Multilitteratus Incognitus

It's been about five years since I defended my dissertation (oh my! How time does fly!), and I caught myself thinking about my evolving relationship with academic writing. While I've been somewhat  active over the past few years, I also find that I'm a lot less interested in producing academic/journal writing as a genre of writing. And, when I want to engage in such an activity, 'going at it alone' when I don't have a guaranteed venue of publication (i.e., you write the article first and then submit to a journal for review), feels a lot less palatable as an activity during my leisure time. I neither need for professional purposes, nor do I have time during my regular work day for this kind of activity, so it's classified as leisure for me personally (is there an academic equivalent like athleisure , I wonder...🤔). I make the distinction between writing for journals and writing chapters for books. Not that writing chapters for books is a guaranteed venue, on...

Happy Friday, to all! This past week  - well, even a few weeks before that, if we're really counting - I've been contemplating my academic work.  Part of it is because I am working on one collaboration with some really awesome folks, and reading proofs for another collab from last summer (that should be published later this year).  However, it's worth noting that all of these academic pursuits are hobbies for me, so it takes time off other hobbies.  They are not things that I can do as part of my regular work (I am not a faculty member). Part of this introspection is because I was updating my Academic CV for a teaching gig I might apply to (another part of the hobby, but this one pays at least), and  I realized that I've done quite a few things in the past couple of years that fit into this particular hobby category, and also fit pretty much in the "life of an academic" category. So, what's changed? To cut to the chase, Trump, and Musk,... and their demen...

Choose your Destiny Over the past month or so, IHE has published a few opinion pieces about the issues with academic peer reviews; specifically that there is a bit of a dearth of peer reviewers which is holding up the publication of papers.  For lack of a better way of explaining this, it sounds to me that older academics who write these pieces (who had privileges that current-day academics don't) seem to chalk it up to "Darn these young academics! Nobody wants to work anymore!" I suppose that one  take on the current situation, but I think it's a shitty take. I suppose that if I were still an editor at an academic journal, I might be feeling the pressure a bit more, but I am not, so I can ponder some things from a relatively disconnected position. For what it's worth, I think the field™ has done this to themselves by (1) artificially keeping tenure-style  jobs low† and (2) increasing the stress, pressure, and sometimes the opaque requirements for obtaining tenure...

Maybe I shouldn't take the bait, but I guess I couldn't leave this one alone either 😂.  I might as well have a little fun with a clickbait-style title for this post 🤣. Reading IHE and JK feels like it's bad for my mental health. Anyway, instead of rage-writing, I thought I would expand a bit on his arguments.  JK, over at IHE is opining again about things . This time it's a reaction to the CHLOE7 report (I somehow managed to miss CHLOE1 through 6, but that's OK). It's not that I disagree with JK about what he writes, but I think he is rather naïve, he doesn't dig deep enough, and he doesn't question current systems of power and authority.  This, I feel, is a cautionary tale of being careful what you wish for... At the center of this thought exercise is a figure (10%), that's the number of online leaders that indicated that their ID capacity as of  Fall 2021 was "fully sufficient" and that given "COOs' projection of significant f...

  A while back a tweet caught my eye that really piqued my interest. I don't remember who posted it, but it was responded to by someone I follow with a confirmatory story of their own.  The tweet went something like this: I finished my [graduate] degree x-many years ago. In this time, I have not been contacted by my [alma matter] department to participate on panel discussions, webinars, submit updates on my professional activities, articles I've authored, write a guest blog- or newsletter-post, give a talk, facilitate a workshop, etc. Let me say that I can totally understand! If my experience is any indication it's probably not you but rather how the organization functions.  As most blog posts go, I have some anecdotes! These are both from my experiences as an alumnus of an organization and  as a staff member of that organization.  Student & Alumnus Perspective Let me start with my experiences as an alumnus. I graduated from my programs in 2004, 2007, 2...

Puzzle board generalist Over the past few months, this idea has been floating around in my head, but I haven't really found the words to describe my general ponderings, so here goes a freewriting activity that I hope makes sense... July will be the one-year anniversary from whence I passed my dissertation defense (yay!) and became a "doctor"👏 (not the 'damn it Jim!" kind😜).  Over the last few years, leading up to my dissertation defense, I had spent a lot of time becoming an expert in collaboration, and specifically in an open educational context. There was a little rhizomatic stuff there, but I need to go back and read more about it. I had also spent a lot of time building my expertise on the Community of Inquiry model before I abandoned that line of inquiry, as well as communities of practice, MOOCs, and other peripheral areas to collaboration and open ed.  One of my friends, who had already completed their doctoral journey a few years prior, told me to reall...

