Multilitteratus Incognitus

Part VI of my ponderings on all the things and wayfinding in academia. This is the last part of this series - at least for now. I don't know. I think it's time to move from retrospection to some kind of next phase 🤓 Anyway, I saved the most controversial topic for last hahaha 😂 OK, so before I get the rotten tomatoes🍅🪰, hear me out!😅 I am a big proponent of lifelong learning. In fact, I joke, on this very blog, that I am "Pondering what my next degree should be 😂" Go ahead, look to the top of this page, I'll wait. In case you're from the distant future and my blog's subtitle has changed, it basically said what's in the quotes, and I added this subtitle after I completed my doctorate in 2021.  Anywhoooo.... where was I?  Ah yes, Lifelong learning ! Since completing my dissertation and graduating in 2021, I've tried my hand at professional development through various means. I've done a month-long synchronous online workshop on coaching (one...

#wilty A few weeks ago I decided to ask ChatGPT to tell me a little bit about myself. Part of it was curiosity, while part of it was because I needed to write a short bio and I just felt uninspired.  The first time the query ran, ChatGPT told me that it didn't know who I was.  That's fine, I thought to myself, because it would be weird to be known like that. After all, I don't really consider myself to be anything big in academia. This past week I decided to try again just to see if anything had changed in the world of ChatGPT. And lo and behold it had! Now ChatGPT seems to know who I am...sort of... Prompt: Who is Dr. Apostolos Koutropoulos? Response: Dr. Apostolos Koutropoulos is an educator, researcher, and entrepreneur who has worked in various fields related to technology and education. He is currently an Associate Professor of Instructional Technology at the University of Massachusetts Boston and the founder of several EdTech companies . Koutropoulos has published ...

It's a Boston thing... Alright, this blog post has been sitting in my drafts for a while, since I am procrastinating writing that paper on video game preservation (a story for another blog), why no blog?😂. Now that the dissertation is done, and the doctoral degree is completed, I've been spending a little more time observing the ID-sphere on Reddit, Facebook, and Twitter and I have seen a fair number of threads that solicit feedback and advice regarding doctoral studies in the field of instructional design or something like educational leadership.  These two things come up often and it's no surprise given that that advertising for PhDs in ID and Ed Leadership come up even for me (including in Instagram where I basically mostly post nature photos!!!). It's usually certain for-profit universities that are responsible for the bulk of this advertising - at least for me, but I see certain names come up in the Facebook and Reddit threads as well. It's never your local st...

It's been a while since I last just sat down to think  and write about something (like the good old days when I was cMOOCing...).  These past few weeks have been about conferences, and getting back on track with my dissertation proposal (although I think I am the only one who is keeping a score on that at this point). In my attempt to get back to writing, and engaging with friends and colleagues out there in the wild blue yonder which is the internet, I thought I would pick through my accumulated Pocket list until it's almost empty.  One of the ponderings of interest came by means of an article on Inside Higher Ed titled  Academic Identities and Terminal Degrees , where the overall question was:  Does one need an academic terminal degree to identify professionally with that discipline? And, as Josh goes on to explicate Can only someone with a Ph.D. in economics call herself an economist? Do you need a Ph.D. in history to be a historian? How about socio...

One of my friends posted this on their facebook wall the other day.  I thought it was quite pertinent for PhD students and other professionals out there :-) In case you don't speak German, it says: "Errors are for beginners.  We produce catastrophes" ;-)

The other day I was reading a blog posted by Rebecca on marking and getting a sense of that impostor syndrome creeping in . I love reading posts like these because I still consider myself new  to the teaching, even though I've been doing it for a couple of years now.  Some of the things that she describes are things that I have thought or experienced, and some are not. In terms of an impostor syndrome, it hasn't come out for me with grading assignments.  In the past, when I have momentary panics or thoughts that impostor syndrome is setting in, it's usually around content-area knowledge!  Early on, when I started teaching, I wasn't even a doctoral student.  I was a practitioner and life-long learner, with a little research under my belt.  I knew enough, but I didn't consider myself the font of all knowledge - and that was scary.  What would learners think of me?  What if I was in a 'pop quiz' type of situation and the learners asked me some...

I came across this in PhD comics the other day: I am sure that the concept isn't novel  - I've been trying to get my friends and colleagues to do something like this for a few years now...to no avail. ;-)  I wonder if anyone in the AU EDDE cohorts wants to try something like this.  Or, maybe, a Magic the gathering type of card game with academics.  If you draw the George Siemens card you get +5 on network powers for 3 turns.  What do you think? ;-)

"Instructional Designer" - by AK & Net Art Generator - for #CLMOOC Continuing on my quest to read through what I've accumulated in my Pocket account, I came across a blog with the title  Learning Experience Design: A Better Title Than Instructional Design? The title was catchy enough for me to save it to pocket for later reading (which seemed to be forever ago).  In any case, Christy seems to be making the point that people, who are not in the field of instructional design, are perplexed when someone tells them that they are Instructional Designers, or that they earned their degree in Instructional Design.  What the heck does that mean?  What is an instructional designer qualified to do? This is a good conversation to have over a drink or a cup of coffee, but since my instructional designer friends are nowhere to be found, it's blogging time! That's a good question, and I am sure that if you ask 10 different instructional designers what they do, ther...

Derby Wharf, Salem, MA - Jan 2015 (Storm: Juno) I am sure that last one is a word I just made up on the spot. It's been a slow week in 802.  I was reading Lisa's reflection on Lurking in 802 (she is in last year's cohort, so she is two courses ahead of us in Cohort 7), and how she viewed 802 at the time as a make or break experience for the Ed.D. program.  While 801 last semester was a whirlwind tour of Online and Distance Education , this semester is a whirlwind tour (or boot-camp perhaps) on the topic of Research and how to go about doing it.  The textbook, by Cohen and the gang , is something that I have read before (a few year ago), but this doesn't help a ton ;-)  There is a lot to unpack, and this book is dense.  Even if one could memorize everything (not a good way to learn, by the way), it's like going to philosophy course - you are there essentially to argue for and support your stance. You are also called upon to explain your underlying fra...

My own doctoral journey may have just started, but it's been a meandering path to even get to the start.  It's not the destination after all that matters but the journey. Eventually all doctoral journeys culminate in a dissertation.  For the longest period of time this type of writing was a bit intimidating.  After all, who's got the energy to sit down and write a document that's 100 pages long and that few people will read. I challenge you to go ahead and look at academic articles that cross your path.  How often do you see people citing someone's dissertation in their citations?  Not that often, eh? So, this gets me to this blog post.  I was reading M aha's blog post this morning on the way to work about her experience with her dissertation and her defense, and I was prompted by the #digiped questions she reposted.  This really got me thinking about my own path and what it's leading me to. about a more responsive, and perhaps more accurate, fina...