Nothing is Perfect or Complete with Dr. Marshal Miller

Hello! This month, Gina and Kelly sit down with Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Information Science, Dr. Marshal Miller. In this episode, “Nothing is Perfect or Complete,” Marshal shares with us why he believes good teaching always requires maintenance and why it's so important to help instill a love for the material when we know for students it's so easy to quit. Please be sure to subscribe to, rate, and review the podcast and follow us on Facebook and Instagram @pedagogyagogo. 

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00:00:00 Gina Turner

One, two, three, four, Pedagogy A-Go-Go, Pedagogy, Go, Go, Go.

00:00:14 Gina Turner

Hello and welcome to Pedagogy A-Go-Go, a podcast about how we engage with learning and why.

00:00:20 Gina Turner

This is season 6, episode 1, Nothing is Perfect or Complete with Dr.

00:00:26 Gina Turner

Marshall Miller, and we are your hosts, Kelly Allen and Gina Turner.

00:00:31 Gina Turner

Hello, Kelly Allen.

00:00:33 Kelly Allen

Hey, Gina.

00:00:36 Kelly Allen

Season 6, holy crow.

00:00:38 Gina Turner

I know.

00:00:39 Kelly Allen

Where does the time go?

00:00:40 Gina Turner

Sunrise, sunset, right?

00:00:42 Gina Turner

I guess.

00:00:43 Gina Turner

I guess.

00:00:44 Gina Turner

It's exciting.

00:00:45 Gina Turner

We're together.

00:00:46 Gina Turner

The band is back together.

00:00:47 Kelly Allen

Yeah, absolutely.

00:00:48 Kelly Allen

So how's your semester going?

00:00:49 Gina Turner

It's going really fast, actually.

00:00:51 Gina Turner

I can't believe we've just finished fall break, and my students are starting to get that slight hint of exhaustion and panic in the backs of their eyes a little bit.

00:01:02 Gina Turner

We were talking about their final project today, and they were like, oh, right.

00:01:07 Gina Turner

How about you?

00:01:08 Kelly Allen

Yeah, same.

00:01:10 Kelly Allen

So I do this thing where when we come back from a break, I

00:01:15 Kelly Allen

I kind of reprint the second-half of our calendar.

00:01:20 Kelly Allen

And then I like make some notes.

00:01:21 Kelly Allen

It's like, so here's the labor involved between now and the end.

00:01:26 Kelly Allen

And just I hand that out and we just kind of like talk it over.

00:01:29 Kelly Allen

It's like, so if you felt that the first half went fast, the second-half is just going to be a streak of lightning because there's going to be like another break in there with the Thanksgiving holiday.

00:01:39 Kelly Allen

And it's just.

00:01:41 Gina Turner

Yeah.

00:01:42 Kelly Allen

I just tell them, brace yourself.

00:01:43 Gina Turner

Yeah, that's really smart to do, to hand it back out, like make it real for them.

00:01:48 Kelly Allen

Yeah.

00:01:49 Gina Turner

I pull it up on the screen and I just like, look at, look at what, look at the schedule.

00:01:53 Gina Turner

This is where we're at.

00:01:55 Gina Turner

So, but other than that, it's my favorite month of my favorite season.

00:01:59 Gina Turner

So there's that.

00:02:01 Kelly Allen

Oh, okay.

00:02:01 Kelly Allen

You're good.

00:02:02 Kelly Allen

Tell me more.

00:02:03 Gina Turner

I just love fall.

00:02:04 Gina Turner

I mean, I'm, you know, I'm kind of a nerd, so I actually always liked going back to school.

00:02:08 Gina Turner

And then, and this is the weather that I prefer.

00:02:12 Gina Turner

Even the rainy, even the rainy fall days just soothe my soul.

00:02:18 Kelly Allen

I feel smarter this time of the year.

00:02:20 Gina Turner

Yeah, your brain's fresh.

00:02:22 Kelly Allen

Yes.

00:02:22 Gina Turner

Yeah.

00:02:24 Gina Turner

I don't know.

00:02:24 Kelly Allen

No, I like it.

00:02:27 Kelly Allen

So before we get into this, I need help from you all on, I need a new word.

00:02:34 Kelly Allen

So as you both know, I've kind of transitioned from a role that was primarily administrative to now I'm teaching full-time.

00:02:47 Kelly Allen

And it, like working with

00:02:51 Kelly Allen

just a whole bunch of students all at once has been awesome.

00:02:56 Kelly Allen

And I just forgot how, and here's the word, I forgot how goofy they are.

00:03:02 Kelly Allen

And when I say goofy, I mean goofy and just like, in all the...

00:03:08 Kelly Allen

the best ways.

00:03:09 Kelly Allen

So I'm thinking about, so my son who is 14 years old and he's like growing into this like little man body and just watching him just like flop around everywhere.

00:03:20 Kelly Allen

it's just like, it's goofy.

00:03:22 Kelly Allen

And I feel like our students, at least at the community college, are like that as well.

00:03:29 Kelly Allen

Like they've got a full-time course load, full-time

00:03:35 Kelly Allen

workload generally, they commute all the time and they have families that they're caring for.

00:03:42 Kelly Allen

Either it's like their own or it's like their parents or like other siblings.

00:03:46 Kelly Allen

They got so much going on and it's like, and in juggling all of that, like, they end up just doing like these

00:03:54 Kelly Allen

delightfully goofy things.

00:03:57 Gina Turner

It's almost like the filters, they don't have the energy for filters because their energy is keeping all of these other balls in the air a little bit.

00:04:06 Gina Turner

My friend and I were over at his friend's house, and she has a four-year-old.

00:04:11 Gina Turner

And at one point, the four-year-old was lying on her back, singing a song, spinning in a circle.

00:04:17 Gina Turner

And we were just like, you know, why can't we do that now?

00:04:22 Gina Turner

And then we came up with a theory that that's why we age, is because we spend all this energy preventing ourselves from lying on the floor, singing and spinning in a circle and being goofy.

00:04:33 Gina Turner

And that that's what actually ages the edges of our

00:04:36 Gina Turner

chromosomes.

00:04:36 Gina Turner

That's why our telomeres shrink.

00:04:39 Gina Turner

But you know, so I think being there's something about a student mindset, goofy is a good word, but it's almost like a, there's a, there's a, an unhinged freedom, I think.

00:04:52 Kelly Allen

Yeah.

00:04:52 Gina Turner

You know, like.

00:04:53 Kelly Allen

Then I'm going to keep using it because, so like I ran into our provost in the parking lot.

00:04:59 Kelly Allen

It's the first time that I'd had a chance to like say even like 2 words to him since the semester started.

00:05:06 Kelly Allen

I asked him how his semester is going and then he asked me and he was like, and you're back in the classroom, how's it going?

00:05:12 Kelly Allen

I was like, I love it.

00:05:12 Kelly Allen

And our students are so goofy.

00:05:14 Kelly Allen

And he's like, I've never heard someone use that word to talk about students before.

00:05:19 Kelly Allen

And I was like, oh, really?

00:05:20 Kelly Allen

Is that wrong?

00:05:20 Kelly Allen

Should I use something different?

00:05:22 Kelly Allen

But no, maybe it lands well.

00:05:25 Gina Turner

I like it personally, but I'm.

00:05:29 Gina Turner

I embrace the word goofy for myself.

00:05:32 Gina Turner

I feel like I'm going to live forever because I've never quite managed to achieve adulthood.

00:05:39 Gina Turner

I don't know, knock wood.

00:05:40 Kelly Allen

Absolutely.

00:05:41 Kelly Allen

Okay, cool.

00:05:42 Kelly Allen

All right.

00:05:42 Kelly Allen

Well, thank you for that kind of moment of kind of like solipsistic attention.

00:05:48 Kelly Allen

But all right, thank you.

00:05:49 Gina Turner

Are very welcome.

00:05:50 Gina Turner

And I think we're excited for maybe goofy times with our guest today.

00:05:56 Gina Turner

Yes.

00:05:59 Kelly Allen

I got to admit, like I'm a little like nervous because it's like, okay, we're talking with a computer science faculty and it's like, I don't get to hang out with computer science faculty all that often.

00:06:11 Kelly Allen

And it's like, I don't know if it's like intimidation or like, I'm like, damn, I hope that we're like,

00:06:19 Kelly Allen

It's going to be entertaining.

00:06:21 Gina Turner

Or is the paradigm too different, from our little arts and humanities and social sciences brains?