I was reading Twitter the other daaayyy (just picture someone from Letterkenny saying this😜) and I came upon yet another discussion that basically boiled down to online (or remote) versus face-to-face. I made the mistake of reading the replies🙄.   On the one hand, I was hoping that there would be a more nuanced discussion (and to be fair, I did get those types of replies from people I follow), but there were so many more about "online not being for everyone,"  about how people who teach face to face can "see if their points are landing and if learners are confused," or how "face to face is easier for building community" (maybe for you extroverts...🤨), or even "online works great if you love reading information off a screen and taking self-paced tests" (someone's learning like it's 1999...🤣) and other such (insert word/phrase of your choice). Obviously, the quotes are paraphrased. I became upset and irritated reading such non-sense pos...

Back in December, I was searching for the #tenure hashtag on twitter.   There was some discussion (probably stated by Jesse Stommel 😜) which prompted me to search for this #hashtag out of curiosity to see what was tagged.  Along with heartwarming stories of people who've just earned tenure (a nice perk right before the winter break!), there was this wonderful tweet specimen... I'm not gonna lie.  IT BUGS ME. It bugs me as a learner.   I've always completed course evaluations and I tried to give honest feedback to the professor.  If the course was easy, hard, just right, I wanted them to know.  If I was appreciative, I wanted them to know.  Yes, sometimes I've half-assed it and just completed the Likert scale with a "loved the course" comment at the end, but many times I try to be more concrete about the feedback. It bugs me as a program manager. I am the individual who sets up, collects, and often reminds students, about the course ev...

Have PhD...( source ) George Station had posted this article titled " The academy I dreamed of for 20 years no longer exists, and I am waking up " with the lead in of: Ellen Kirkpatrick has yearned for an academic career for many years. But 18 months after finally earning her doctorate, she is no longer sure she wants to remain in a sector defined by precarity, exploitation – and ‘quit lit’  George asked us (tried to bait us? 😏) to see what we think about it in his Fb posting, and I am surprised (given the circle of people George and I follow) that no one else jumped into the discussion.  I though I'd give it the old college try and write a blog post about it.  It is something that's been on my mind in the past couple of years. Once the coursework component of my EdD was done people started asking me what I plan to do after I earn my EdD.  I am still at the proposal stage (one of these days I'll write about it), but inching forward, so I guess the end wil...

 Alfonso Bedoya in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre Dissertation proposal, draft number...I don't know - lost count - has been submitted.  Things look good, well at least in my humble view, so I hope I am ready to defend this proposal within the coming month and become a "candidate" soon‡. With the draft submitted I can now focus on the other pile of academic work that needs attending to, and is more collaborative than my dissertation. In any case, a recent incident (incident sound too austere...happening? occurrence?) I was reminded, for the umpteenth time that what we, as educational researchers, are expected to have a purpose in our research. What is the rationale for the study?  people ask. Why undertake this study?  Who benefits? What is the problem you are trying to solve? As you can tell from the title of this blog post I hold the position that I don't need no stinkin' rationale. I could make something up like "by examining population X, ...

From PhD Comics It's been a while since I've had the bandwidth to think about something other than my dissertation proposal.  When I started this process four years ago (starting with matriculation in March 2014) I thought I'd be the first or second person in my cohort to be done (ha!), but like most marathoners I guess I am part of the pack looking at the fast folks ahead of me 😏.  Being part of the pack does have its benefits, such as getting an idea of how long the process takes (having friends in other cohorts also helps with this).  I thought, initially, when someone submitted their draft (be it proposal or final dissertation) that you would get feedback and signs of life from your various committees soonish, but seeing Lisa's journey (currently at 5 weeks and counting) gave me a reality check. Waiting isn't bad per se (we wait for a ton of things in life), but I think it is the expectation of things to come that makes this type waiting much more anxiou...

I think I am going to commission a saint painting (Byzantine style, of course) of Paul Prinsloo (I just need to find a clever Saint Epithet for him).  Here is another though process sparked by something he shared recently on his Facebook.  Paul shared this blog post without comment (I swear, sometimes I feel like this is an online class he's conducting and we're all participating in a massive discussion ;-) ) and it got me thinking... I do recognize the adjunctification (and probably de-profesionalization) of the professoriate, and I see it as a trend that's not new.  If I really think back to my undergraduate days, almost 20 years ago now, I could probably see it back then as well. There is, however, plenty of blame to go around. Academia is (slowly or quickly, depending on your standpoint) becoming a capitalist monster operating on a greedy algorithm. My own university, a state university, seems to be in competition with other state universities in the same state...