Lower Ed: How For-Profit Colleges Deepen Inequality in America by Tressie McMillan CottomMy rating: 4 of 5 stars Interesting book to read. While most of what was in this book wasn't really news for me, it was helpful to add some additional context to the "Lower Ed" field. I think this is a worthwhile read for high school students thinking about college, and for college graduates thinking

Collaborative Learning: Higher Education, Interdependence, and the Authority of Knowledge by Kenneth A. BruffeeMy rating: 4 of 5 stars Interesting read. The first part of the book discusses collaboration as a means of nonfoundational knowledge teaching. I felt that a large part of the book (part II) dealt with the philosophy of nonfoundational knowledge instruction (much more so than collaboration).

Engaging Students Through Social Media: Evidence-Based Practices for Use in Student Affairs by Reynol JuncoMy rating: 4 of 5 stars I picked this up when it first came out, and I have thumbed through specific sections over the years (as needed for work), but this is the first time I've read from cover-to-cover. While some technologies may be dead already (I'm looking at you, vine!) this

I think this is the only April Fool's joke to come out of an educational provider.  Courses.com.au seems to be a course/job certification website that matches potential students with educational providers in Australia.  This certificate of human survival is perfect for a post-apocalyptic world!

Computer-Supported Collaborative Learning: Best Practices and Principles for Instructors by Kara L. OrvisMy rating: 4 of 5 stars An interesting book to read if you're interested in CSCL. It may be a tad bit dated at this point, but some core (or historical) materials are of value. For me specifically - and my EdD research, there were some interesting points to be made about CSCL. I don't

Well, after almost 2 months, 8 drafts, and a lot of work, I've arrived at my update dissertation proposal. This thing grew about 15 pages since my last draft.  Yes, some pages are blanks by virtue of needed to start something on a next page, or to not break-up a table, but I did end up having to explain some things a bit more based on the literature.  Hopefully I can form a committee soon,

MOOCs by Jonathan HaberMy rating: 4 of 5 stars While the book is a bit out of date (MOOCs have moved along since it was published) I still found it to be a good introduction to the phenomenon of the (albeit without really looking too in-depth at research done in MOOCs).I did have an opportunity to hear the author speak back in 2012 (?) at the Campus Technology conference in Boston. At the

Well, it's the first day of a new academic year.  I guess this is the most sobering. This shit makes me angry (and I have no student loans!)

Case Study Research: Design and Methods by Robert K. YinMy rating: 5 of 5 stars Quite a thorough book on doing case studies.  This is the second book just on case studies that I have read thus far, and it seems quite inclusive.  I did like the Stake book (see review a few weeks ago) but this seemed to give more of a roadmap.  This is probably the 8th or 9th book I've read

It's amazing how much access to the internet is really woven into our daily lives.  For the past 2 weeks I've been away on vacation in Spain.  Before we left home I tried to be proactive, I scanned some of the book chapters that were due for my class while I was away, I got Assignment 1 done before I left, and I downloaded articles onto my Surface Pro so that I had reading material to go

Oh man... gets my blood boiling(Last Week Tonight covered Charter Schools this week...)

For the past few weeks I've been facilitating a workshop on Social Media in Online Education.  The following graphic in one of the participant's final presentations made me smile :-)

My team and I just finished presenting on Assignment 2 for our Leadership course this past week.  In going through my notes, collected over the past month of meetings and preparation for this assignment, I came across the term 'soul-sucking leadership'.  It's not a leadership theory at the moment, but hey - maybe we can coin a definition and become famous ;-)  What do you think? (actual

The other day in facebook this image came up in my timeline.  It's in Greek, but basically the text translates as:Dad: If you don't study (hard) you will become like this guyHobo: I am professor!I guess regardless of the country, there are issues in higher education.  In the US we have a high population of (low paid) adjuncts, and in Greece you have tenured folks making less than what adjuncts

While we still have a few more weeks left in 2015, and I probably will finish one more book (the one I have in progress and listening to during my commutes these days), this is a mostly accurate view of my 2015 reading list.  One year I made my goal to read 30 books in a year - failed it.  Since then I've decided to keep it simple and focus on reading a book a month.  If I go over that

