August 23rd, 2010
Edublogger Review
A "mash-up" of postings from nine engaging educational
and e-learning bloggers.
Towards Answers
Source: http://suburbdad.blogspot.com/2010/08/towards-answers.html
By Dean Dad on August 23rd, 2010
In this week's kerfuffle about the New Faculty Majority – from
which other administrators seem to have learned that such
things are best ignored, since engaging just brings flame wars
– several commenters asked, with varying degrees of civility,
what my answer was.
It's severalfold.
First, if you're adjuncting and you feel like you're being
exploited, stop adjuncting. Just stop. Walk away. You are an
adult, responsible for your own choices. If your college didn't
specifically promise you a full-time job after x semesters of
adjuncting, then it does not owe you one, no matter how badly
you want it. Colleges don't exist to provide jobs for academics.
It's not about you.
Second, I strongly encourage all second- or third-tier graduate
programs in the evergreen disciplines to stop accepting new
students. This is what keeps replenishing the reserve army of
the underemployed. If we don't get a handle on this, we will
never bring things into alignment. The basic arithmetic of this
is so obvious that I'm amazed that the compass-direction-state
U's of the world still get funding for graduate programs in
history and English and sociology.
Third, don't blame the culture at large. The cost of higher
education is much higher now than it has ever been. Given the
cost trend, I don't see a fundamental attitude shift between,
say, forty years ago and now. The culture valued education at
x forty years ago, and still does now. The problem is that the
cost has gone from .5x to 2x. The culture didn't turn its back
on us; we just mistook respect for open-ended entitlement.
Raging at the booboisie is easy, self-flattering, and doomed to
fail. You don't gain the support of the public by calling it stupid
or philistine.
Fourth, and this is why I wrote my posts the way I did, don't
give people false hope. It's precisely that false hope that keeps
luring bright young people into a dying career. I don't simply
think the NFM proposal is naïve, though it is; I think it does
active (if unintended) harm. It does harm by perpetuating the
myth – I should say, the lie – that there's a full-time job owed
to every adjunct, if they just stick around long enough. There is
not, and there never will be. Let people come to grips with the
economic – yes, economic – reality of the situation, instead of
trying to dress up wishful thinking as high principle.
Published by: philosophyandrew
Fifth, let's retire the tired “it's all the fault of the
administrators” line. The cost spiral and the adjunct trend
have been gone on for decades, in every corner of higher
education and every region of the country. Thousands of
administrators have come and gone in that time, with no
discernible effect on either trend. Good administrators help
the institutions do what they do well, but at the end of the
day, the drivers are mostly structural. And the changes will
be structural. The only question is whether we will make the
changes, or they will be made for us.
It's time to have some serious discussions about structure.
I've mentioned before that this needs to include such costly
anachronisms as the credit hour, tenure, and the agrarian
calendar; I'm increasingly convinced that it also needs to
include the notion of the “comprehensive” college. The era of
“all things to all people” passed decades ago in most other
industries. At a really fundamental level, it's time to rethink
the “diffuse mission, few funding streams” model in favor of
a “diffuse funding streams, focused mission” model. Instead
of counting on an ever-stingier state to support ever more
programs, let's diversify the funding streams and channel
them into fewer, stronger programs. At the community college
level, I see that boiling down to the liberal arts, criminal
justice, and nursing, with some regional variation. Let the
proprietaries handle the vocational stuff; it's what they do,
and we can't keep adding boutique programs on ever-declining
revenue. Let's get the benefits of specialization, and do a few
things well rather than a lot of things just a little bit worse every
year.
Of course, we don't have to have those difficult conversations.
Instead, we could simply continue the unthinking slide of
the last forty years until the for-profits and various online
companies eat our lunch.
I would consider that non-decision utterly tragic, but it's the
path of least short-term resistance. If I wanted to make my
readers happy and enhance my career prospects, I could just
write the umpteenth peroration on the joys of tenure and the
wonderfulness of academia and our collective misunderstood
tragic beauty, but I didn't start blogging to lie. I care too much
about higher education to let it die of neglect without at least
trying to save it. But it has to want to live. It has to stop
pretending that it isn't badly sick. It has to stop pretending that
eating its young is a viable long-term strategy.
I'll admit becoming increasingly impatient with positions that
amount to trying to squeeze ever more people onto the Titanic.
It's the wrong battle. And I'm too young for fatalism. This
isn't about defending the current system; it's about bending it
so it won't break. If higher education is going to survive in a
form worth having, it's going to have to change in some pretty
dramatic ways. We in higher ed can take leadership roles in
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driving those changes, or we can let the University of Phoenix
do it for us.
How do you manage
information?
Source: http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/2010/08/21/how-do-you-
manage-information/
By gsiemens on August 23rd, 2010
I’ve posted a few thoughts on AU’s Landing about how I
manage information. I specifically use the term information
instead of knowledge. Our encounter with information
is one of sensemaking and wayfinding. We encounter a
continual flow of information – most of it will never
become “knowledge”. We file it, we share it, we cite it.
Knowledge, however, requires more than storing information.
For something to be knowledge, we must be personally related
to it – we must integrate it with what we currently know.
We spend most of our day trying to make sense of the world
– in my case, emerging technologies, learning, institutional
change, and so on. Most of my sensemaking efforts involve
managing information flow. Much less of my time involves
knowledge: tagging resources, posting to delicious, or tweeting
don’t count as knowledge-making. Knowledge-making is the
process of integration, of seeking coherence between what we
know and what we encounter, and performing some action.
My information management system is diagramed below:
Published by: philosophyandrew
Some unoriginal and wrong
thoughts
Source: http://www.jarche.com/2010/08/some-unoriginal-and-wrong-
thoughts/
By Harold Jarche on August 23rd, 2010
Tweet
Here are some of the things I learned on Twitter this past week.
QUOTES
“Anything you think is either unoriginal, wrong or both”
@courosa Look at a single Twitter page. Think about prior
knowledge / literacies needed to decode that page. RTs. links.
voice. events. #MediaLiteracy
@Dave_Ferguson My comment to @rnantel : fixing most
performance problems with training is like fixing a leaky faucet
by painting the kitchen.
—
KM tools for small business: an array by @jackvinson
But wait a minute. Why go with these additional
