Multilitteratus Incognitus

This is part IV of my  all the things(!!!)  blog series where I attempt to make sense of all the things I've gotten myself into these past 5-10 years, and I figure out how to Marie Kondo my professional  hobbies.  Yes...yes... I know that Kondo is no longer Kondoing and has given up the practice, but I am aiming for the gives you joy  part. This particular post tackles teaching, a topic, and an activity I love, but I think that I may be suffering from too much of a good thing . While I had taught bespoke hour-long workshops in the past, in my training jobs at the university library and in my job as a learning technologist in IT, my teaching side hustle really took off in 2012. I often joke that I got into college teaching as a kind of dare .  Once I finished my instructional design degree I was really into curriculum planning and seeing the big picture. And my laboratory for this was the instructional design program from which I graduated. I spent some tim...

Gazing at Learning The other day I was doing some reflecting on my own "return" to being a learner after my doctoral journey ended. Last semester I took a course on negotiation, which I saw relevant to both work and also for my role as a member of our union's contract bargaining team this round.  This course was a graduate-level course, and is typically taken either in the first or second term of a graduate student's journey in the Conflict Resolution program at my university.  While the semester was busy, I rarely broke an (academic) sweat.  The course was challenging, don't get me wrong, but I found the number of readings manageable (since I have my TTS routine), and the number of words that I had to write for papers was 5,000-6,000 cumulatively in the semester (and maybe another 8,000 across the forum posts throughout the term). In the grand scheme of things, this feels normal for a graduate course (from a design point of view), but it feels  easy having gone ...

This is part III of V of a look back at 2022. The first part discussed peer review requests in 2022 , and the second part discussed professional development more broadly .  As I was pondering professional development, a branch from that thread started vining out and sort of developing in my mind as related to, but distinct from, professional development.  Thus, part III will be dealing with... Charting out the next phase of academic development As I was pondering professional development in my previous post, I started to veer into the area of academic development.  I continued to write my previous post, but I decided to stop myself and separate this section out because I realized that I think of PD and AD as two different (but sometimes overlapping) entities.  In my view, PD tends to relate much more closely to one's work. What you learn is usually applicable to your work environment sooner rather than later.  Professional Development is also something that you ...

This is part II of V of a look back to 2022. The first part of this series did a bit of reflecting on professional expectations in the form of peer review requests that I received in 2022 . This next section is all about retooling, pondering, and... Figuring out what PD means for me I think that 2022 was really about recovering  from my doctoral work. I completed my defense in July 2021, and all edits were accepted and published, and the degree was granted by October 2021. This, in essence, left me the entirety of 2022 to just let my brain air out a bit and recalibrate. Looking back, 2011-2016 were my MOOC years (free-range learning), and 2014-2021 were my Doc years (structured learning), and lots of time and brain bandwidth were allotted to that endeavor.  While there were bumps in the road, I am really happy with the committee I had in the end, and they supported me in reaching that finish line. The completion of a doctorate means that I "won" at academia-ing right?😂  ...

  Happy New Year fellow learners and ponderererers (that's spelled right, right? 😜) Looking back, 2022 seems like an academic blur. I know that lots of things happened, and I've jotted all of them down on a notepad so I can add them to my CV as some point in the future, but as I look back five distinct threads (points of pondering) come up as trends that emerged, or became more clear, in 2022. As I started writing this, it seemed like the length was getting out of hand, so I decided to break it up into many different blog posts. My first point of pondering is... A deluge of peer review requests... Alright, maybe "deluge" might be a bit overdramatic, but it does feel like requests for peer review increased in 2022.  I've been peer reviewing since 2012 and I am not sure what exactly changed.  Did someone see my publons/WoS/ORCID profiles and decided to add me to their regular reviewer's circle? Did the addition of a doctorate to my credentials make me more visi...

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...

Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash Back in December, I had an idea: 2022 is the 10 year anniversary since the "year of the MOOC," so why not write something about it? After all, open education and MOOCs are subjects that interest me a lot, still. MOOCs of course go back before 2012, and the year of the MOOC  in 2012 was really relevant in North America.  I've seen other proclamations for the year of the MOOC being 2013 or 2014, but that's in different contexts. Anyway, since it's 10 years from some  proclamation, and this year is actually one where I am free and clear from the obligations of dissertation writing, I thought it would be fun to revisit my old stomping grounds and do a 10-13 year retrospective research article (I need to get back into publishing somehow, no? 😂). I also have a title:  MOOC post-mortem: A decade(+) of MOOCs .  More on this title later. Anyway, I decided to start this project in a very predictable way.  I already had a treasure trov...

