Good morning. I too have a name that is, I've lived with it's not very
pronounceable. Not very spell able but I just couldn't get rid of it either so if
here it is and it's pronounced like an S so it's Cukor, Patricia Cukor-Avila.
Right. It's Hungarian. Means sugar. I'll just stop there. (Laughs) Okay so when Patrick asked me
to do this presentation my first thought was, "This should be really easy I've been
teaching here since 1994 I must have dozens of best teaching moments and of
course no bad ones." Because we've all chosen to forget those well maybe not
because I've heard a few this morning, right, which is great but after mulling
this around for a few days I decided I would tell you about a teaching moment, a
teaching experience I had, and about a few years ago in 2011 in the fall of
2011 when I redesigned an undergraduate course that I teach every semester in
the fall and it's called English Language in America. And so this
experience sort of developed along a bumpy path so I've got a good and a
bad story here but ultimately resulted in a significant learning experience for
both my students and for me. So just briefly, I forgot my glasses so you have
to bear with me, (laughs) here a bad moment, briefly lean 4010, which is the number
of the course, goes over issues like why people from different parts of the US
have accents; why certain varieties of American English are considered more
prestigious than others; and what are some of the changes that have taken
place in American English over the past several decades. So my typical approach
to teaching this course has been to separate the course into four major
topics and then have students do small research projects at the end of each
section. So this semester I wanted to try a different approach so I decided to
engage the students in a semester long field project where they would collect
data on perceptions of Texas speech. Here we are in Texas basically where people
living in Texas perceive dialect boundaries in the state because if
you've lived here long enough or if you're from here you know that not
everybody sounds the same in the entire state. Right? It's a pretty big place and
then also look at the ideologies that are associated with these boundaries
that people perceive. So my vision for this project was so amazing students
would experience firsthand how to do preliminary research on a topic,
design a survey instrument, collects survey data, digitize the data using cool
map generating software, analyze the data and synthesize their findings in a
PowerPoint presentation at the end of the semester. And best of all I had
invited a good friend and fellow linguist, Denis Preston, who pioneered
this kind of research to be a guest during their final presentation so this
was just the ultimate class. I was certain that my students would feel the
same giddy excitement I had when I broke them into groups and
explained each phase of the project to them. Well let's just say that not all
other eyes lit up with joy but I was committed to making this work so onward
we trudged. Right? They worked in groups with each group responsible for a piece
of the project. I heard the usual grunting and groaning
about group work, right, but in the end they did their part to complete their
tasks. But I want to focus on one group that went above and beyond the call of
duty. The group responsible for digitizing the paper survey maps and in
ultimately creating digital maps in ArcGIS. A program I had never used. I
don't know how many of you have used it but you're supposed to grunt when you
hear that right. Ok this is the part of the story where I tell you
about my worst teaching moment. You might be wondering why I would even attempt to
have my students use ArcGIS if I had never used it myself.
Well I modeled the project after similar research done by a colleague at the
University of Washington and she had used ArcGIS to produce really cool
dialect maps. So I figured I could do the same. I read the article. I saw the
process in there right. From what I read in her article the process seemed pretty
straightforward but what I didn't know at the time was that she had worked with
a geographer who did all the digitization and all the ArcGIS analysis. (laughs)
So here I am the linguist who knows nothing yet I can see that some people
understand what I'm talking about here. So by the time I realized that I was in
way over my head my students had invested a lot of time and energy in the
lab so there was no going back. Fortunately one of my M.A. students
was working with us and she spent hours looked - literally hours - learning how to
navigate the program. And thanks to Bruce Hunter, who has since retired, I was able
to get help from a couple of geography graduate students. We all made a lot of
mistakes and ArcGIS as it always does quit unexpectedly, (laughs) countless times, but in
the end don't know how we did it my students created digital maps of the
perceptual data that they had collected. Each of the groups came together and
produced a final product that they presented in the environmental sciences
building because I wanted to be where it all took place to an invited audience
who included Bruce Hunter who had given us access to the lab at all hours of the
night and Dennis Preston my linguist friend
who drove down from Stillwater to be our guest of honor. I was really proud of my
students who had stumbled along with me on this journey. Most of them on the
other hand were probably relieved that the semester was over and they had
survived. I was certain that none of them ever wanted to work with me again but
fortunately that wasn't the case. Two of the students asked to continue the
research in an independent study class. We formed a research group - that's the
cue - there's should be a picture there, ah there we are the left-hand side, we
formed a research group with my M.A. student and spent the semester
collecting new data and most importantly we learned, more or less, how to navigate
through ArcGIS. That spring we presented our research - that's a picture on the
right - at a conference in Austin and this was subsequently
published, so my two undergrad students actually were able to be published, and
had a story about the project posted on the UNT news web page which is that
hyperlink but it may not be working so that's okay and since then we have
presented all the phases of the project at several national and international
conferences. We have also collaborated with another geographer here at UNT, Chetan
Tiwari, who's helped with this project has been invaluable and we
couldn't have done it without him. So that was a great experience for me as
well. I learned quite a bit that semester as I worked alongside my students. I
experienced their frustration at the difficulties they encountered and I also
shared their excitement as they saw the results come together and they had a
story to tell about the data which is for me this is what
teaching is all about a shared learning experience where I am the guide and I
encourage my students to think critically. But perhaps the most
important lesson I learned that semester is not to bite off more than I can chew
especially when testing out a new and improved approach to teaching and most
of all to be a much better prepared guide. Thank you. (Applause)
you