good research paper (at least in History, which is my field) *is* creative work. Or at least, it should be. You see something that other people don’t, and then you make them see what you see, in a compelling way.
I, too, like the idea of a full scholarship hanging on more than just 140 characters — a portfolio of sorts I *might* be able to get behind. One bon mot just isn’t that predictive. Then again, universities have been awarding scholarships based on SATs for decades, so perhaps it’s no worse than what we’ve got now.
Maybe at the PhD level (I have not and will not go to PhD school, but I did study history at a pretty well respected university) research papers are creative – although I do wonder how many papers are groundbreaking and how many are building good houses on already-broken ground. But even so, a research paper follows a pretty basic structure (sticking with history, at least): First you explain why your subject is important. Then you give a rundown of what’s already been written on it. Then you explain what’s missing in published scholarship. Then you fill the empty hole with your primary source discoveries. Then you write a conclusion. It’s not easy, but it’s easier – once you have a question, you do the research and it comes together. With a more creative project like the ones Amanda* says she used, you still have to come up with a question, research it, and answer it well, but you also have to choose and possibly design a medium in which to deliver it.
I do think that a twitter feed would be a better “essay” than a single tweet. A bon mot might not be enough, but sustained bons mots prove that someone is, again, at least an interesting person it might be fun to have around.
*I know you don’t like “Professor Krauss,” but it’s REALLY hard to call you by your given name, even though I’ve never met you.
Tweets might be techno-relevant right now, and good ones might indicate an interesting degree of cleverness on the part of the tweeter (twitter? twiterer?) But you’ll never discover the true writers in the crowd with that approach.
I would assign them a topic or have them pick one they can expound on and tell them to build a Wikipedia entry on it, complete with source references, pics, etc. You get something from them you can honestly say has some value because it will be used as reference material by others, plus it challenges them (or at least it should!) to keep their wiki fresh and up to date,with improvements being made as their writing and research skills improve- Skills which will probably be abysmal right out of what serves as American High Schools these days.
The wiki thing can work well, and I know profs who do assign their students to author or “improve” wikipedia entries. I think it’s good for the students, but it worries me only because it continues the trend of making information a bit too free, and “research” something that anyone can do. I don’t think these ideas have helped the humanities at all.
That’s because people mistake the availability of web based encyclopedia style resources for actual, authoritative sources that can be used for true research. The web resources like Wikipedia have their place- Everyone sooner or later needs to look up something quickly and most don’t have the required reference books at hand or easy access to a library in the time available. The CIA World Fact Book is a good example of a tool designed to fit specific needs, and Wikipedia and similar web resources are another.
Unfortunately, just as the Spell Checker embedded in word processing software is a great tool for catching occasional mistakes or getting the correct spelling for hard to remember words, Wikipedia is cool for fast answers to quick questions. However, just as the Spell Checker can be used as a crutch for the lazy minded who can’t be bothered to learn to spell correctly, Wikipedia is abused by lazy students who think that they can search and copy from it to support actual scholarly reaserch papers and reports from the convenience of their computer, without visiting a library or reading and quoting source material.