Image by Greg Montani from Pixabay Okay...okay!  I know, it's only been a couple of months since I defended my dissertation, and it's only been one month since it was totally official and on my transcript, but in thinking about further research I am simultaneously filled with both excitement and dread.  There are some things I want to pull out of my dissertation and polish up for an article, there are also threads on MOOCs and lurking that I want to return to, but I am feeling this sense of "oof😫" when I think about actually jumping in again.   It is quite possible that I need a much longer break, and maybe an actual vacation, but this reflection on research and publishing has gotten me to ponder the point of publishing as an alt-ac. Now that I am done with the doc program, many people ask if I'm going to pursue a tenure position somewhere. It's an interesting thought (neither appealing nor unappealing), but then the question does make me reflect on what I d...

This post has been brewing in my head for a couple of years now. Since I am waiting for IRB clearance for my dissertation I thought it would be a good time to jot things down and see what others think.  I usually tend to have people in my network who either teach or work in some sort of instructional designer (or faculty developer) capacity.  I don't (think) I know too many people in the higher education administration aspects of my work to discuss these kinds of things with (so I may just be speaking to no one 😝). Anyway, one thing that's been gnawing at me for the past number of years is how one enters into graduate programs.  I'll focus more on the master's level for a few reasons.  I manage an MA program, I teach for an MEd program, and from observation, I've seen that masters programs probably don't have as many administrative constraints: for example, [virtual] classroom space, working with a cohort model that's more tightly integrated [as co...

I originally posted this as a response in a post that Paul Prinsloo wrote on facebook (in response to this Chronicle Article on Beall's list and why it died ), but it seemed lengthy enough to cross-post as a blog post :-) -------------- So many issues to dissect and analyze is such a (relatively) brief article. It is important to see and analyze predatory journals (and academic publishing) in general systematically with other trends in academia. This includes the fetishization of publish or perish, and the increased research requirements to even get a job in academia ( see recent article on daily noos as an example ) One thing that bugged me was this line --"Good journals are not going to come to you and beg you for your articles. That should be your first clue." There are legitimate journals out there that are new, and hence don't have any current readership because they are new, so they can't necessarily rely on the word of mouth to get submissions for...

Paul Prinsloo has a wealth of thought provoking posts on his facebook ;-)  I wasn't planning on blogging until tomorrow, but this got my mental gears moving and thinking (not about my dissertation, but it's thinking nevertheless).  This blog started as a continuation of a comment I left on Paul's facebook feed. The article that got me thinking is an article on the Daily Nous titled The Publication Emergency . In the article a journal editor (in the field of philosophy) opines (although not with his editor hat on) that graduate students (I guess this means doctoral students) should be barred from publishing until they are done with their degree. He says that this is not a barring of people who don't hold a doctorate, but rather of people who are in process  of earning their doctorate.  So, in theory, some with an MA, but not pursuing a doctorate would be welcome to publish their stuff.  So, even if an article is good and has merit, if its author is in proc...

I came across an article on Campus Technology last week titled  7 Tips for Listing MOOCs on Your Résumé , and it was citing a CEO of an employer/employee matchmaking firm.  One piece of advice says to create a new section for MOOCs taken to list them there. This is not all that controversial since I do the same.  Not on my resume, but rather on my extended CV (which I don't share anyone), and it serves more a purpose of self-documentation than anything else. The first part that got me thinking was the piece of advice listed that says "only list MOOCs that you have completed".  Their rationale is as follows: "Listing a MOOC is only an advantage if you've actually completed the course," Mustafa noted. "Only about 10 percent of students complete MOOCs, so your completed courses show your potential employer that you follow through with your commitments. You should also be prepared to talk about what you learned from the MOOC — in an interview — an...

I was thinking about this the other day...  I was reading the requirements for setting up review committees for my dissertation proposal and for my ultimate dissertation defense. One of the forms that people on committees need to fill out is a statement on conflict of interest.  This isn't unusual since I see it on the peer review side of things, be it in peer review journals, or (more recently) being on a conference program committee. Normally I wouldn't have spend more time thinking about this, but I've been more active on social media as compared to some of my cohortmates.  Over the years I've met academics in my area on twitter, on google+, and even though I make it a point not to 'friend' people on facebook unless they are actually my friend (or family), I've added some academics on there who seem to be more active on facebook than other social media platforms.  And, of course, when I see something of interests on there I try to engage with them....

This semester is turning out to be one that is quite busy.  It was a good idea to not teach a graduate this semester so I can focus on my dissertation proposal, however (like that irresistible desert at the end of the meal) various collaborative projects have come in to fill the "void" left in my schedule from not teaching (the one that is supposed to be going into dissertation prep), and these projects have me thinking. First is the aspect of Hybrid Presence.  Suzan and I coined this term to describe something between Teaching Presence and Learner Presence for the most recent Networked learning conference.  We are currently working more on this topic for an upcoming book chapter. Second is gamification.  A term that has come in and out of my list of curiosities that I want to play around more with.  I've done some work on this for school, and for professional organization presentations, but nothing big in terms of an article (in my ALECS proposal it wa...

