August 17th, 2010
Edublogger Review
A "mash-up" of postings from nine engaging educational
and e-learning bloggers.
Ask the Administrator: Ranks
Source: http://suburbdad.blogspot.com/2010/08/ask-administrator-
ranks.html
By Dean Dad on August 17th, 2010
A new correspondent writes:
Why are ranks at Community Colleges sometimes
different from those at 4-year schools? For example,
my rank is "Instructor," but I'm full-time tenure track.
I only achieve the rank of "Assistant Professor" in
five years, after I get tenure. The other ranks are for
various levels of promotion.
I know it's a minor issue, but frankly it drives me a
little nuts having to explain to people that I am, in
fact, TT and that I'm not a part-timer. Sometimes I
just fudge and say "Assistant Professor," to avoid the
confusion.
Any idea why the ranks are so often different? How
naughty am I to refer to myself as Asst. Prof. if that's
not what it's called at my school?
This may seem weaselly, but my first response is to ask the
context in which you refer to yourself that way. On a cv, in an
official document, or in a job interview, it would be fraud. In
informal conversation, though, I don’t see the issue.
DIfferent systems use different criteria and definitions for
names, but the names themselves don’t change much. This
leads to no end of confusion.
It starts with something as simple as “professor.” Much
of the unhappiness in the profession, I think, stems from
people having very different ideas of what a “professor” is.
Is a “professor” a researcher with graduate assistants who
occasionally gives an auditorium lecture, or a teacher who
relies on group discussion, or a learning coach who helps
students navigate self-paced learning modules? I’ve seen it
carry each of those meanings and many more, but if you think
it means the first and you get hired somewhere that believes it
means the third, I foresee heartache.
It’s even worse for administrators, if that helps. Is a “dean” an
august leader, a middle manager, or a low-level paper pusher?
I’ve seen them all...
The instructor-assistant-associate-full ladder is fairly
standard across the industry, but each rank carries different
meanings in different places. I’ve seen schemes in which
Published by: philosophyandrew
‘instructor’ is reserved for full-timers off the tenure track,
though in other places I’ve seen those called “visiting” assistant
professors. I’ve also seen schemes in which new t-t hires
are called ‘instructor’ until tenure, unless they have Ph.D.’s,
at which point they’re called “assistant professor” until hire.
(For my money, the best line reading of “assistant professor”
belongs to Elizabeth Taylor in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
But I digress.)
Oddly enough, in some places, ranks are entirely disconnected
from tenure status. I’ve never understood that -- it seems to me
that if you have a tenure system, then tenure and promotion
should be connected somehow -- but it happens. I’ve seen
systems in which you could gain tenure, work for decades, and
retire still at the rank of assistant professor. It doesn’t make
much sense to me, but there it is.
The issue isn’t really that different colleges define the terms
differently. The issue is that they don’t know it. Since most
tenure-line faculty don’t move around much, they often only
know the system in which they personally work. When you try
to move between systems, you’ll often see assumptions made
based on a lack of awareness that different systems use the
same words differently. Are ‘instructors’ on the tenure track?
Maybe, maybe not. Do assistant professors have doctorates?
Maybe, maybe not. (On the administrative side: do deans
have tenure? What’s the difference between a director and a
coordinator? Are department chairs administration or faculty?
The answers to each of these varies by institution.)
I hope that the quirkiness of the local naming scheme doesn’t
cause any real issues for you. As long as you don’t lie in an
official context, I say call yourself whatever is easiest.
Wise and worldly readers, have you seen a particularly odd
rank/naming scheme? How did it work?
Have a question? Ask the Administrator at deandad (at) gmail
(dot) com.
Connected and Crazy
Source: http://www.jarche.com/2010/08/connected-and-crazy/
By Harold Jarche on August 17th, 2010
Tweet
Here are some of the things I learned via Twitter this past
week.