00:06:28 Gina Turner

Like, is the paradigm going to be, are we going to be able to even communicate with each other?

00:06:34 Gina Turner

Yes, Well, I know we will be able to communicate with Dr.

00:06:38 Gina Turner

Marshall Miller.

00:06:39 Gina Turner

And Marshall is assistant professor of computer science and information science.

00:06:46 Gina Turner

which I don't know why those are listed separately and maybe we'll find out why.

00:06:51 Kelly Allen

I hope so.

00:06:52 Kelly Allen

If I don't remember to ask, you have to remember to ask.

00:06:55 Gina Turner

Okay.

00:06:55 Kelly Allen

Deal.

00:06:56 Gina Turner

Deal.

00:06:57 Gina Turner

If you had just one word to describe yourself as a teacher, what would it be?

00:07:06 Kelly Allen

Same as this.

00:07:08 Kelly Allen

Do you listen to podcasts?

00:07:10 Marshal Miller

I do.

00:07:11 Kelly Allen

Oh, what do you listen to?

00:07:13 Marshal Miller

The nerdiest things you can imagine.

00:07:16 Marshal Miller

There's one about keyboards.

00:07:19 Marshal Miller

There's one about file systems.

00:07:22 Marshal Miller

I don't know.

00:07:23 Marshal Miller

I'm trying to think.

00:07:24 Kelly Allen

Well, talk to me about file systems.

00:07:27 Marshal Miller

Well, it's one of my examples, but there are different ways, like probably back in...

00:07:36 Marshal Miller

I don't know, 10 years ago, when you plugged in like a flash drive in your computer, sometimes it would say like needs to format or something like that.

00:07:43 Marshal Miller

And that's because different computer systems use different file systems, which just means that they store information differently.

00:07:51 Marshal Miller

So it's how they organize the data onto them.

00:07:55 Marshal Miller

That's largely gone because

00:07:59 Marshal Miller

Microsoft and Apple have kind of agreed to use this one called Extended 4.

00:08:06 Marshal Miller

And so that kind of just works for everything.

00:08:07 Marshal Miller

So most of them are just formatted to that.

00:08:09 Marshal Miller

But they're very interesting.

00:08:11 Marshal Miller

There's some really advanced ones, some that are automatically duplicated multiple times, some that you can send an entire computer over to another one over the internet real quick.

00:08:24 Marshal Miller

Lots of duplications.

00:08:27 Kelly Allen

Wow.

00:08:29 Marshal Miller

I know.

00:08:30 Marshal Miller

I guess I can check that off of favorite topics to cover.

00:08:34 Marshal Miller

Now we've already gotten to file systems.

00:08:36 Kelly Allen

It's funny, like, so my relationship with technology has always been like, I'm going to get the best, fastest, most storage-y kind of whatever processing device that's out there.

00:08:52 Kelly Allen

And of course, I have sticker shock and then I don't.

00:08:54 Kelly Allen

But then I think, well, wait a minute now.

00:08:57 Kelly Allen

I type documents and I watch YouTube.

00:09:02 Kelly Allen

I don't need all of that stuff because I don't know how to use it.

00:09:07 Kelly Allen

So like when you're talking about like LMNO P4 things, or sorry, like when you're talking about file systems, it's like, oh sweet, is he going to teach me how to organize my Google Drive?

00:09:22 Kelly Allen

That was where my mind went.

00:09:24 Kelly Allen

It is a hot mess.

00:09:26 Marshal Miller

We call that the file.

00:09:28 Marshal Miller

boy, architecture, I guess.

00:09:30 Kelly Allen

So is there anything from the file systems work that you were just talking about that could influence the strategies that we have for the file thing that I just talked about, the file hierarchy?

00:09:48 Marshal Miller

Yes.

00:09:49 Marshal Miller

Sweet.

00:09:50 Marshal Miller

But it might not keep you more organized.

00:09:53 Marshal Miller

It's just you would never have multiple copies of them.

00:09:56 Kelly Allen

That helps.

00:09:56 Marshal Miller

Some of them, even if you have two copies of the same file in two different folders, it's actually just using one memory address.

00:10:04 Marshal Miller

So it affects it, but it's not going to help you.

00:10:07 Marshal Miller

I'm sorry.

00:10:09 Gina Turner

It's good to know that at least there is nothing that I'm missing other than my own ability to organize myself.

00:10:18 Gina Turner

But I'm going to sort of start jumping in because this is actually really cool because you've already expressed that you have a real passion for what you just termed nerdy, but like for computing, right?

00:10:33 Gina Turner

For all of these aspects of computing.

00:10:36 Gina Turner

So

00:10:37 Gina Turner

Can you, is that, do you like teaching that?

00:10:40 Gina Turner

Is that something you enjoy teaching to other people?

00:10:43 Gina Turner

It seems like you do, because you're giving Kelly this, you know, this rundown.

00:10:47 Marshal Miller

If people ask questions, yeah.

00:10:49 Marshal Miller

No, I mean, honestly, you know, people often ask me just like, oh, why are you teaching?

00:10:56 Marshal Miller

You can make, like, and it's a fair argument.

00:10:58 Marshal Miller

You can make money at like this software company or something like that.

00:11:03 Marshal Miller

And honestly, I mean, my response is always the same.

00:11:05 Marshal Miller

I can do that on the side if I want to, and I do for fun.

00:11:08 Marshal Miller

I can make whatever project I want.

00:11:10 Marshal Miller

But now I just get to tell other people about the cool stuff, and they have to listen to me.

00:11:15 Marshal Miller

Like, I mean, they got to sit and listen about file systems, and I'm really excited about it.

00:11:20 Marshal Miller

And if they pretend to care, too, that's even great.

00:11:23 Marshal Miller

And I think sometimes they do, and then they go on and they tell other people about how cool file systems are.

00:11:30 Marshal Miller

And then, hopefully, down the line, that's their career too.

00:11:33 Kelly Allen

That's awesome, but you'd have to do that.

00:11:38 Kelly Allen

You would have to enjoy the relationship of teaching and learning somehow, because if not like...

00:11:50 Kelly Allen

students are, in working with students, it's a complicated practice.

00:11:57 Kelly Allen

It's not a one-size-fits-all, no matter how much someone would try when you're engaging in the learning process with them.

00:12:05 Kelly Allen

So there has to be some element of love and hopefully joy in that.

00:12:10 Kelly Allen

So.

00:12:12 Marshal Miller

I mean, I certainly do.

00:12:15 Marshal Miller

I think people who have been around me enough are sick of my constant sharing of certain things.

00:12:22 Marshal Miller

But there's just, in my mind, there's so much that's great.

00:12:26 Marshal Miller

About evolution of computing, not even, now we say computers and we're thinking about, the machine we type on with the keyboard and like this laptop in front of me.

00:12:36 Marshal Miller

But I mean,

00:12:37 Marshal Miller

The process of computing is ancient in society, and I think it's amazing to watch just to even document how humanity has figured out ways to process information that they can't naturally in their brain.

00:12:53 Marshal Miller

And so almost everything I see in my mind is like,

00:12:58 Marshal Miller

I wonder how that relates to this.

00:13:00 Marshal Miller

And I don't know.

00:13:01 Marshal Miller

Yeah, I can't help but love it.

00:13:04 Gina Turner

Just makes me think of the movie Hidden Figures, where they are called computers.

00:13:09 Gina Turner

Like that term actually referred to the women in that case who were calculating by hand, fundamentally, the calculations necessary for the space program.

00:13:21 Gina Turner

But the people were called computers.

00:13:23 Gina Turner

Just really dun bad.

00:13:24 Marshal Miller

You have now, you guys have taken two of my talking points off of it.

00:13:28 Marshal Miller

No, it's more than fine.

00:13:30 Marshal Miller

That just means I can ramble about something else now.

00:13:33 Marshal Miller

But no, I mean, you're absolutely right.

00:13:35 Marshal Miller

I mean, it's really, I've been lucky enough this semester that we got to finally start an honors section of computer science one.

00:13:44 Marshal Miller

And a lot of the stuff we did, well, pre-fall break, which is everything up to this point.

00:13:50 Marshal Miller

We did a lot of historical perspectives of computing.

00:13:53 Marshal Miller

And then after it, we said, okay, well, we'll get into some of like

00:13:57 Marshal Miller

the more groundbreaking things that are currently happening.

00:14:01 Marshal Miller

But I love to talk about how like, I mean, women especially were just so crucial.

00:14:08 Marshal Miller

And it all, well, I don't know.