This past semester one of my colleagues, and fellow co-instructor of the Instructional Design capstone project, suggested we use a new service called Pi to bring our sections together. This sounded like a great idea given that the capstone course tends to be pretty hermetic for most students, since they work on individual projects.  The separate sections also have a low number of students enrolled

Last week I came across a parody for something called World of Peacecraft, where instead of blowing your enemies to smithereens, you make peace with them through bilateral and multilateral agreements.  As I already said, this is a parody, this game does not exist, but it does reminds me a lot of bad edutainment games. The funny thing is that I could see some misguided  company trying to make

I just came across this TED video (in a workshop I am taking).  This short video was pretty good! Going from Human Gatekeepers (of information) to Algorithmic Gatekeepers.

This was a pretty interesting TED talk that I listened to while on the way to work last week

I love a good parody! I was looking at materials for the Canvas LMS (learning management system) and I came across a parody of the infamous 1984 Apple Mac ad. I guess you have to be in the "in" crowd to get the references though ;-)

The other day I made an observation on LinkedIn that 8 people had recently left the employment of UMass (LinkedIn told me so).  The number seemed rather high, so I wanted, out of curiosity, to know who had left, was it someone I knew?  It turns out that most of the people who "left" were teaching assistants, graduate assistants, or like me had added "student" to their profile under job. 

A while back I downloaded Free: The future of a radical price (by Chris Anderson) from Audible.  I'm pretty sure that it's probably still free (the eBook version was free for a while but probably not anymore). In any case, with the audible app, I've rediscovered by free purchase (which is probably in some backup disk somewhere), downloaded it and started reading it.I have to say that I really

A while back there was a fascinating article titled "Open Isn't so Open Anymore". It lingered in my starred items folder for quite some time, but I finally was able to read it. I think the blog post does deserve a reading (or even a re-reading!)My two cents on the issue: In order to really have open education, we really do need some radicals to step up to the plate and take command of the field.

The other day I saw that a local community college had sent us a catalogue of courses for the upcoming semester. We decided to flip through it just to see what they are offering, after all you never know what you are going to find.When we get to the computer science area we see the description seen in this screenshot. OK, it's a class where one learns about ISPs, the Internet, online services like

I saw this on the Usable Learning blog the other day.I love the tag line - sometimes it only takes one time ;-)Wouldn't it be nice if all learning were like that :-)

Don't get me wrong, there are institutions out there that are credible (and accredited) institutions of learning that have online branches for students who are far away, or have jobs and can't drop everything to pursue their education. But there are cases of diploma mills that grant MBAs to dogs how is it not easy to poke fun at online institutions? :-) This video is from last week's Saturday Night

I was reading an Engadget post earlier this week that pointed to an article on the Daily Pricentonian regarding the failure of the Kindle DX to catch on as an academic product. One student went so far as to say that the Kindle is a poor excuse for an academic tool. Well I've got a news flash for you my peeps :-)The Kindle is not meant to be an academic product. It's a commercial product, for commercial

I was reading an article that I had started in my google reader last week called "What are we assessing". This reminds me a lot of my undergraduate days as a learner of the German Language (and any language that I had taken for that matter). The name of the game was learn enough grammar and vocabulary necessary to pass the test and the test after that, until the semester ends. This of course got

Over the weekend I was reading this article on Inside Higher Ed (maybe I should be posting over at multiliterratus, but oh well...)In any case, the author of this post talks about how how Wired's "The good enough revolution" pertains to academia. Personally I agree that some of what the author writes are quite valid arguments - but I would like to play devil's advocate for a moment from an IT management

I was reading a post on eLearningTech recently and this quote caught my attention:The Institute didn't include any courses from suppliers such as Learning Tree, but was rich with resources from Books24x7, TechChek (a web-based technical skills assessment tool), internal company communities and knowledge sharing wikis. A ning site, podcasts, video learning resources, RSS feeds from the large technology

