Multilitteratus Incognitus

XKCD 1403 It's hard to believe, but five years have passed since the successful defense of my dissertation.  Where does the time go? My defense was on July 7, my final accepted manuscript was published on August 11th . I guess that's my pubaversary? 🤔 The degree was ultimately conferred in October, given university timelines, so I guess I also have a degreeaversy coming up😂.  Anyway, I count July as being the definitive date for degree completion because all the rest is really administrativia.  This only means one thing: I can now delete my scratch files, notebooks, recodings, transcripts, notes, and other raw research data collected from this research.   Athabasca (at the time, at least) required that we keep our data for five years after conferral of the degree. That seemed fair enough. I guess if someone wanted to verify what I did for some reason, they had time to do so within these five years (I suspect that this is the reason for data retention).  I...

Yesterday evening I came across a post by Tony Bates where he shared some findings from some recent reports on faculty (and student) preferences for learning in a post-pandemic world . I haven't read the reports yet, but I had some initial thoughts based on Tony's high-level overview of those three reports.   Two big things jumped out at me. The first is that students and faculty aren't on the same page (for the most part), and faculty still overwhelmingly prefer on-campus.  Tony notes that, at least in the EDUCASE case, compared to pre-covid numbers, more faculty have expressed an interest in something other than purely face-to-face (about 79% pre-covid, with 50% now). Tyton Partner's Analysis of Modality Preferences The first thing I noticed above is where students and faculty fall in their respective preferences.  If taken together, something other than purely face-to-face is a clear winner for student preferences.  Now, what that something else actually is....

OK, I fibbed, I am not going to give you the magic bullet that will make you an uber-student being able to tackle three graduate classes, a family and full time work! Heck, I don't have those answers to give :-) The situations recently where people tried to tap into the "secrets" I have for being able to manage a full graduate course load plus a full time job made me think of a seminar that I had as an undergraduate called "study smarter, not harder". At the time I was overwhelmed with working two part-time jobs (45-55 hours per week) plus a full course load (4 courses). I was tired, I was stressed and I was looking for a magic bullet. When I went to this seminar I thought to myself "whaaaat? Seriously? Your tip is not not leave things 'till the last minute? WOW! Now THAT is a revelation!" My workflow (i.e. "tips" or "magic bullet") works for me, but it is not a guarantee that it works for everyone and in all situations. So ...

Now, don't get me wrong. At work I use Microsoft Office for the Mac and for Windows on a daily basis. It's a necessary evil. People just send me attachments in the all too familiar doc, xls and ppt formats. When the clock strikes 5 and I get off work, that's where MS Office and I part ways. As a student it just doesn't make sense to pay $150 for the student edition of Microsoft Office! If you're a non-student this price balloons to $317 if you want all the trimmings. I still have papers to write, presentations to prepare and spreadsheets to crunch. What is a student to do? Well, In the past year I've found the perfect solution to my office troubles. This solution is a combination of free and for-pay tools. OpenOffice - this is completely free. It has programs that do essentially what Microsoft office does, for free! And, it's quite compatible with Microsoft Office files, so you don't have to worry (much) about opening files that your friends and colleag...