00:14:10 Marshal Miller

Do we just keep going down this path?

00:14:12 Gina Turner

Yeah, okay.

00:14:13 Gina Turner

So you mentioned you're teaching an honor section of computer science.

00:14:16 Gina Turner

What else are you teaching?

00:14:18 Gina Turner

What's your regular classes that you teach?

00:14:21 Marshal Miller

That is almost impossible to answer.

00:14:24 Marshal Miller

I teach what

00:14:27 Marshal Miller

Someone else can't.

00:14:30 Marshal Miller

So whatever we can't find to teach, that's what I teach.

00:14:35 Marshal Miller

I came here at a very strange time for the computer science department.

00:14:41 Marshal Miller

We lost Ann Richards, unfortunately.

00:14:44 Marshal Miller

And Norm Lippincott retired soon after that.

00:14:52 Marshal Miller

We didn't lose Ken Kraus to COVID in the traditional sense.

00:14:56 Marshal Miller

He left because he didn't really want to adapt to COVID teaching.

00:15:02 Marshal Miller

So it was pretty bare at some points.

00:15:06 Marshal Miller

And the skill set you need to teach all of computer science is usually pretty specialized.

00:15:12 Marshal Miller

Like Norm is really great with some of the older technologies.

00:15:18 Marshal Miller

He was there and working in the industry.

00:15:21 Marshal Miller

When you hear about some of the languages that we were teaching, like COBOL or Fortran, like he was there, that's what he did for his profession.

00:15:31 Marshal Miller

And so, like the historical ones, he usually does a lot more of.

00:15:36 Marshal Miller

But it is hard to find someone who's that well-rounded.

00:15:42 Marshal Miller

But for the most part, I know the structure of most programming languages, kind of depending on what they are,

00:15:51 Marshal Miller

it's easier to adapt.

00:15:52 Marshal Miller

Like once you know one, you kind of start to get the picture.

00:15:55 Marshal Miller

So I kind of just plug and play.

00:15:57 Marshal Miller

But anything, it's limited to computer science and web development.

00:16:04 Gina Turner

Okay.

00:16:04 Marshal Miller

But it could be like, I don't know, one of 14 classes.

00:16:09 Marshal Miller

I don't know.

00:16:10 Gina Turner

Wow.

00:16:10 Gina Turner

Yeah.

00:16:11 Marshal Miller

So I mean, I consistently teach computer science one because I really like it.

00:16:15 Marshal Miller

And

00:16:16 Marshal Miller

It's an extremely important one.

00:16:18 Marshal Miller

To your point, that's the one where I have to instill the love of computer science into people, because it's really easy to quit.

00:16:27 Marshal Miller

And not that other people can't do that, I mean, but it is kind of personal to me if I find that our majors are coming in, and not even just struggling, but don't have that, because it is...

00:16:46 Marshal Miller

I mean, it was a hot job for, a long time, but it really is kind of like a thing of passion.

00:16:53 Marshal Miller

Our own Jeff was a giant quitter when it came to computer science, but I know, right?

00:17:00 Marshal Miller

Shots fired already.

00:17:03 Marshal Miller

No, it's no, it's not.

00:17:08 Marshal Miller

It's not like the most shiny or attractive major.

00:17:12 Marshal Miller

It's not IT either.

00:17:14 Marshal Miller

The cybersecurity is in networking that get a lot of advertisement, but I really like it.

00:17:23 Gina Turner

Was there an experience that you had as a student that made you not a quitter like some people in the room?

00:17:32 Kelly Allen

I love you, Jeff, by the way.

00:17:33 Kelly Allen

I'm not going to let these haters hate.

00:17:38 Marshal Miller

I think I came into this

00:17:41 Marshal Miller

very similarly to how the industry involved itself, like over the years.

00:17:49 Marshal Miller

So as a kid, I very much like had engineering tendencies, like a lot of connects and Legos, I don't know, tinker toys.

00:17:59 Marshal Miller

There were some that you could make like circuits and like do like the little low voltage electricity thing.

00:18:06 Marshal Miller

So kind of got an electrical engineering.

00:18:09 Marshal Miller

went to Radio Shack, bought the two cent pieces of things to make a light bulb go on.

00:18:16 Marshal Miller

And that's really where the origin of computer science starts, is they're all from electrical engineering really built into that, because before we had screens, computers still used electrical currents to work.

00:18:29 Marshal Miller

So I very much just came in very interested in how things work.

00:18:36 Marshal Miller

And it kind of just like evolved out of that.

00:18:39 Marshal Miller

I was probably very lucky in the time that I came up in that I had the internet from a pretty early age, but also not too early that I was entranced by it.

00:18:54 Marshal Miller

Like websites were there.

00:18:56 Marshal Miller

They weren't like cool or engaging.

00:18:58 Marshal Miller

You wouldn't spend more than 10 minutes on one.

00:19:01 Marshal Miller

You could find information, but it wasn't like, entertainment really.

00:19:06 Marshal Miller

So I liked the architecture aspects.

00:19:10 Marshal Miller

And then, I don't know.

00:19:12 Marshal Miller

It seems like every Rd.

00:19:14 Marshal Miller

I traveled, there was some aspect of that.

00:19:17 Marshal Miller

So it kind of was like, even bringing me back like to here to do this job, a lot of it was just like, it's hard for me to separate that part of myself.

00:19:28 Marshal Miller

It's just,

00:19:29 Marshal Miller

It's mostly just been curiosity.

00:19:32 Gina Turner

That's great.

00:19:34 Gina Turner

So you just have always sort of been a student of this topic, right?

00:19:41 Gina Turner

Broadly and then focusing in.

00:19:45 Gina Turner

So do you disagree, Kelly?

00:19:48 Kelly Allen

Oh, no, I'm just saying he's got me thinking about a lot of things because, you know, you were

00:19:56 Kelly Allen

listing some names of former colleagues, but just got me thinking about kind of past relationships with kind of not just like the department, but the discipline.

00:20:11 Kelly Allen

So the discipline of computer science.

00:20:14 Kelly Allen

So this is, I don't know if it's intro to computers or whatever, it's something that is

00:20:19 Kelly Allen

It's required of all majors, I believe. Is that correct? That everyone has to take that course as part of their degree requirements. And like I remember taking it when I was doing my bachelor's of work and like what we were taught was like, here's how you use Windows 94. You know, it's like this is what Excel is. You make these things called spreadsheets and like whatever. It was dreadfully dull, but I think I passed it.

00:20:49 Kelly Allen

But we're now living in an age where, like you're talking about, having access to the internet at a relatively young age. Like we are immersed in technology. And granted, I don't think that very many people understand how technology works the way that you described earlier with like Lincoln Logs and Legos and Connects and stuff. But like,

00:21:16 Kelly Allen

we're like immersed in this. And so the conversation that was coming up in the past was like, why do we have this intro to computers class when students are coming in and they already know more than we do, which is false. But like the assumption is that they know more than we do. So like, what is it, like, what is it about your relationship with the discipline that kind of might

00:21:47 Kelly Allen

I guess, silence the naysayers, if you will, but then also like that thing that you're talking about, generating curiosity with students and making sure that they don't quit, and I'm...

00:21:59 Kelly Allen

And I'm assuming that you're not just talking about computer science majors, but just like our general whatever classes. I don't know if there's a question in there. Usually Gina saves me at this point. She's like, well, Kelly, I think what you're talking about now is, but.

00:22:14 Marshal Miller

I think I got you.

00:22:15 Kelly Allen

All right. Thank God.

00:22:16 Marshal Miller

So this is actually, I mean, unfortunately, I think anyone who's met me knows this. I'm a very bad liar. So I just tend to tell the truth. I'm also one of those naysayers about

00:22:29 Marshal Miller

It's CISC 101 that everyone has to take.

00:22:32 Kelly Allen

Well, then let's squash it, man. Well, listen, I'm working on it.

00:22:37 Marshal Miller

One of the things is it's a requirement for transfers for everyone. And it teaches, it teaches basically the, actually, no, it actually specifically specifies that it has to be the Microsoft Office Suite. So they learn all of the Office tools.

00:22:57 Marshal Miller

Including access, so that explains why transfer students have to take it. My B for it now is the other reason everyone else takes it is because it is our technically right now it is our only course for non-computer science majors that qualifies as...

00:23:21 Marshal Miller

What's it called? A technology.

00:23:23 Gina Turner

Oh, the gen ed requirement.