This week, one of the discussion forums in my doctoral seminar had this question (well, it was part of the question, but I just pulled out this part): How are you deciding what literature to review for your lit review? What determining factors direct you? I think that my literature review is probably going to be a little challenging. My overall question is “why do people in MOOCs collaborate on non-assigned course projects?” The actual question will need refining, but this encapsulates the spirit of the question.  My thoughts are that I actually don’t know the why (this is why I am researching it), so I can’t really nail down a definitive list of research and researchers that will be all inclusive and ‘canonical’ if you will. This to me seems to indicate that I need to be a bit of a cafeteria researcher with my literature review and formulate some hypotheses as to what might be relevant.  For example internal vs external motivation research from psychology might...

The other day I got access to my summer course on Blackboard.  With just under 25 days left to go until the start of courses, it's time to look at my old syllabus (from last summer), see what sorts of innovations my colleague (Rebecca) has in her version of the course, and decide how to update my own course.  I had some ideas last summer, but since then the course has actually received an update by means of course title and course objectives, so I need to make sure that I am covering my bases. Concurrently, in another thread, while I was commuting this past week I was listening to some of my saved items in Pocket, and I was reading (listening to) this article on Hybrid Pedagogy by Sean Michael Morris, Pete Rorabaugh and Jesse Stommel titled Beyond Rigor . This article brought me back to thinking more about academic rigor  and what the heck it really means.  I think it's one of those subjects that will get a different answer depending on who you ask.  The aut...

One of the nice things about being a language geek and an academic is that you get access to research that has been published in other languages.  In addition to English I fare quite well with research written in French, Italian, and Greek. Even though I don't have any formal experience with learning Spanish I could probably get the gist of Spanish articles based on my familiarity of French and Italian.  When it comes to writing (producing language), the process is a bit painful.  My academic vocabulary isn't as developed in the other languages and the necessary stylistics of research publications in other languages is a skill that I don't yet have. I am actually quite interested in developing that competency just for my own edification, but I would love to be able to publish research in other languages, with practice comes more familiarity and ability to use those languages anyway, and that's a goal that I strive toward.  That said, I started pondering the ...

I guess today I will be taking off my "Instructional Designer" cap, and putting on my "Higher Education Administration" cap. My career in higher education goes back to the days of me being a  work-study student, working for the department of Media Services, providing all those nice A/V equipment that professors use as part of their course.  Since then I've had a variety of jobs with an ever increasing responsibility load.  Despite the change of departments, change in job descriptions and duties, I always remained outside of an academic department (you know, the ones that have professors and teach courses).  I was always in some support role, and usually one that involved technology.  I have always been a 12-month employee, not an academic-calendar employee (9-month, September to May) like the TT† faculty. If you had asked me back then if I would want to take the entire summer off, I'd probably tell you that you were nuts. Even if we factored in the lower p...

Well, in a week I will be in Edmonton starting off my EdD in distance education at Athabasca University.  I know that most North American doctoral students probably don't think of their dissertation topic this early (I haven't even completed my first course), but I want to be pro-active and work on the thing while taking courses.  So, Rebecca's post on Educational Design Research (EDR) was quite timely.  This isn't my first go around at a dissertation topic, my current topic has evolved over the past couple of years as I was thinking about what I want to do (and which university is best to pursue this). My initial idea was to blend my background in Instructional Design and MOOCs to teach a language, specifically designing a MOOC to teach Greek as a foreign language to novices. This actually came out of making a MOOC out of my MEd capstone .  This was circa 2011-2012 after my experiences with MobiMOOC, LAK11, CCK11 and before the xMOOCs invaded the scene.  ...

This past week I was able to attend Campus Technology and AAEEBL 2014 in Boston. I count myself lucky that I have two conferences every year that are pretty close to me (the other one being NERCOMP) that allows me to go and see some interesting presentations, engage with colleagues, and talk to vendors (and let's not forget the cool vendor swag ;-) ). This year, unfortunately, I didn't get an opportunity for post-conference beers, dinner, and discussion as I had last year with some pretty interesting people from both the US and Canada. Oh well, next year maybe :) Even though these things are local I don't submit session proposals. I feel more comfortable on the audience end (where I can report and comment on via twitter) than the presenter end. That said, I did want to comment on one session that I went to that has really made me rethink book publishing.  The session was titled "Are MOOCs the equivalent of college courses" (you can check out the recording of t...