Education & Scholarship

We go through life often looking at Google to lead us in the way we should go. Which is the best blender on the market? What is it that I can do for this ailment? Which program is the best for me? Well, there is an issue with this mindset. The internet can give you facts, but cannot give you the answers you are seeking. These answers can only be found in using the information collected with yoru knowledge of your values.  The article I read this week was "I Won't Let You Pay Me for My Open Source" by David Heinemeier Hansson and it spoke particularly of the viewpoints of RAILS vs.  Microsoft pointed out that thee were similarities in their background, but that they are diametrically opposed on a variety of topics because of their choices and their expectations of others. The author of this article has put forth software into the world as open-sourced and hopes that people will contribute their work to the public as well. Sharing the work does not mean that they need to b

  As I am preparing to graduate iwth my master’s degree, I wonder what I am going to do with the next few years of my life. I loved the research aspect of being in school, and yet, I will no longer have access to the resources that I did when I was affiliated with a large university. How then am I to continue learning and growing more in my chosen research area? Apparently, I’m not necessarily supposed to be able to do that.This feels like another method of gatekeeping, ensuring that those who are not affiliated with large universities and have access to all of the latest journals in their fields cannot be the ones who are doing the research that needs to be done. After all, if I as a designer or educational technologist can’t afford to pay $40 per article for the dozens of articles that I would want to be able to look at in order to do a literature review, how can I continue to contribute? You also cannot really contribute unless you are aware of what's happening in the field arou

 The fragmented educator 2.0: Social n THis week I read over a portion of a professor’s tenure packet and another article by Kimmons and Veletsianos (2014) entitled, “The fragmented educator 2.0: Social networking sites, acceptable identity fragments, and the identity constellation.” Looking at the tenure packet was interesting because of the small amount of the document that was dedicated to a primary focus of his research agenda. This professor works primarily on open educational resources, and yet, it is not something that fits within the metrics that are an important part of the current academic schema. And yet, if you were to compare the impact of this professor to the impact of scholars who are active on Twitter and their blogs, it is important to realize where the bigger impact can be made. I don’t mean to be condescending to my professors. I’ve had so many amazing professors throughout my academic career, but there's a difference between the impact of those who are writing

  This week we read two articles: MOOCs and Directing teh Academic Field by Kimmons   Nobody's Version of Dumb by Spelic         The academic field is one that, at the highest levels, is heavily influenced by those who are already at the highest point in the academic sphere. It is ingrained into our way of mentoring those who are working toward doctoral degrees.   This kind of influence is strong and teaches primarily one way of doing research and one primary mindset for how you think about the issues surrounding your field. Kimmons compares this to MOOCs, where thousands can be influenced by the work of a single professor at the top of their field. It is this point that allows them to be even more impactful in the learning of other students for several reasons: First, they can influence more people in a MOOC than they can over the course of a career when they are mentoring. Second, the professor is delivering content to students who may or may not take another class in that area

This week I read the IOWA Toolkit regardign OER and Tenure.     This addresses the issues surrounding tenure and open education. There is a push to make our materials, resources and other activities available so that education is available to those who seek it. However, most faculty, who are generally going to be the subject matter experts, may have difficulty finding time to contribute to these resources. New faculty members have responsibilities that require them to publish research and there are strict requirements for where these can be published to have them count toward tenure.      This document  makes points that are useful for faculty members to use so that they can make the argument to their department chair and dean.  This approach seems to be taking a bottom-up approach and is a slow means of change through the process of helping to use OER publications as a part of other requirements on their time, like tenure requirements. If we can get those who are trying to get tenure

 This week's readings included: 1. Planning to Share Versus Just Sharing 2. Open Pedagogy: The Importance of Getting It In the Air The point of these articles was that sharing is necessary, and not just to share, but to design what you are doing with the end goal of sharing these materials in mind.  These articles are both a little older, so I would be curious to see how things have changes over the last several years. Is it still necessary to go about creating teaching materials for the purpose of sharing these materials? It is impossible to say. I don't know how things were puiblished differently when these were written, but the perception of faculty and adminiistrators at that time seems very similar to those of faculty and administrators now overall. But what of the formats in which we are sharing our information? What of the rules that govern our sharing?      It seems much more popular now than it did 20 years ago to post pre-publiction articles on venues such as Research