I was reading this article on Mashable over the weekened and this little statistical tidbit raised an eyebrow. According to a new study by Proofpoint, an Internet security firm, of companies with 1,000 or more employees, 17 percent report having issues with employee’s use of social media. And, 8 percent of those companies report having actually dismissed someone for their behavior on sites like Facebook

I was reading this article recently and a couple of things caught my eye.The top three reported challenges were:Rapidly changing technologyLack of staff support or interestLack of curriculum resourceI get lack of curriculum resources and lack of staff support or interest. What I don't get is the rapidly changing technology aspect. When I was in high school doing computer science, I learned computer

This past week I saw an article on the BBC and a blog post on the Brazen Careerist network that go well together - like w(h)ine and cheese. Yes, the bad pun was intended.The BBC article centers around a woman in New York who is a jobless graduate and is suing her college because she's failed to get a job after graduation. As the BBC reports:She is seeking to recover $70,000 (£42,000) she spent on

Inside Higher Ed had this article recently on BlackBoard (the makers of the 'popular' learning management system by the same name) buying an iPhone application company. Needless to say I was really excited about the news (prior to reading the article) because the BlackBoard application that they already have only supports their newer product and my campus uses BlackBoard Vista (no relation to Windows).

I saw this on NPR the other day - I starred it and forgot about it - but Byline reminded me of it :-)The title is "should everyone go to college?"... Perhaps this is a better post for my multilitteratus blog, perhaps not. The answer of course it "it depends". It really depends on what one's definition of college is. Is college anything after high school? If so, then yes, everyone should go to college.If

I've added a number of podcasts to my RSS reader in iTunes. When possible, I try to get enhanced podcasts so that I can get the 'chapter' option that enhanced podcasts offer.In the past five years I've grown to really like to listen to a number of people because of the news, insights and opinions that they provide. Of course, just like a newspaper, I don't want to listen to every topic that someone

I read this article today in the incoming section of my Google Reader.// Begin quote //One particularly revealing moment in his discussion is his day 60 post in which he describes a series of questions that he poses to his graduate students to get at the "fundamental things we do."The Question and ConclusionsCan doctor still be a doctor without a hospital? They usually answer -- of course. Can you

I've been experimenting with many web 2.0 services lately. Each one of them requires its own username and password. Admittedly using something like Hellotxt allows one to setup a service and then blog/update from hellotxt, so updating isn't that problematic - even though you aren't fully utilizing the service you signed up for because services like hellotxt and ping.fm allow you to use the lowest common

No, I don’t have an MLIS, but does it matter? I know that this comment might inflame some people, especially MLS-holding librarians, but my response is ‘m-eh’. (No I am not trying to be a fire starter, I am just a little irked)I have been following the comments on the Liminal Librarian’s blog (which I like by the way and I subscribe to). There are two blog posts, one entitled “if it quacks

Every now and again I look at the Massachusetts Bay Library Commissioners website to see what new and exciting librarian jobs there are. I don’t have an MLIS (Master’s of Library & Information Science) degree, but that does not deter me, since there are jobs that don’t require the degree.Many library jobs do require an MLIS degree though, jobs that I would not have thought needed an MLIS

In the last year or so I’ve been following library blogs to see what other libraries are doing, both public and academic, and how they are evolving as a service point to their constituents. I’ve also looked at librarian jobs in the past, but most jobs with “librarian” in their title require a Master of Library (and Information) Science degree that it accredited by the ALA (American Library

Like the pun? academian + yawn =… oh never mind!I never said I was a comedian ;-)Anyway, in the past couple of years I’ve been thinking of a doctorate. I have discovered that I like to teach, so I thought that I may be able to do it for a living at a college level, which requires a PhD (or some doctorate thereof). I’ve been frustrated with PhD programs though. Most are full time, which means

The State of Massachusetts requires Professional or Sub-Professional certification of library directors in order to receive state aid. For the Professional certification all you need is your MLIS diploma. For a SubProfessional you need to complete the following classes (termed Basic Library Techniques), and you do not need an MLIS. Of course the caveat for the subprofessional is that you can only be