Quote of the Week:@hrheingold “Free, open, multimedia
university of tomorrow is here now, technically. Knowing how
to self-organize learning with others is another matter”
via @nancyrubin Collaboration – If it Were That Easy We
Would all Do It – Well
1
August 17th, 2010
Five Models of Collaboration:
• Communities of Practice/Interest
• Content Collaboration
• Process Collaboration
• Project Collaboration
• Goal-based Collaboration
@davecormier “next time someone makes fun of twitter … tell
them about you guys finding the name of the berry that Posey
ate for poison control [baneberry]”
we took the kids into the woods, on a little trail on
the back of Dave’s ancestral lands. and we spun our
heads back, three of us at once to see Posey in her tutu
and her grandmother’s fake plastic pearls chomping
heartily away on…something.
three parental mouths opened in unison to say what’s
she eating? and then Dave crossed the three steps
between him and her in only one and he pried the
berry from her mouth. ew, she said.
he grabbed the culprit to ask the internet, once we
were back at the house.
Photo & The Culprit
via @helinur the best goal is no goal :
So what does a life without goals look like? In practice,
it’s very different than one with goals.
You don’t set a goal for the year, nor for the month,
nor for the week or day. You don’t obsess about
tracking, or actionable steps. You don’t even need a to-
do list, though it doesn’t hurt to write down reminders
if you like.
What do you do, then? Lay around on the couch
all day, sleeping and watching TV and eating Ho-
Hos? No, you simply do. You find something you’re
passionate about, and do it. Just because you don’t
have goals doesn’t mean you do nothing — you can
create, you can produce, you can follow your passion.
via @markwfoden Case study on using micro-blogging to
support informal learning [PDF] at Pitney Bowes:
• Better Employee Learning: Yammer facilitates
and augments the highly valuable “casual
learning” that happens every day within Pitney
Bowes.
• Easily Searchable Knowledge Base: Each
discussion is archived and accessible to all
within the organization for future access.
• Better Knowledge Flow: Knowledge isn’t siloed
into specific regions or departments.
via @elsua Starting another day with this required reading:
Am I Crazy? Or Is It The Whole Firm Where I Work? by
@stevedenning
A century hence, when historians come to write the
history of the current age (assuming our species
Published by: philosophyandrew
survives so long), they will, I believe, be puzzled as to
why so many people managed—and so many more
people allowed themselves to be managed—in ways
that were known to be unproductive, crimped the
spirits of those doing the work, and frustrated those
for whom the work was being done. Why, they will
wonder, did this continue for so long on such a wide
scale?
Still Kind Of New But Hopkins'
President Is Making Changes
Source: http://keptup.typepad.com/academic/2010/08/still-kind-of-new-
but-hopkins-president-is-making-changes.html
By StevenB on August 17th, 2010
As president of the Johns Hopkins University, Daniels might
spend one week in Uganda, learning how his university's
researchers spent painstaking years developing methods to
slow the spread of HIV. The next, he might hold a chat with
undergraduates on the Homewood campus about enriching
their college experience. In 16 months presiding over the
university, Daniels has made several bold moves. Despite
budget shortfalls, he insisted that the university shift its
admissions policy so the Class of 2014 could be chosen without
regard for students' ability to pay. He threw himself into
advising the Hopkins-affiliated East Baltimore Development
Inc. and helped shift its focus to building a $40 million
community school. Read more at:
http://articles.baltimoresun.com/2010-08-14/news/bs-md-
hopkins-president-20100813_1_ronald-daniels-pamela-
flaherty-culture-change
GLORIAD: Advanced
Networking and
Cyberinfrastructure for
Global Science and Education
Collaboration
Source: http://www.educause.edu/node/211584
By drupal on August 17th, 2010
The Global Ring Network for Advanced Applications
Development (GLORIAD) is a "ring of rings" fiber-
optic network around the northern hemisphere connecting
the science and education communities of partner
countries (and others) with advanced communications
services enabling leading-edge collaborations, from quality
audio/videoconferencing to remote control of scientific
instrumentation to advanced telemedical applications to high-
volume data transfer. The NSF has invested $18.5 million to
date, matched by roughly $200 million from international
partners. This session will discuss GLORIAD and how it
is promoting the use of advanced cyberinfrastructure in
supporting the growing globalization of science and education.