systems? Why not just help people in the business
do a better job with what they have? Why not
teach and encourage advanced Personal Knowledge
Management skills, possibly using some of the online
services? That’s not a bad idea, actually. If everyone
can use the same tools and those tools can share
information amongst colleagues, that may be a good
starting point.
via @sebpaquet What life lessons are unintuitive or go against
common sense / wisdom? Quora.com
Focus on spending this money in ways that improve
your happiness and reduce your stress levels, and be
cautious about using it to buy things that other people
say you “should” buy.
Designing for complexity by giving up control: a traffic
example via @johnniemoore
Recommended viewing for contemplating the power
of self-organisation and the hidden costs of top-
down control. The best line in the commentary was
this: “Road capacity might be limited but empathy is
boundless.”
A Man with a PhD: Sounding strident & desperate for a reason
by @RBGayle
We sound desperate and strident because dealing
with this level of managed ignorance puts
tremendously unnecessary stress on our ability to
solve complex problems.
@NatashaChart did a lack of print copyright law jump
start Germany’s industrial development and popular literacy?
Spiegel Online International
Did Germany experience rapid industrial expansion
in the 19th century due to an absence of copyright
law? A German historian argues that the massive
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proliferation of books, and thus knowledge, laid the
foundation for the country’s industrial might.
[snip]
Indeed, only 1,000 new works appeared annually
in England at that time — 10 times fewer than in
Germany — and this was not without consequences.
Höffner believes it was the chronically weak book
market that caused England, the colonial power,
to fritter away its head start within the span of a
century, while the underdeveloped agrarian state of
Germany caught up rapidly, becoming an equally
developed industrial nation by 1900.
These IHEs Have Decided It's
Time For Landline Phones To
Go
Source: http://keptup.typepad.com/academic/2010/08/these-ihes-have-
decided-its-time-for-landline-phones-to-go.html
By StevenB on August 23rd, 2010
Tired of watching dust gather on dorm phones, several
Indiana colleges are pulling the plug on landlines, making
their classes of 2014 the first in the state to be totally
cellular. Without landlines, some colleges will save tens of
thousands of dollars in hardware and hook-up fees paid to
phone companies. Butler University, for example, could save
up to $60,000 a year; Indiana State about $35,000. But the
reason for the change is not money: It's the reality of a new
high-tech generation. Read more at:
http://www.indystar.com/article/20100819/
NEWS04/8190412/1085/LIVING03/Some-colleges-in-state-
are-dropping-telephones-in-the-dormitories
Maximizing Content Coverage
and Learning in a Blended
Biology Course
Source: http://www.educause.edu/node/211858
By drupal on August 23rd, 2010
Perhaps the biggest challenge of face-to-face courses is
covering content while simultaneously modeling scientific
thinking. This session will address how this challenge
can be overcome in a blended course. After half the seat
time in a blended cell biology course was relinquished, all
content was delivered online and lecturing was eliminated.
Students were engaged in interactive (often collaborative)
exercises in class, which required content knowledge
and demanded critical, analytical thinking. Summative
objective exams declined in value while assessments of
the ability to "think like a scientist" increased. Examples
will demonstrate how students can construct knowledge
by interpreting data, framing hypotheses, and designing
experiments.
Published by: philosophyandrew
Place-based services
Source: http://www.elearnspace.org/blog/2010/08/20/place-based-
learning/
By gsiemens on August 23rd, 2010
The explosion of mobile devices has added numerous layers
to our interaction with each other and with information, most
notably – augmented reality and location-based computing.
Location-based services (such as Foursquare and Gowalla)
allow individuals to “check-in” to physical locations through a
mobile app. Once you’re checked in, members of your social
network knows your location and is able to connect with you
(in person) if they are nearby. I’ve used Foursquare several
times to meet people I’ve only known online in the past.
This week, Facebook jumped into the location-based game
by announcing Places (Techcrunch has posted a useful
comparison of various systems). Some are calling Places
Facebook’s biggest bet to date . Others say it completes
the picture (no idea what “the picture” is…is it the complete
fulfilment of Bentham’s Panopticon ?)
Local IHEs Will Team
Up To Aid Community In
Emergencies
Source: http://keptup.typepad.com/academic/2010/08/local-ihes-will-
team-up-to-aid-community-in-emergencies.html
By StevenB on August 23rd, 2010
If a five-alarm fire blazes in one town, neighboring fire
departments naturally assist in putting it out. So if a calamity
were to befall an area college, why shouldn't nearby colleges
assist? That's the idea behind a newly approved mutual
aid agreement for 12 educational institutions in the South
Metropolitan Higher Education Consortium. The idea is
somewhat novel, officials say. After all, these schools are,
in a real sense, rivals. The schools are in business against
each other, competing for higher student enrollment, but
they all recognize it is in their interests to work together
when planning and responding to a calamity such as a school
shooting or severe flooding. Read more at:
http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2010-08-13/news/ct-x-s-
college-emergency-0813-20100813_1_mutual-aid-
agreement-colleges-team-college-presidents
Brick-And_Mortar IHEs
Catching Up To For-Profit
Leaders In Online Degrees
Source: http://keptup.typepad.com/academic/2010/08/brickand_mortar-
ihes-catching-up-to-forprofit-leaders-in-online-degrees.html
By StevenB on August 23rd, 2010
For the University of Massachusetts, enrolling Killoran is a win
against the pioneering Internet providers that still dominate
the online education sector. UMass is one of several Bay State
brick-and-mortar colleges whose aggressive expansion into
the virtual classroom is finally paying off. The best-known
online players include the University of Phoenix, Walden, and
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Capella University. But the brick-and-mortar competition is
catching up, from the likes of Northeastern University, Lesley
University, and Boston University, while smaller institutions,
such as Southern New Hampshire University, in Manchester,
are promoting online programs, too. Read more at:
http://www.boston.com/news/education/higher/
articles/2010/08/18/traditional_schools_grow_online/
NYT Review Of "Higher
Education?"
Source: http://keptup.typepad.com/academic/2010/08/nyt-review-of-
higher-education-.html
By StevenB on August 23rd, 2010
Published by: philosophyandrew
and marketing students to build networks in the professional
world. Bringing a service like Twitter into an academic
environment is a teaching approach that has garnered a fair
share of criticism. Some educators say that restricting users to
140-character blurbs plays havoc with students' writing skills
and destroys their attention spans. Read more at:
http://www.usnews.com/articles/education/best-
colleges/2010/08/16/twitter-goes-to-college-.html?
PageNr=1

