I agree that many of them are very reasonable and he is just being stubborn. For example, switching the BMI example to another example to avoid public shaming, using a variety of names and references so that everyone feels represented, and using provided pronouns costs him nothing and makes other people feel included. That being said, some of the others are less...value adding?
* A relaxation of grading on coding style - In the real world you will be expected to adhere to a prescribed coding style. Getting students used to this is not a bad thing. This is equivalent to docking points from students who refuse to learn how to use git.
* Allowing students to work together in a group for part of their grade instead of requiring them to complete all graded work individually. - This is a request to make the curriculum easier and does not appear to be related to inclusion.
* A reduction in the amount of effort expended pursuing cheating cases by 50 percent even though there has been no reduction in cheating cases. - This is a request to make the curriculum easier and does not appear to be related to inclusion.
* The addition of an indigenous land acknowledgement to the syllabus. - This is far outside the scope of a CS course.
* The use of gender-neutral names like Alex and Jun instead of Alice and Bob. - As long as you are using a variety of names, this seems redundant.
* An avoidance of references that depend on cultural knowledge of sports, pop culture, theater, literature, or games. - Using these is meant to be engaging and many students like it. As long as you don't need prior knowledge of history or knowledge of the reference to solve the problem then I don't see what the issue is.
* The replacement of phrases like “you guys” with “folks” or “y’all.” - "You guys" is universally understood to be gender neutral. Taking issue with this seems pedantic.
* A declaration of instructors’ pronouns and a request for students’ pronoun preferences. - Asking for students' pronouns is good practice and the professor should use them if provided. It is unreasonable to demand that professors provide theirs. It should be understood that if pronouns are not explicitly stated then individuals wish to go by their biological pronouns.
> * The use of gender-neutral names like Alex and Jun instead of Alice and Bob. - As long as you are using a variety of names, this seems redundant.
Alice and Bob are actually standard names for cryptography, though. They weren't names that this professor plucked out of thin air. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_and_Bob
They seem to be arguing that the names can be trivially changed without impacting further education or careers, and the names being used across classes and universities would say that that isn't (trivially) the case.
If he had pulled the names from a hat, it would be trivially the case.
> * A declaration of instructors’ pronouns and a request for students’ pronoun preferences. - Asking for students' pronouns is good practice and the professor should use them if provided. It is unreasonable to demand that professors provide theirs. It should be understood that if pronouns are not explicitly stated then individuals wish to go by their biological pronouns.
I must be misunderstanding this. If I were teaching a class, am I really expected to solicit every single student for what their preferred pronouns are?
I'm fine with people's pronouns, but it is so rare, how does it make sense to ask everyone?
I actually know a trans person, and she told me that she hates how some people are constantly drawing attention to trans people.
I interpreted the request broadly as "there should be some opportunity for an individual to indicate atypical pronoun use", not that professors need to stand up and formally question poll the class on which pronouns they use.
> Allowing students to work together in a group for part of their grade instead of requiring them to complete all graded work individually. This is a request to make the curriculum easier and does not appear to be related to inclusion.
Out of all the suggestions that were made, this is the one that's perhaps most relevant to inclusion and getting more women to code, actually. It's well-known that women are on average more social than men, more open to working with people than things, and less approving of solitary activities like being a traditional lone "rockstar coder".
>> It's well-known that women are on average more social than men, more open to working with people than things, and less approving of solitary activities like being a traditional lone "rockstar coder".
And yet if this professor used a statement like that as an explanation for why fewer women code than men, he would suffer the consequences, name calling, and firing.
Furthermore, the lone "rockstar coder" is an antipattern. Very little development is done in a vacuum, and the best developers I know -- male or female -- are the ones who can bring other people along with them in technical discussions.
It isn’t exactly an anti pattern, just rare; eg with Notch and Minecraft. Lone coders can create great masterpieces, but it is a very different kind of artifact than what a group could produce. Don’t count loners out from being productive members of society in any field.
Of course, most work requires a lot more collaboration, and CS departments could do more to help train up those skills.
* A relaxation of grading on coding style - In the real world you will be expected to adhere to a prescribed coding style. Getting students used to this is not a bad thing. This is equivalent to docking points from students who refuse to learn how to use git.
* Allowing students to work together in a group for part of their grade instead of requiring them to complete all graded work individually. - This is a request to make the curriculum easier and does not appear to be related to inclusion.
* A reduction in the amount of effort expended pursuing cheating cases by 50 percent even though there has been no reduction in cheating cases. - This is a request to make the curriculum easier and does not appear to be related to inclusion.
* The addition of an indigenous land acknowledgement to the syllabus. - This is far outside the scope of a CS course.
* The use of gender-neutral names like Alex and Jun instead of Alice and Bob. - As long as you are using a variety of names, this seems redundant.
* An avoidance of references that depend on cultural knowledge of sports, pop culture, theater, literature, or games. - Using these is meant to be engaging and many students like it. As long as you don't need prior knowledge of history or knowledge of the reference to solve the problem then I don't see what the issue is.
* The replacement of phrases like “you guys” with “folks” or “y’all.” - "You guys" is universally understood to be gender neutral. Taking issue with this seems pedantic.
* A declaration of instructors’ pronouns and a request for students’ pronoun preferences. - Asking for students' pronouns is good practice and the professor should use them if provided. It is unreasonable to demand that professors provide theirs. It should be understood that if pronouns are not explicitly stated then individuals wish to go by their biological pronouns.