2
August 17th, 2010
The 2010 Social Networking
Map
Source: http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=53133
August 17th, 2010
Updating the famous XKCD map, this map of social networks
has been redrawn for 2010. "The numbers are taken to
reflect many new developments in the social networking
communities, including Facebook surpassing Myspace as the
preeminent online community." I love the depiction of the
'Former Kingdom of Myspace.'
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Advising
Source: http://suburbdad.blogspot.com/2010/08/advising.html
By Dean Dad on August 17th, 2010
In our never-ending quest to help students succeed, we’re
taking a fresh look at how we do academic advising on campus.
From asking around, it seems like there are several different
schools of thought on academic advising, each pretty much
talking past the others.
First, there’s the “advising is scheduling” school. This group
sees advising as a discrete function to be carried out almost
entirely in the first week of registration, consisting almost
entirely of helping students decipher degree requirements
and sequences of prerequisites. I think of this as the sherpa
function; the sherpa doesn’t ask why you want to climb this
mountain; he just guides you to the top. The appeal of this line
of thought is its implied humility: I don’t know why people
do the things they do, I just help them realize their revealed
preferences. The downside, of course, is that people don’t
always know what they want, or they may not understand the
difference between, say, “criminal justice” and “prelaw.” If you
don’t ask the second question, you’re just helping the student
dig herself in deeper.
Then there’s the “whole person” school of advisement, which
elevates the adviser to something like guru status. This school
holds that the adviser is supposed to see past the student’s self-
delusion and suss out what s/he really wants. When it actually
works, it’s lovely, but it’s hard to reproduce at scale, and it’s
certainly open to charges of arrogance or self-dealing. (My
adviser in college was a physics professor who just couldn’t
understand why anybody would ever major in anything other
than physics. I’m sure he meant well, but he didn’t help me
any..)
Published by: philosophyandrew
A close variation on that is the “role model” adviser. This
usually gets applied to students in underrepresented groups.
The idea is that people make assumptions about what they
can do based in part on who’s doing those things now, so
putting some recognizably similar faces in key roles can send
a powerful message. I’ve never been entirely comfortable with
this line of thought, but there’s some empirical support for it,
so I hold my tongue.
There’s also a basic tension between those who insist that the
faculty should own advisement, and those who believe that
it’s reasonable to have full-time advisers. I side with the latter
camp, only because the faculty simply aren’t around during
the summer and vacations, but students come in year-round.
I don’t want to say to a kid who shows up in June “sorry, come
back in September and someone will talk to you.” I get the
philosophical argument for faculty ownership, and in some
tightly-constructed cohort programs (Nursing, music) we go
with that by default. But in the fairly popular and loosely-built
transfer major, the pragmatic argument for having some folks
around whenever seems more persuasive to me.
“Intrusive advisement” is all the rage in the national literature
now. I think of it as systematic nagging, though that may say
as much about me as it does about intrusive advising. The
intrusive model -- yes, they actually call it that -- involves
deputizing certain staffers to become a variation on truant
officers, chasing down students who miss class to ask them
what’s up and help them get back on track before they fall so far
behind that there’s just no hope. The whole enterprise strikes
me as demeaning and vaguely creepy, but the results I’ve seen
suggest that for certain populations, it can actually work.
Finally, there’s the libertarian line of thought, which I think
of as the old computer helpdesk term “RTFM” (for “Read
the F-ing Manual”). This school says that learning how to
navigate bureaucracies is a life skill, and part of what a college
graduate should be able to do. As long as the catalog and
related information is available and accurate, it should fall to
the student to figure out both what she wants to do with her
career and how she should do it. If she can’t be bothered, well,
let her learn the consequences of that, too.
I’ll admit some philosophical affinity with this view, but
pragmatically, it doesn’t work. Part of the reason for that is
that the manual itself changes, and I can’t claim with any
certainty that it’s flawless. The manual also rests on a series
of assumptions about students -- they’re full time, they start
in the Fall, they don’t fail anything -- that don’t always hold.
(In this setting, they’re actually the exception.) There’s also a
perfectly valid argument to the effect that learning how to seek
out good help is a useful life skill; a little humility isn’t always
a bad thing.
Wise and worldly readers, has your campus found a reasonably
successful way to handle undergraduate advisement?