00:23:24 Marshal Miller

The gen ed requirement.

00:23:25 Gina Turner

Yeah. So for transfer students, there's a list of competency skills that they all need to graduate with. So computer science, excuse me, intro to, what is it called now? Intro to.

00:23:38 Marshal Miller

I think it's called intro to information systems or maybe information technology now.

00:23:43 Gina Turner

Yeah. And that fulfills that.

00:23:46 Marshal Miller

Yeah. I mean, sadly, I'm a monster and don't teach that class. So that's not.

00:23:51 Marshal Miller

one I instill my love in. And I like you even more. It does bother me a lot. And I have a lot of things trying to at least offer an alternative. We're not there yet. Sadly, there's a lot of things that I'm trying to change all at once. That's never fun. So.

00:24:15 Gina Turner

Okay, so I just want to go there and ask you, what would you do instead of

00:24:20 Gina Turner

So in the current CISC 101, you're learning all the Microsoft apps, including Access, which no one uses anymore. So what would you, how would you reinvent, and you don't have to drill down at a granular level, but what would be the big learning outcome that you would want to replace?

00:24:40 Marshal Miller

So I'd actually love to do, and I think I can make it work,

00:24:45 Marshal Miller

whatever, current issues and trends in computing or in technology even. We actually have the cluster, I don't want to say has the ability, like we're all powerful, but we can substitute and designate anything to qualify as that technology competency. And I think as long as we organize it right, the course outlines are done properly, we go through curriculum, it can be done. But I feel like that

00:25:15 Marshal Miller

The nice thing about those courses is obviously technology moves fast. So right now there's gonna be a section on AI. It's certainly a current issue and event in there. That doesn't mean we're gonna, you know, it's not gonna be a fully AI class.

00:25:31 Marshal Miller

which I would probably not enjoy. Jeff has again experienced me and I start in the 1970s. So no one really loves my AI talks. But yeah, I think that would be adaptable enough and we could reach all of them. And I think it would be much more enjoyable so people understand that like the computer isn't just like this tool that we do mundane tasks on that we offload things onto. But like this is kind of

00:26:02 Marshal Miller

this is where we are right now and information sharing as humanity. And that may not always be true.

00:26:10 Kelly Allen

Well, yeah, because like you were earlier talking about like what's great about computers in that it's they do things that our brains or maybe our bodies as well can't just naturally do on their own. So

00:26:28 Kelly Allen

Now that we are living in this like, just hyper like technologically complex society, in what way can we like use computers, not just as, modes of kind of like survival, but like ways of kind of like engaging with the world in like these new and like joyful creative ways?

00:26:52 Gina Turner

I mean, it's making me think of two things. one of them is we live with computers like we live with air right now, right? So we take them completely. That is awesome. Well, we take it completely for granted, right? And even in the sense that if suddenly someone sucked the air out of the room, then of course we would care, just like if someone steals our phone, right? Suddenly we would be panic stricken, right? So, but we take it for granted. And so the other, I'm about to police myself,

00:27:22 Gina Turner

and I'm not going to, I almost want a critical computing theory. It is kind of what you're talking about, which is looking at the systems that, being aware of the systems around us and how we ended up with this incredible amount of computing power in our pocket that we take for granted. I mean, that feels so powerful to be in a class that everyone has to take.

00:27:49 Marshal Miller

Yeah, and I think that's part of my general philosophy.

00:27:52 Marshal Miller

I mean, as I described it, as something that we can't do, I try to make sure not to use technologies for things that I can do. So I don't, there's certainly in math and certain things, I mean, anytime you want to display something on a screen, there's nothing I can do about that. I'm going to need to do some PowerPoint presentations at some point, or my reviews probably aren't going to be great. But

00:28:22 Marshal Miller

I think a lot of it is I don't want to replace, not myself like just in the, we talk about the jobs of that, but even just the function of myself. I very much like to, again, I like to know the full history. I think that's the one thing my students, that's the one plus I'll give myself. I give a thorough explanation.

00:28:41 Marshal Miller

of the history and why something is the way it is. So if there's something that seems weird, I'll be like, so in 1985, there was this program, and this is like, and I'll explain its journey, and it's like, it's just carry over from that.

00:28:56 Marshal Miller

It might not make sense, but at least you'll know why it happened. And I think that's very much how I try to operate with technology. That's why, yeah, when I walked in, I saw all these wires. I was like, oh, we're having a conversation. This doesn't seem like what conversations do. Obviously, we need this to have the broader dissemination of what we're doing. I guess this is how podcasts work. I'm not producer Jeff over there, but you know.

00:29:22 Gina Turner

Well, what you just said, so last week I went into my class, I'm teaching research.

00:29:26 Gina Turner

research methods this semester, and my flash drive wouldn't format, funnily enough. And apparently it just is, maybe I should give it to you, and maybe you can make it work again, but I couldn't get any of my slides. So the class was stuck with me and a whiteboard and a dry erase marker, and we were fine. So it was one of those moments where it's like, I'm so dependent on my PowerPoint slides, but I don't need to be that dependent on technology necessarily. I mean, I know what I want to tell them, and

00:29:56 Gina Turner

and I have my notes and I can write things on the board and make them participate. So it just made me think of that. But I guess I'm going to bring it back to one of our specific questions because you already talked about one of the things you would give yourself high marks on in the classroom is your ability to kind of give the historical context. So did you think of a word that you would use to describe yourself as a teacher?

00:30:22 Marshal Miller

I thought of three words. The first one I felt was like

00:30:26 Marshal Miller

mess. It feels like that because I do go, I mean, obviously I have the outline to make sure I cover the content that needs to be covered. But at the same time, I don't think anyone would go into a room knowing just how much we're going to cover or how we're going to get to where we are, including myself. So, you know, that's the one. But I would say

00:30:52 Marshal Miller

Probably like iterative would be the one that I use most. It's a big concept in computer science too, that nothing is ever perfect or complete and it requires maintenance, so updates to my syllabus and this. And then I value feedback from the students above all. First 10, 15 minutes of every class is like, hey, did anything throw anyone off in the homework?

00:31:20 Marshal Miller

Was there like a question on the test that you feel like you got right? Like we very much gather the feedback to, make a change. And sometimes I can't change it for them. Sometimes it's like, okay, well, next year I have to do this. But I do think the students very much respect that. I don't think anyone ever has told me something and felt like I didn't take action on that. Whatever the action may be, they'll get an apology if necessary or an explanation.

00:31:49 Marshal Miller

orally to, an office hour section where we walk further in it. But I do think that's probably it, as far as like my style. And I try to do that for them too. Even like homework assignments, one of the things I do is we do, we do some of it in class together, some of the coding. But for this, the second half, I usually do hybrid sections.

00:32:19 Marshal Miller

and they have an assignment to do on their own. And they're actually, I let them use whatever they want. They can use the textbook, they can use the internet. I just told them don't work with each other because I need everyone to struggle through this. And it sounds mean, but what we've done is essentially I've set up a system where they submit their code and it will give them

00:32:46 Marshal Miller

feedback and tell them, hey, there's this kind of error. And it doesn't tell them how to fix it, but it tells them what kind of error it is. So the goal is that they keep submitting it until they get it right. And then that's like my grading policy. It's like, I don't care how many times you submit. I have some people submit 20 times, but then they get it right. And so, you know, they get it. I don't mind as long as it's there by the due date, and I actually highly encourage them to do it.

00:33:13 Marshal Miller

Because it just, that feels like, I don't know, one, it feels like computer science to me, but that also feels like learning to me. Engaging in the flaws every time and then working on it. And then next time I can catch it that much sooner.

00:33:28 Gina Turner

I mean, to me, that sounds fantastic. And what you called mess really sounds to me like responsiveness, right, to what is happening in the present moment in the room. And it ties back into what you said about being iterative, right? You're operating from the feedback that's coming into you. So that sounds, not a lot of people can tolerate that quote unquote mess because they're so worried about jamming through what's on their agenda. But to me, that sounds also very much like learning.

00:33:57 Gina Turner

The process of learning,

00:33:59 Kelly Allen

and there's the part though of thinking of students.

00:34:05 Kelly Allen

doing something 20 times and then getting it right. Like there is certainly like a beauty in the, what is that, just kind of the resilience of a student. Is that the right word I'm looking for, that they just keep doing it and doing it and doing it until they get it right? Grit. Sure, grit. But then my follow-up question to

00:34:31 Kelly Allen

that I feel that I would have for that student, and I'm assuming that you've done the same, is like, okay, so what did you learn from that process so that the next time you do it, you're not doing it 20 times? So like, where's the knowledge transfer in that kind of engagement with the material?

