Education & Scholarship

  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

  This week I read: Assumptions and Challenges of Open Scholarship by Veltsianos and Kimmons Vision, Plans, and Policies, EdTechnica In these articles, Veletsianos and Kimmons discuss the difficulties associated with the ideals of open scholarship. There are a number of issues with open scholarship aas there are with any other way of creating establishments in the area of learning, or any other type of area. Up to the point of this article, it sounds as if there had been much aplomb and interest in open education, but the focus was entirely on the utility and wonder of open scholarship. Open scholarship is great. However, there are a number of questions that have gone unanswered like how to make sure that the information being provided is good and accurate. It si an important piece of teh pizzle, ensuring that the knowledge that is spread is good information, but how can that be done?