3
August 17th, 2010
IHEs Count On Hotels When
They Run Out Of Dorm Rooms
Source: http://keptup.typepad.com/academic/2010/08/ihes-count-on-
hotels-when-they-run-out-of-dorm-rooms.html
By StevenB on August 17th, 2010
According to college administrators, most students prefer
the predictability and security of campus life. The problem is
that securing space in a dormitory can be as challenging as a
calculus exam, thanks to burgeoning enrollment and the fixed
number of dorm beds. The result at Westchester colleges is
an institutional scramble to find more large-scale off-campus
housing. The path often leads straight to a nearby hotel. About
800 students applied for on-campus housing at Mercy this
year, Mr. Schaefer said, but only 325 dorm beds are available.
In response, the college has leased 180 beds at the Marriott
Hotel in nearby Tarrytown, providing shuttle service and
requiring that students comply with the campus curfew and
other rules. The cost to the student at a hotel is the same as at
a dorm. Read more at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/
realestate/15wczo.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss
This content has been flagged
for review
Source: http://www.educause.edu/node/211521
By Bookworm on August 17th, 2010
Unless otherwise noted, EDUCAUSE holds the copyright
on all materials published by the association, whether in
print or electronic form. In certain cases the work remains
the intellectual property of the individual author(s) (see
Special Circumstances ). Content from conference speeches,
presentations, blogs, wikis and feeds reflect the opinions of
the author, and not necessarily those of EDUCAUSE or its
members.
Running courses openly –
fewer problems and more
benefits than expected
Source: http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=53127
August 17th, 2010
As registrations for PLENK2010 continue to accumulate, it's
worth noting that not only is the open course phenomenon is
spreading, it seems to be working surprisingly well. "Sounds
like a win-win-win situation, if there is such a thing. With little
effort the Professor increases the benefits of his or her teaching
and gets to work with motivated and engaged learners (win),
enrolled students enjoy a richer learning experience (win), and
informal learners have access to a learning opportunity that
did not exist before (win)."
Comments
Published by: philosophyandrew
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Goldman Sachs Behind For-
Profit That Has Students
Crying Foul
Source: http://keptup.typepad.com/academic/2010/08/goldman-sachs-
behind-forprofit-that-has-students-crying-foul.html
By StevenB on August 17th, 2010
Like many investors, Goldman, owner of 38 percent of the
Art Institute's parent, Education Management Corp. ( EDMC
), was drawn to for-profit colleges by their rapid growth and
soaring stock prices. EDMC also faces complaints from its own
graduates and employees. A lawsuit filed in Texas state court
by 18 students alleges they were misled about the accreditation
status of their program, diminishing their degrees' value and
leaving them with debts they can't repay. Read more at:
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_33/
b4191066612953.htm
Rethinking e-Learning
Source: http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=53122
August 17th, 2010
This sounds right: "This recognition that our processing
uses external representations is an important component in
looking at ways to support performance. When should we
provide tools, whether representational or computational,
instead of trying to put all information in the head? We need
a richer picture of how we perform, rather than a simplistic
and ineffectual model that posits we can know everything we
need." And I like what the author calls the seven Cs of 'natural
learning':
- Choose what we are interested in
- Commit to do what is necessary to learn about it
- Create expressions of our understanding as application
- Crash when our expressions sometimes fail
4
August 17th, 2010
- Copy others' performances
- Converse with others about the topic
- Collaborate to co-create a shared understanding as well as an
artifact
I'd like to get a 'cooperate' in there somewhere. And maybe
a 'cultivate'. And definitely a 'clarify', a 'criticize' and even a
'construct'. Via David Jones.
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them here you agree to license under the same terms as this
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make sure it makes sense.