00:34:49 Marshal Miller

So I try to integrate that into the next lesson. So when we do it live coding,

00:34:57 Marshal Miller

not to make it seem like I'm a great coder, but no one does it right the first time. So what I do is very much, I will open up literally like Notepad, not like a computer programming program, just open up Notepad and write the code out and talk through it and narrate it. And I would say, well, sometimes I think too, if I heard that feedback, I'll purposely make that mistake.

00:35:25 Marshal Miller

so that it triggers it. And then we'll run the program together. And then I'll be like, that's weird. Or sometimes when you get, I mean, the best part is like when you get to, we're about to get there, like week five, people are just like, hey, I didn't notice this. Like as you're going, like everyone is reviewing the code together. And it really becomes a collaborative effort. So the in-class ones, yeah, you work together with those people too. And it's just really great to see.

00:35:52 Marshal Miller

like the collaborative effort and it does, it seems like they do it. I think to your point, it's probably not the best way to assess that direct feedback, but that's why I have to iterate again. Now I have this feedback.

00:36:11 Kelly Allen

Well, so I teach writing and

00:36:16 Kelly Allen

The way that I approach my first semester writing class is that they're, like, all of their work is scaffolded. So the very first thing that, so I focus on public writing. And the very first thing that they do is an informative essay. So what is this public writing that you have found? And then, but while they're kind of

00:36:42 Kelly Allen

answering that question, they're also engaging with kind of like these basic writing skills. Like, okay, so let's look at sentence structure. Let's look at paragraph development. How well are your paragraphs working together to do thesis statements? So we have like these like list of like maybe four or five basic questions that we have to ask of our writing in the very beginning. And then when we move on to our next

00:37:10 Kelly Allen

essay, which is shortly after is the genre analysis. It's like, okay, so here are some new questions, but you're also asking yourself these other previous questions. So by the time that we get to our last project, there's like this like very extensive list of things that they need to run through to make sure that they are addressing so they know that they've written this thing appropriately, like within this academic setting. So

00:37:39 Kelly Allen

Again, like when I'm hearing you share with us, about these experiences that your students are having with, doing something, over and over, but then you said like on week five that they're starting to recognize that, like that's that transfer of knowledge where they've gone through this first basic sets of questions. You know, it might have been kind of dirty and kind of messy, but so long as that like we're getting these small,

00:38:05 Kelly Allen

these small gains in the beginning and then that you can kind of piece them together throughout the semester. I don't know, that's just good teaching in my eyes.

00:38:15 Marshal Miller

Yeah, I think my favorite part is again, kind of getting, hitting that.

00:38:21 Marshal Miller

week four is probably where it starts, is they've actually learned the language for the most part, but everything on top of that is a new tool. So each lesson is like, hey, here's a different way to solve a computing problem, because everything's A prompt. And so, I mean, and some people will be like, oh, is this cumulative? I was like, yeah, because if you don't know week one to three, you're not going to be, your program's not going to even like turn on. So

00:38:48 Marshal Miller

But they get to make those choices from then on to know kind of which is the best way to do it. And sometimes that's how, we get up in the submission count is because they're like, they were doing it, they saved their work, and then they're like, oh, you know what? I bet this approach will work better. And so, yeah, I really like that. It's the, oh boy, sorry, Jeff. The class as a whole.

00:39:11 Gina Turner

So,

00:39:13 Kelly Allen

I'm sorry. I think that this,

00:39:17 Kelly Allen

for this episode, the word Jeff has been used more than any previous episode. So if there's any of our audience members out there that like, every time that you hear the word Jeff, take a drink, please don't try.

00:39:31 Marshal Miller

This is a good one. No, Jeff is Jeff's my anchor being in this room. You know, whenever you need to feel a little bit safe,

00:39:41 Marshal Miller

or something like that. When I try to walk into a room in public, I try to, find that person that chills me out a little bit or I feel more comfortable with. And Jeff happens to be that. So I'm referring to Jeff a lot, but that's probably why.

00:39:56 Gina Turner

Jeff is our anchor being too.

00:39:57 Kelly Allen

I was going to say, he's my anchor being.

00:40:01 Marshal Miller

I mean, it doesn't have to be reciprocal.

00:40:02 Marshal Miller

I don't think any of us are Jeff's anchor being.

00:40:05 Marshal Miller

But.

00:40:08 Kelly Allen

Where is this going?

00:40:09 Kelly Allen

Holy crap.

00:40:11 Kelly Allen

Okay.

00:40:11 Gina Turner

Well, so I'm thinking you must not have students who are able to leave because you are working with each of them to scaffold them throughout the class.

00:40:28 Gina Turner

But do you ever

00:40:30 Gina Turner

have a student where you're thinking, I need a different approach with this student?

00:40:35 Gina Turner

I mean, do you shift the ways in which you'll work with individual students?

00:40:39 Marshal Miller

So I tend to not let a student fall behind more than...

00:40:44 Marshal Miller

a week because the class moves very fast.

00:40:48 Marshal Miller

And my rule is like reviewing what they're doing.

00:40:51 Marshal Miller

If I'm seeing something either in their submission or in class, I ask them to meet during office hours.

00:40:57 Marshal Miller

And usually I can dissect where I lost them.

00:41:01 Marshal Miller

There definitely are people.

00:41:04 Marshal Miller

I don't know what people call it here, but there is a

00:41:08 Marshal Miller

I don't remember what the term is, but basically this is the class that tells people if they want to be in computer science or not.

00:41:13 Gina Turner

Yeah.

00:41:14 Marshal Miller

So there are people who, I'm sure it's not a nice term.

00:41:18 Gina Turner

No, there is a term and I can't think of it either.

00:41:21 Gina Turner

It's like the Axe class or something like that.

00:41:24 Gina Turner

It's like the.

00:41:25 Kelly Allen

Like a gatekeeper coming in.

00:41:26 Marshal Miller

Yeah.

00:41:27 Marshal Miller

It's not.

00:41:27 Kelly Allen

Is that the word?

00:41:28 Gina Turner

No, it has that meaning.

00:41:31 Gina Turner

Yeah.

00:41:32 Marshal Miller

You're still doing a great job, Kelly.

00:41:34 Kelly Allen

Thank goodness.

00:41:34 Kelly Allen

You know, that's why we do these podcasts, so that I can get like affirmation from as many of my colleagues as I can.

00:41:42 Kelly Allen

So winner, winner.

00:41:45 Marshal Miller

But yeah, so we do get people, especially with the level of math that's required.

00:41:50 Gina Turner

Okay.

00:41:51 Marshal Miller

And that's usually where the problem is.

00:41:53 Marshal Miller

And I mean, I've talked to a few groups about the troubles we have.

00:41:59 Marshal Miller

people not understanding that computer science is different from IT, and that that's usually like the management of technology and working with users and operating it, opposed to, very much like an engineering background and coming up with different ways to store tiny bits of information.

00:42:21 Marshal Miller

And so I don't think, I think sometimes people come in just like, I want to work with computers, there's computer science,

00:42:27 Marshal Miller

not realizing, first semester you're going to be in calculus.

00:42:33 Marshal Miller

And then you're going to have three more math classes after that.

00:42:37 Kelly Allen

Oh, wait, okay.

00:42:38 Kelly Allen

So IT, the focus is working with the user.

00:42:44 Kelly Allen

So that's the people.

00:42:45 Kelly Allen

So if you're an IT person, you need to know that you're working with people.

00:42:52 Kelly Allen

But if you are a computer science person, you're working with machines.

00:42:58 Marshal Miller

Usually, you're, I mean, yes and no.

00:43:04 Marshal Miller

You're working in systems, but those systems are often people, but you're not, you're probably not working with many people outside of computer science, or at least the process of making a program.

00:43:17 Marshal Miller

So we do collaborate often with, say, sometimes marketing or sales teams, because they come with a feature.

00:43:24 Marshal Miller

Sometimes it could be a web designer, a graphic designer, because you don't code images.

00:43:31 Marshal Miller

So there is a lot of collaboration, but it's always like an internal team, not an external facing team, usually, unless you're like a freelancer or something like that.

00:43:45 Kelly Allen

How many computer science people end up in IT?

00:43:49 Marshal Miller

That's a great question.

00:43:53 Marshal Miller

I couldn't tell you, for a number of reasons.

