Multilitteratus Incognitus

I was reading this opinion piece on the Chronicle of Higher Education on Careers. The author reports back on a forum discussion where people talk about your first job influencing your career. Essentially should you go get a teaching job right after you get your PhD, or should you publish your heart out and try to get to that R1 institution where fame and fortune lies (or so they say). I quite honestly don't get where this vitriol is coming from. Why is it that teaching faculty get little respect. If you want a 5/5 course load, why shouldn't you be judged on your teaching ability? Why are we hearing all this whining about getting a 3/3 course load and time for research and if you go teach at a community college you're not as good as someone in an R1 (research) institution. People go to college to learn. They attend college for educational purposes (well that and Frat parties if you are going to one of the party school teeheehee), so why isn't there an expectation that...

I was reading this article on the Chronicle of Higher Ed recently. The article is about teaching customer service as a science . Please forgive my naiveté but calling something a science does not make it so! While there are some scientific elements - what is referred to as social science - such as sociology and psychology, trying to make a whole degree program out of customer service is just plain silly. Customer service is common sense. In addition, why is this field completely separate from management studies in general? Shouldn't managers know what good customer service is and practice it? The article was a it short (news reporting), but the comments were quite interesting (as they usually are). I got a chuckle out of this comment: Interesting when manners, etiquette, common sense, and decency are items that may be turned into a “degree program.” ConSc 201 – Anatomy of a Smile. ConSc 204 – History of “Thank You.” ConSci 215 – Pricing Strategies for Lost Customers ConSc 225 –...

I was recently reading through the post titled IDs - It's time for some seriously tough love when I came across the following closing statement: When you look at the job titles, you see things like content analyst, technical writer, screen writer, video producer, project manager, budget manager, evaluator, test-writer, statistician, graphic artist, web designer, content author, scripter, coder, analyst. LMS manager. Trainer. Teacher. They are coming from design schools, art schools, multimedia departments, computer science departments, engineering, video and film, media and advertising. Business schools. They don't seem to depend so much on learning theory. Does anybody else see anything wrong with this picture? Especially as games, Web 2.0 and new media are purported to be the future of elearning, and this is what IDs typically design? Are IDs really still as relevant as we want to think we are? I think that the Instructional Design field is probably suffering from the same ...

I came across a blog post entitled The Great ID Debate the other day. I actually found it quite interesting to read. I found the last three paragraphs quite poignant : Think about it - these days a good ID needs to be able to write instructional objective. Conduct a content analysis. And an audience analysis. Measure job/performance outcomes. Write a criterion referenced test Create a shared collaborative experience and measure its impact. Script a simulation. Create Camtasia movies. Know a .swf from a .flv. Produce a virtual webinar on any number of web platforms. Develop a website. Administer a blog. Program in Actionscript 3. Administer an LMS or two or three. Metatag your content so that everyone in your organization can find it. Create a video and post it to YouTube. Write a report. Evaluate the impact of a performance support initiative in your workplace. Manage a project. Handle a budget. Fix the copier. Trouble-shoot the network.... With all due respect to the university facu...