New Data Indicates Student
Mental Illness Is On The Rise
Source: http://keptup.typepad.com/academic/2010/08/new-data-
indicates-student-mental-illness-is-on-the-rise.html
By StevenB on August 17th, 2010
The number of college students who are afflicted with a serious
mental illness is rising, according to data presented Thursday
at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Assn.
in San Diego
The findings came from an analysis of 3,265 college students
who used campus counseling services between September
1997 and August 2009. Several programs are available to
assist students with mental illness. Read more at:
http://www.latimes.com/health/boostershots/la-heb-
college-20100812,0,3226328.story
Motoring enthusiast builds
367mph bus
Source: http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?post=53120
August 17th, 2010
Your comments always remain your property, but in posting
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Automated Spam-checking is in effect. If you are a registered
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Published by: philosophyandrew
Despite Web Information
Students Still Need The
Campus Tour
Source: http://keptup.typepad.com/academic/2010/08/despite-web-
information-students-still-need-the-campus-tour.html
By StevenB on August 17th, 2010
"I've done a lot of research online about which schools I
wanted to visit," said Kilner, a student at Gonzaga College High
School in Washington, D.C. "Online information is good, but
you can't capture college life in photos or articles on a Web site.
You need to get the feel for the college to really know which
one is right." Like Kilner, most high school students start their
search for the right college experience online -- but visits to
campus remain a high priority for CU's prospective students,
according to campus admissions officers. Read more at:
http://www.dailycamera.com/ci_15712398
Forbes Reveals Its Top IHEs
Source: http://keptup.typepad.com/academic/2010/08/forbes-reveals-its-
top-ihes.html
By StevenB on August 17th, 2010
The best college in America isn't in Cambridge or Princeton,
West Point or Annapolis. It's nestled in the Berkshire
Mountains. Williams College, a 217-year-old private liberal
arts school, tops our third annual ranking of America's Best
Colleges. Our list of more than 600 undergraduate institutions
is based on the quality of the education they provide, the
experiences of the students and how much they achieve. [In
addition to the rankings the issue contains feature articles
about higher education along with quite a few opinion pieces
about the state of higher education]. Read more at:
http://www.forbes.com/2010/08/11/best-colleges-
universities-rating-ranking-opinions-best-
colleges-10_land.html?boxes=Homepagelighttop
The EDUCAUSE Review Open
Issue
Source: http://keptup.typepad.com/academic/2010/08/the-educause-
review-open-issue.html
By StevenB on August 17th, 2010
The July/August 2010 issue of EDUCAUSE Review is all
about "open" - open content, open courses, open faculty, open
technology...anything that's open is up for analysis in this
issue. Read more at:
http://www.educause.edu/er
UC Berkeley Plan To DNA
Test All Students Creating
Controversy
Source: http://keptup.typepad.com/academic/2010/08/uc-berkeley-plan-
to-dna-test-all-students-creating-controversy.html
5
August 17th, 2010 Published by: philosophyandrew
By StevenB on August 17th, 2010

Two UC Berkeley professors Tuesday defended a controversial

plan to perform genetic testing on incoming freshmen
during a legislative hearing that also featured testimony from
privacy experts and bioethicists blasting the plan. If the state
Department of Public Health rules that UC Berkeley's project
amounts to medical testing, the university would have to have
students' saliva tested in a specially designated laboratory.
The university argues that it is performing research – not
medical tests – which would allow testing at a greater variety
of labs. The exercise is part of an orientation project designed
to introduce new students to Berkeley's intellectual rigor. Read
more at: http://www.sacbee.com/2010/08/11/2950513/
uc-berkeley-professors-defend.html#ixzz0wOtmsoSD

He Was First To Apply To

College Using The Common
Form
Source: http://keptup.typepad.com/academic/2010/08/he-was-first-to-
apply-to-college-using-the-common-form.html
By StevenB on August 17th, 2010

Cree Bautista’s application for next year’s freshman class

at New York University isn’t due until Jan. 1, but Cree, an
incoming high school senior from Pflugerville, Tex., was not
taking any chances. Just after 12:01 a.m. on Aug. 1 — when
this year’s version of the Common Application was first posted
on the Web — Cree sat down at the computer in his parents’
bedroom and began filling out the form. As it turned out,
Cree, 17, was the first applicant for the class of 2015, not just
at N.Y.U. but to any institution that accepts the Common App,
including those of the Ivy League. By Tuesday he had plenty
of company: Nearly 1,000 applications had been filed. Read
more at:
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/11/
education/11application.html?_r=1&partner=rss&emc=rss