00:43:56 Marshal Miller

It doesn't happen as often as you think.

00:44:01 Marshal Miller

And it's usually a personality thing.

00:44:04 Marshal Miller

I am, I hold the distinction of being the only person at the Bethlehem campus with a basement office.

00:44:12 Marshal Miller

And that kind of comes with the territory.

00:44:17 Marshal Miller

Actually,

00:44:19 Marshal Miller

this came up before, but even, the term hackers or even the term artificial intelligence were actually derogatory terms to early computer scientists.

00:44:32 Marshal Miller

It was like, you're not a real intelligent being, you're just working with machines.

00:44:38 Marshal Miller

So there is a lot of that, I don't want to say like they're non-social.

00:44:44 Marshal Miller

I think they get a lot of that, but it, yeah, it's definitely not,

00:44:49 Marshal Miller

I think the personalities are very different.

00:44:52 Gina Turner

Well, this strikes me as similar to what happens in our allied health programs, because we have a major in health sciences that students who are nursing intent or one of the other professions take.

00:45:05 Gina Turner

And the challenge is if they, the, I'm still trying to think of that word, the weeding out class, right?

00:45:11 Gina Turner

So anatomy and physiology is a big weeding out class for that population.

00:45:16 Gina Turner

And so then

00:45:18 Gina Turner

Is there a sort of a safety net or a guidance program to direct them toward health adjacent professions?

00:45:28 Gina Turner

Is there something like that for the computer science student who's then going, what, calculus and three more math classes?

00:45:38 Gina Turner

Is there kind of an off ramp for them?

00:45:40 Marshal Miller

I am so glad you brought this up because I am, I love to drop this tidbit.

00:45:47 Marshal Miller

Yes, we have a system.

00:45:50 Marshal Miller

Her name is Elena.

00:45:52 Marshal Miller

She is the greatest academic advisor.

00:45:55 Marshal Miller

I will fight anyone to that.

00:45:58 Marshal Miller

She comes to every single cluster meeting, sees any conflict, even like a conflict with a math class, and is like, hey, you might want to shift this class because it is possible technically for a student to be in both these classes at the same time, and I don't want any conflicts.

00:46:14 Marshal Miller

She knows all of our programs,

00:46:16 Marshal Miller

better than any of us.

00:46:19 Marshal Miller

And, that's where they go first.

00:46:23 Marshal Miller

And she is just amazing.

00:46:26 Marshal Miller

she comes to us all the time with questions to help her advise them.

00:46:30 Marshal Miller

So if she has a question, but there is just, I have never seen someone like so proactive and just like have it under control.

00:46:38 Marshal Miller

So she's usually pretty great about that.

00:46:41 Marshal Miller

But it is just,

00:46:43 Marshal Miller

I feel like it's, well, one, it's a lot on the workload, but I also don't know if that's the best way to onboard people is just like talk to your academic advisor, and then we're relying on one person to sort them out.

00:46:56 Marshal Miller

I mean, we've been trying to talk about

00:46:58 Marshal Miller

about that for a while.

00:47:00 Marshal Miller

And it's hard too, because they actually share zero of the same classes.

00:47:05 Marshal Miller

So if you start in IT or you start in computer science, there is no, like, debt credit does not go over.

00:47:12 Gina Turner

Wow.

00:47:13 Marshal Miller

Well, I guess, you know, Gen.

00:47:14 Marshal Miller

eds, but I just mean, like, yeah.

00:47:16 Marshal Miller

So it is, we see that as one of our big issues that we're trying to figure out right now.

00:47:25 Gina Turner

I mean, that kind of does lead me to another question along those lines, which is you've already talked about wanting to see changes in the 101 class and maybe finding a way to find the common ground between the IT and computer science, maybe for those reasons.

00:47:44 Gina Turner

What other things would you want to see differently in

00:47:48 Gina Turner

in the pedagogy around computer science or in your profession?

00:47:53 Marshal Miller

Oh.

00:47:54 Marshal Miller

It doesn't have to be here related, right?

00:47:56 Gina Turner

Nope.

00:47:56 Marshal Miller

Okay.

00:47:57 Marshal Miller

Because for a while, I'm going to be honest, it was whatever I wanted.

00:48:01 Marshal Miller

So there's not much, you can blame me for everything that happened in computer science.

00:48:06 Marshal Miller

So that one's hard to say.

00:48:08 Marshal Miller

I mean, I changed things, but.

00:48:11 Marshal Miller

So this is the thing I'm most passionate about in the world.

00:48:16 Marshal Miller

I think

00:48:17 Marshal Miller

Some of it stems from, I'll start at the basic part, which would just be right now, like the ed tech space is really bothering me.

00:48:26 Marshal Miller

And most of it centers around this proprietary nature of like getting locked into these contracts and kind of being predatory and selling lots of things.

00:48:36 Marshal Miller

So I personally have a pretty big vendetta against

00:48:44 Marshal Miller

proprietary things.

00:48:45 Marshal Miller

That sounds bad.

00:48:46 Marshal Miller

I do very heavily abide and read copyright law and all of that, but that's part of where it comes to.

00:48:54 Marshal Miller

the Copyright Office and Patent Office were designed specifically to incentivize innovation, and I don't think that's what it's doing right now.

00:49:06 Marshal Miller

And a lot of that comes from a shift in funds and support from

00:49:12 Marshal Miller

the government, not just our government, but we, going back to the history.

00:49:21 Marshal Miller

We're talking, yeah, World War II.

00:49:24 Marshal Miller

We have a huge incubation of women and funding from the Navy and NASA.

00:49:32 Marshal Miller

And we're just training everyone to compute and cryptology.

00:49:41 Marshal Miller

for code breaking.

00:49:43 Marshal Miller

And we're just investing so much money into this.

00:49:46 Marshal Miller

And this is done primarily through academic institutions.

00:49:50 Marshal Miller

So, we were getting a lot of funding for that, and it was done there.

00:49:55 Marshal Miller

we have the space race, and we have ARPA, which is now called DARPA.

00:50:01 Marshal Miller

But they were just investing in some really big ideas.

00:50:06 Marshal Miller

Again,

00:50:08 Marshal Miller

just, they started the early versions of the internet.

00:50:12 Marshal Miller

They funded that.

00:50:14 Marshal Miller

They had a lot to do with the creation of AI, again, in the basement of MIT in the 70s.

00:50:22 Marshal Miller

They really did that.

00:50:23 Marshal Miller

Their ideas were moving so fast.

00:50:26 Marshal Miller

that they actually started to try to recruit science fiction writers because they were moving so fast that the only way they could think of to plan the thing next was to have someone with like outrageous ideas.

00:50:38 Marshal Miller

Like they were just like, we can't, we're moving so fast, we're running out of ideas.

00:50:43 Marshal Miller

That's so cool.

00:50:45 Marshal Miller

and when was the last time, you heard that kind of funding coming to, the academic institutions, where it's like, we want to support everything and we love these ideas.

00:50:56 Marshal Miller

And some of that, we had, again, the early internet, it was called ARPANET at the time, which was only linking of like 4 academic institutions.

00:51:08 Marshal Miller

Again, big part of that.

00:51:10 Marshal Miller

We get the NSF out of that.

00:51:11 Marshal Miller

They take over

00:51:13 Marshal Miller

the internet for about a decade, well, 88 to 94, that's not a decade, but somewhere around that time frame.

00:51:21 Marshal Miller

It's called the NSF net, then eventually, so fully funded by the NSF, that's great.

00:51:28 Marshal Miller

And you know, from them we get things like the MRI.

00:51:32 Marshal Miller

I don't think they invented Doppler, but they certainly improved it a lot.

00:51:38 Marshal Miller

And then deep ocean exploration, these all come out of NSF at this time.

00:51:43 Marshal Miller

But I think kind of when I went back to Ed Tech, some of it just came like I see a lot of big technology companies coming in and taking those contracts and doing things like in secret.

00:51:57 Marshal Miller

So even going like, again, back in computers, we have IBM, like one of the biggest companies ever made, or sorry, Bell Labs, not IBM.

00:52:06 Marshal Miller

They come later.

00:52:07 Marshal Miller

It's annoying people.

00:52:09 Marshal Miller

But, I mean, they've gotten broken up.

00:52:11 Marshal Miller

I don't, I can't even count how many times as a monopoly, but they like, they owned the internet essentially.

00:52:18 Marshal Miller

And they were charging major prices for access to software, a lot like what we're seeing right now.