Andrew Hacker and Claudia Dreifus have written a lucid,

passionate and wide-ranging book on the state of American
higher education and what they perceive as its increasing
betrayal of its primary mission — for them, the teaching of
undergraduates. in a series of well-structured and strongly
argued chapters, the book does pose searching and sometimes
troubling questions about the degree to which the social
utility, personal benefits and philosophical ideals promoted
by admissions and publicity offices are overstated, overpriced,
subordinated to extraneous purposes or distorted by self-
perpetuating bureaucracies. Read more at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/19/books/19book.html

Higher Education Not Shy

About Spending On Lobbyists
Source: http://keptup.typepad.com/academic/2010/08/higher-education-
not-shy-about-spending-on-lobbyists.html
By StevenB on August 23rd, 2010

Academia may be a bastion of liberalism, but in the past

two years, the higher education industry has often lined up
opposite the White House and congressional Democrats -- and
has spent a lot on lobbyists in the process. The most recent
example is the resistance from for-profit colleges to the Obama
administration's proposal to raise standards for institutions
receiving federal student aid. But traditional colleges and
universities also have opposed Democratic initiatives. NAICU
has spent $514,000 on lobbying since the start of 2009. ACE
has spent $442,626. Read more at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/
article/2010/08/18/AR2010081805710.html

Faculty Looking At Ways To

Leverage Twitter For Learning
Source: http://keptup.typepad.com/academic/2010/08/faculty-looking-at-
ways-to-leverage-twitter-for-learning.html
By StevenB on August 23rd, 2010

Twitter might be a couple of rungs below Facebook in terms

of popularity among college students. But a growing number
of professors are embracing it as a way to introduce students
to a different kind of communication. At Champlain College
in Vermont, for example, marketing and online business
professor Elaine Young discusses it as a way for business
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