Multilitteratus Incognitus

Last weekend, while I was enjoying something on television, my iPad buzzed and kindly informed me that a few people I follow on twitter were all tweeting about #whytenure.  Woah! I thought!  What's this?   Is there something earth-shattering happening with tenure ?  I had to find out.  I saw some tweets, favorited them (for later digestion), and went back to my show. It seems to me that this was a reaction to Wisconsin and Gov. Walker's most recent attempts to mess with higher education in that state. There is no doubt that feelings around tenure, both in Wisconsin and outside, are pretty charged. I see blind acceptance of tenure as a given by most people I interact with, but I don't see why (despite their arguments). I am one of the few people, that I know in my circles, that holds the unpopular opinion (among people in academia) that tenure is an outdated institution and what's on the drawing board needs to be erased and re-conceptualized from scratch....

I've been following an interesting discussion in one of the LinkedIn groups that I am a member of called " How important is a formal certificate/degree in Instructional Design to become a successful Instructional Designer? " I guess the discussion is not new (well it may be new to this group, but it's been going on in the ID circle for a while). There are pros and cons to each position, for example non-formal trained IDs (Instructional Designers) are seen are more creative and adaptive and in their mind formally trained IDs are a bit more rigid. At the other end of the spectrum, formally trained IDs see a formal education as "I know why this is happening and I can harness its power instead of relying on chance" and the degree of course can get them in the door whereas non-degreed IDs might have a problem with that. There are some comments which just derail the discussion like a commenter that said that she wants to see people rename IDs learning designers ...