00:52:26 Marshal Miller

And it was just, you know, and now we're seeing more deals with things like Oracle and Meta and Amazon.

00:52:33 Marshal Miller

And basically people found out you could make money off of these things.

00:52:37 Marshal Miller

And obviously less and less funding is going to academics.

00:52:41 Marshal Miller

Personally, I tend to believe that's because there's less transparency if you don't have to go to an IRB board or be held to ethical standards.

00:52:51 Marshal Miller

And you can just, you know, do what you want and sell it.

00:52:56 Marshal Miller

But I just, you know, out of some of that, especially in like the 90s, came this idea of

00:53:03 Marshal Miller

just open, so like open source.

00:53:07 Marshal Miller

There was a student, Linus Torvalds, and he was Finnish, and he couldn't afford a copy of the Bell Labs operating system, but he was a college student, obviously wanted to learn more about computers.

00:53:25 Marshal Miller

This dude ends up just making his own.

00:53:28 Marshal Miller

And it's still today, runs about 97% of the internet.

00:53:32 Marshal Miller

It's all the servers and backend stuff that runs it.

00:53:35 Marshal Miller

Mac OS is built on top of it too.

00:53:39 Marshal Miller

But there was a big push during this time of like this shared knowledge and innovation that just brought about a lot of things.

00:53:51 Marshal Miller

And a lot of it was from that early internet.

00:53:54 Marshal Miller

So I think, you know, my biggest thing, I don't actually know if I want the government giving us all of our money again.

00:54:02 Marshal Miller

I mean, funding's nice, but I don't know if, maybe I shouldn't be like that.

00:54:08 Gina Turner

Well, if the strings attached to the money are worth it.

00:54:11 Marshal Miller

Exactly.

00:54:13 Marshal Miller

Like, I don't know if I want to say that, but I'd love to go back to the days of like the collaboration and investing in innovation opposed to these, you know, I feel like right now we're not advancing humanity with these projects.

00:54:28 Marshal Miller

We're advancing or raising stock prices.

00:54:31 Marshal Miller

Whereas in the open sharing community, we're kind of just, yeah, we're moving forward in different areas.

00:54:39 Marshal Miller

And it just really has that spirit of innovation that

00:54:44 Marshal Miller

and freedom and sharing of knowledge that feels, again, kind of ancient to me that could be passed down.

00:54:49 Marshal Miller

Whereas like, I don't know, a program from Meta, probably we're not going to, one, we don't know how it works now, but in 100 years we won't.

00:54:59 Marshal Miller

But we have records of these open things from thousands of years.

00:55:04 Marshal Miller

that were written down because they weren't, some of them were sealed and laid uncovered.

00:55:09 Marshal Miller

But the idea is just this.

00:55:13 Marshal Miller

I really wish we shared more knowledge and collaborating, even like between institutions.

00:55:20 Marshal Miller

Like it doesn't have to be this race.

00:55:22 Marshal Miller

I feel like the opportunity here is to advance humanity in some way, making tools for things that we can't do, not things that can replace what we can't do.

00:55:36 Gina Turner

Yeah, go ahead.

00:55:37 Gina Turner

Sorry, this is a tangent.

00:55:39 Gina Turner

I saw this movie on HBO called Mountain Something.

00:55:45 Gina Turner

Let me know if this rings a bell.

00:55:46 Gina Turner

Do you know what I'm talking about?

00:55:47 Gina Turner

Do you remember what it was called?

00:55:48 Marshal Miller

I think it might have just been called Mountain View.

00:55:50 Gina Turner

Mountain View, yeah.

00:55:51 Gina Turner

And it's about these tech guys and they're sort of, you can tell they're loosely based on some of our tech billionaires.

00:55:58 Gina Turner

But really the, and it wasn't the best movie I've ever seen, although it was pretty funny.

00:56:03 Gina Turner

But it was

00:56:03 Gina Turner

is really about inventing things just to invent things and make money, as opposed to what are the ramifications of having invented these things.

00:56:13 Gina Turner

And they're just constantly trying to undercut each other.

00:56:15 Gina Turner

And I mean, it really speaks to the moment that we're in, I guess.

00:56:18 Gina Turner

So, and to what you're saying, because that sort of, you know, brave new world, that Star Trek world of like, let's share all the information in the tech and envision brave new worlds.

00:56:32 Marshal Miller

That was always a thing I think

00:56:33 Marshal Miller

that people liked about Star Trek was that they weren't like, this wasn't a war.

00:56:39 Marshal Miller

They were there for scientific discovery.

00:56:41 Marshal Miller

It says at the beginning of every time, like we're there to explore the world and make peace and share our technology with others.

00:56:49 Marshal Miller

I'm not a huge Star Trek nerd, but I think that's admirable.

00:56:55 Gina Turner

Our delightful, what did you call him?

00:56:57 Gina Turner

Your support being?

00:56:58 Gina Turner

Your anchor being.

00:57:01 Marshal Miller

My anchor being.

00:57:02 Gina Turner

Our anchor being is letting us know that we have to sadly start wrapping things up.

00:57:06 Gina Turner

But we can't let you leave without asking about your guilty pleasure that your fellow faculty don't know about you.

00:57:14 Marshal Miller

So that one, that one's hard.

00:57:18 Marshal Miller

I don't feel guilty about, I think I'm pretty transparent in those same ways.

00:57:24 Marshal Miller

I feel like if you, I think you have all heard some of my guilty pleasures already in here.

00:57:29 Marshal Miller

They're just very nerdy things.

00:57:32 Marshal Miller

Can I alter the question?

00:57:34 Gina Turner

Absolutely.

00:57:34 Marshal Miller

All right, let's be, let's do the like job interview one of like, what's your greatest weakness?

00:57:43 Gina Turner

Interesting.

00:57:43 Gina Turner

And I should have prefaced that I usually do in saying no pleasure should be guilty.

00:57:48 Gina Turner

But yes, please take this question in whatever direction you would like.

00:57:51 Marshal Miller

And this might not, this probably ties in a lot with the things we're talking about, which is, I guess, I mean, it is kind of a guilty pleasure, but, and I just really like building things, but to like a little bit of a compulsive level.

00:58:07 Marshal Miller

I don't know if it's because I'm just like really stubborn or cheap, but

00:58:12 Marshal Miller

instead of my classroom needed a doorstep.

00:58:15 Marshal Miller

Instead of just sending an e-mail, I went and designed one on a computer and 3D printed it.

00:58:21 Marshal Miller

And I was like, okay, good.

00:58:22 Marshal Miller

I took care of that.

00:58:24 Marshal Miller

And if there's anything that I feel, I think this goes to my view of technology, where it's like, if there's something that I can do, I don't want to take that agency away from it, which I'm sure it's a control issue.

00:58:38 Marshal Miller

Gina can decide all of that.

00:58:40 Marshal Miller

But

00:58:41 Marshal Miller

I mean, I think a lot of people have seen that around some tasks here too, where instead of using a flawed system, I'd rather make the thing specifically for the task that I want.

00:58:55 Marshal Miller

I see it as a flaw.

00:58:57 Marshal Miller

I don't know, because to Jean's point, I don't know if I feel guilty about it.

00:59:00 Marshal Miller

I mean, it brings me pleasure.

00:59:01 Marshal Miller

I try to do what I think is right, and even that brings me pleasure.

00:59:05 Marshal Miller

So I don't know.

00:59:06 Gina Turner

I, again, there should be no guilt, but you know, it is the, that's the phrase.

00:59:11 Gina Turner

Yeah.

00:59:13 Gina Turner

And I see that as a strength.

00:59:15 Gina Turner

I was thinking about something sort of similar to that idea of just

00:59:21 Gina Turner

of knowing what you're doing and then doing it yourself and how satisfying it is to at least have that understanding of what it is that you are doing or wanting or needing in the moment.

00:59:32 Gina Turner

And so I'm going to confess something here.

00:59:36 Gina Turner

I don't feel guilty about it.

00:59:37 Gina Turner

I have been a very late adapter to using ChatGPT in any capacity.

00:59:42 Gina Turner

But yesterday I was writing up a proposal and I just said, can you just please put these books into APA format for a reference page for me?

00:59:51 Gina Turner

And so I did, but I have been teaching psychology for 47,000 years.

00:59:56 Gina Turner

And so I know what APA format looks like.

00:59:59 Gina Turner

So then I was able to look at it and go, yep, no, wait.

01:00:03 Gina Turner

And I was then able to correct it really easily.

01:00:06 Gina Turner

And it made me feel really good about myself because I have spent 20 plus years learning the skill of APA formatting and all the updates to APA formatting in order to partner

01:00:18 Gina Turner

with ChatGPT, putting it together.

01:00:22 Gina Turner

So I don't know, that just made me feel like a lot of what you're saying, which is to know why I'm using the technology and to be conscious of the fact that I'm using the technology for a very specific purpose.

01:00:33 Kelly Allen

I was teaching APA format in my first semester writing class today, and I don't have very nice things to say about APA format.

01:00:44 Marshal Miller

What's your preferred format?

01:00:46 Kelly Allen

Chicago.

01:00:47 Marshal Miller

Oh, really?

01:00:48 Kelly Allen

Yes.

01:00:49 Gina Turner

Okay, you get to break the tie, Marshall.

01:00:52 Kelly Allen

Yeah, when I write...

01:00:53 Kelly Allen

It'll be difficult, IEEE.

01:00:56 Kelly Allen

What?

01:00:57 Marshal Miller

Yeah, there's another one that's called IEEE.

01:00:59 Kelly Allen

I dig it.

01:01:01 Kelly Allen

Like, I mean, I'm in a discipline where it's like I write in MLA format, but if I had my choice, it'd be Chicago.

01:01:09 Kelly Allen

I think it's gorgeous.

01:01:11 Marshal Miller

But not Turbian, right?

01:01:14 Kelly Allen

No.

01:01:14 Kelly Allen

Okay.

01:01:15 Kelly Allen

I don't know.

01:01:16 Marshal Miller

Isn't that the, that's the one, there's a lady, that's her last name, and she decided that she should work off of Chicago style, but make it her own.

01:01:27 Gina Turner

Oh gosh.

01:01:27 Marshal Miller

And people adopt it.

01:01:28 Marshal Miller

I'm just saying it's oddly popular.

01:01:31 Gina Turner

APA came first.

01:01:32 Gina Turner

That's all I'm going to say.

01:01:35 Kelly Allen

So intrusive.

01:01:37 Kelly Allen

But okay, we're not going to get there.

01:01:39 Kelly Allen

Marshall, it has been just an absolute pleasure to just spend some time with you and to say Jeff's name.

01:01:47 Marshal Miller

I know.

01:01:47 Kelly Allen

A few dozen times.

01:01:48 Kelly Allen

It's been just great hearing, like, you know, the fabulous work that you're doing.

01:01:55 Kelly Allen

And while, you know, I know that many of our listeners don't have the pleasure to, you know, work at the same institution as you do, it just gives me

01:02:04 Kelly Allen

the feels knowing that our students are being taught by someone like you.

01:02:08 Kelly Allen

So thank you so much for being here with us.

01:02:10 Gina Turner

Yeah, it's been a real pleasure.

01:02:12 Gina Turner

And I just love the history angle.

01:02:14 Gina Turner

I mean, really, I could sit here and just listen to you talk about the history of computer science for two reasons.

01:02:19 Gina Turner

One, you actually are really passionate and really obviously knowledgeable about it.

01:02:25 Gina Turner

And 2, because I just think it's so important for us to have that context.

01:02:29 Gina Turner

So thank you.

01:02:30 Marshal Miller

Next time we can talk about how the Loom started

01:02:33 Marshal Miller

Created that first algorithm.

01:02:35 Gina Turner

Fantastic.

01:02:36 Kelly Allen

Let's do it.

01:02:36 Kelly Allen

OK, so he's already volunteering himself for chapter 2.

01:02:40 Kelly Allen

Yes.

01:02:40 Gina Turner

All right, thanks.

01:02:44 Gina Turner

Pedagogy, a go, go.

01:02:49 Gina Turner

Pedagogy, go, go, go.

01:02:53 Kelly Allen

Well, Gina, that was delightfully awesome, but we didn't ask the question.

01:03:00 Kelly Allen

And what was the question again?

01:03:03 Gina Turner

The difference between computer science and information science?

01:03:07 Gina Turner

I think Marshall kind of covered that, though, when you asked him about, is it people versus not people?

01:03:14 Gina Turner

Right.

01:03:15 Kelly Allen

Oh, what did he say?

01:03:17 Gina Turner

He said, it depends.

01:03:22 Gina Turner

So I don't know that we will ever know the answer to that question.

01:03:27 Gina Turner

But I really love how much I understand more about the context of

01:03:32 Gina Turner

our technological world now with the historic contacts that he gave us, which I could have talked to him for another hour about.

01:03:42 Gina Turner

I love that stuff.

01:03:43 Kelly Allen

Yeah, absolutely.

01:03:44 Kelly Allen

And what was...

01:03:46 Kelly Allen

so prior to our talking with him, I was saying it's like, that I was like a little nervous because I don't get to talk with, computer science faculty all that much.

01:03:57 Kelly Allen

And I don't know why that is, but like there's this disconnect between the humanities in that field.

01:04:05 Kelly Allen

But after talking with him, it's like, it's really refreshing.

01:04:10 Kelly Allen

And I feel kind of like bad for not knowing this earlier, just like how immersed

01:04:15 Kelly Allen

that field is in the humanities.

01:04:18 Kelly Allen

Like you're saying, like I could listen to him talk for hours about this kind of stuff.

01:04:23 Kelly Allen

And, he kind of like was hinting at maybe like a round two of this.

01:04:29 Kelly Allen

I don't know how serious he was, but like I definitely have a list of questions that I would like to ask him, from a humanities perspective about

01:04:39 Kelly Allen

like computer science and what that is meaning for our humanity.

01:04:42 Gina Turner

Right, exactly, and the social structures around all of this too.

01:04:46 Gina Turner

So yeah, very social science as well.

01:04:50 Kelly Allen

But the part that he ended on about, and I don't remember how he really worded it, but it was essentially like the freedom of sharing of information.

01:05:04 Kelly Allen

He used the word proprietary, I believe it was, but

01:05:10 Kelly Allen

I don't know, like I'm still trying to chew on that.

01:05:12 Kelly Allen

And just thinking about like how often we place these limitations on our ability to kind of like grow and adapt and be kind of just, healthy humans because of like this other desire that seems so unnatural.

01:05:31 Kelly Allen

Like this, say something about like.

01:05:36 Gina Turner

Right, Like curiosity instead of stock prices.

01:05:43 Kelly Allen

Yes, Yeah.

01:05:46 Gina Turner

I loved the image of him as a little guy and making his little circuit boards and building his things and that never stopped.

01:05:56 Gina Turner

I mean, he really saw that as just a continuous line into what he does now.

01:06:00 Gina Turner

I really love that.

01:06:02 Kelly Allen

Yeah.

01:06:03 Kelly Allen

I don't know.

01:06:03 Kelly Allen

This is

01:06:06 Kelly Allen

definitely been like just a unique podcast for us.

01:06:13 Kelly Allen

And each one is unique in its own way.

01:06:16 Kelly Allen

But what Marshall kind of like shared with us is kind of like, these conversations that I don't find us having very often.

01:06:25 Kelly Allen

And that is, what is our relationship with technology?

01:06:27 Kelly Allen

At least in a way that just is so like,

01:06:31 Kelly Allen

healthy and just amazing.

01:06:33 Gina Turner

And engaged.

01:06:34 Kelly Allen

Yeah.

01:06:35 Kelly Allen

totally.

01:06:35 Kelly Allen

So that was awesome.

01:06:37 Gina Turner

It was awesome.

01:06:40 Gina Turner

That's the end.

01:06:47 Gina Turner

That is the end of our podcast.

01:06:55 Kelly Allen

Goodbye, humans.

01:06:59 Kelly Allen

Was that awesome?

01:07:00 Kelly Allen

Yeah, awesome.

01:07:01 Kelly Allen

Awesome.

01:07:02 Kelly Allen

Totally awesome.

01:07:18 Kelly Allen

Thank you for listening to Pedagogy A-Go-Go, recorded in the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Technology at Northampton Community College in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

01:07:26 Kelly Allen

Our producer in all things technology is Jeff Armstrong.

01:07:29 Kelly Allen

If you've got any questions, please send them to pedagogyagogo@gmail.com.

01:07:35 Kelly Allen

And be sure to follow us on social media at pedagogyagogo and click into our bio for copies of podcast transcripts, guest assignments, and other useful tidbits.

01:07:44 Kelly Allen

Until next time, this is Gina and Kelly saying we hope your day is filled with wonderful learning experiences.