Multilitteratus Incognitus
Back into Design: CALLing all Language Learning x Technology geeks!
08-01-2025, 22:43 APLING, CALL, development, ICT, instructionalDesign, MALL, research, teachingNew Year, New Projects!
I am taking this spring term off from teaching, partly to re-energize my batteries which have been rather low on account that I've been going full speed (🚌) since 2018; the pandemic didn't help because teaching increased around that time (not that I am complaining, the cosmos provided something I needed at the time). Another reason for the break is partly to work on a new course development for the Fall term. While course development shouldn't take 8 months to complete, with so many other irons in the fire, it's a part-time endeavor.
For the first time, in a very long time, I get to mix edtech with applied linguistics!🥳 The last time I did this was a long (long) time ago. It is rather exciting, but also daunting because, over the past 10 years, I haven't kept up with the CALL (computer-assisted language learning) world. Before I started my dissertation planning, my thought was to do something CALL-related, so I spent a few years doing a deep dive into CALL (with a focus on MALL) articles in ReCALL, CALICO, and to some extent System (journals devoted to edtech in language education and applied linguistics). When I decided to focus on MOOCs and collaboration as my dissertation research, I stopped following that thread. Well, now I am back and I am not quite sure where to pick up the thread again😅.
The course that I am tasked with resurrecting and updating is titled "The Internet in the Language Classroom," a title it got back in 2008 (probably as part of a grant my department had in those days, this is before my time). Prior to that, it was titled "Technology in Education." Interestingly enough, there is also another defunct, separate course titled "Technology in Education. What's clear to me from the history of these two courses is that they were originally both Intro to CALL courses, when ICTs brought connection to the classroom one course morphed into an "internet course" and the other course morphed into a Web 2.0 course (ugh... someone was asleep at the curriculum committee wheel since these were essentially the same course...). In any case, this brings me to an interesting dilemma: Since I have carte blanche to make this course anything I want (within the broad realm of CALL) what should I do? What has more value for learners? Should I develop an Intro to CALL course? Should I develop a more focused Teaching Languages Online course? Or something else? From my brief exploration of MA-TESOL programs (they are closely related to what my department offers), it seems that if technology courses exist, they tend to be introductory courses. If this course goes well, I'd like to resurrect the other course and do something CALLy with that too, and perhaps reinvigorate these technology electives more broadly. My gut tells me that I should probably go with an Intro to CALL seminar course to test the waters out, but I am open to suggestions and ideas. So, with that in mind:
Is your area of focus CALL? Do you teach such courses? What are your thoughts? What sorts of topics do you cover?
Or, are you a student or graduate of an MA-TESOL program? What would you have wanted to learn?
If anyone is so inclined to share their syllabus with me, I'd be greatly obliged :-)
Another migration in our midst
16-11-2024, 10:30 educationTechnology, mastodon, migration, social networks, SocialMedia, twitterWith the US elections now settled, and a second Trump term being a reality, I guess many (most?) of the remaining hold outs on Twitter are finally migrating. I decided to keep my personal account, for now, and just promote pro-union, pro-education, pro-left, and anti-war messages, while posting my regular content on Threads, Bluesky, and Mastodon. I am also in the process of shutting down my department's Twitter account for good.
This new wave of migration has brought a few people out of the woodwork, both on Mastodon and on the Mastodon subreddit, asking why people are moving to Bluesky (or even threads) and not to Mastodon. They also get on their high horse about it, but let's talk about that later.
I think that Mastodon had a major advantage in 2022 when Musk bought Twitter. They were really the only game in town. There was no Threads, there was no Bluesky. There were some weird Crypto-based microblogs, like Nostr; or blasts from the past like Plurk. I'm still on Plurk, FWIW 😂. So...yeah, major advantage squandered! It didn't have to be this way, but I think that Mastodon is suffering from some user experience issues which aren't great for wide adoption, and some philosophical (or perhaps dogmatic) issues that turn people off.
I am still on Mastodon, but it's my secondary network. Many from Twitter rushed onto it in 2023, and few stayed after Bluesky opened its doors (without the need for a freakin' invite). Looking back at some of the major hurdles I saw in using the service:
First, you have to find the "right" server. In all honestly, I should have gone with mastodon.social from the start and not even bothered trying to find an affinity group. The first server I joined I picked because other fellow academics were on it and I thought that would be a good place to coalesce, find my old connections again, and continue on as usual. The server I joined (academia related) had a dipshit admin who busted my chops about not including content warnings (CWs) about every single frickin' thing. He was also a pain whenever I didn't include alt-text for my images all the time. And, his biggest bugaboo was about cross-posting to other networks which was verboten on his server. I needed to use the Mastodon interface to post to that network and not use things like fedica or hootsuite. Seriously... fuck right off... 🙄. I got placed on probation and I left. I went to a DS106 server run by a group of hobbyists I know. If I weren't a giant geek, I would have sworn off Mastodon already. In fact, I had an account on mastodon back in 2017 trying things out, but I left because it had a weird vibe. While Musk and Dorsey are major wankers, this particular server admin was competing for the Musk Award...🙄
Second, Mastodon has no quote toots. Yeah, yeah..."it leads to abuse" and other 🐴💩. I don't buy it. It's a design decision and everyone's making excuses for Eugen's design decision. When people want to react to something they don't necessarily want to engage with you, and that's fine. I can easily copy the URL for your post and post it in my new post as a quote. No quote toots is more of a speedbump than anything else. The whole idea that the software wants you to talk to people instead of reacting to what they say...well, why not both? No quote toots leads to a different sort of shithead response. Antisocial behavior exists in that network too. For example, I got a reply to a post of mine from someone who was very much into the ethos of Mastodon, but the poster had a #dontatme. He responded to my post (as the platform forces you to). I find this more antisocial than if they just quote-tooted me and commented. At least then their intentions would be clearer. When Mastodon geeks are confronted with this, their reaction is either (1) why not use a client that supports retooting? or (2) why not use another Fediverse service that does that (soooo... NOT use Mastodon). Good job recommendations, folks. And then you wonder why people didn't join Mastodon. 🙄
Third, finding people you know is a pain. To be honest, it's gotten better, but it's still a pain. Also, because people have moved servers (like I did), they may have several profiles that pop up in a search one that redirects to another and then to another. Old profiles should really be invisible to the end user and only the final/current profile should be active. Related to finding people you know, getting user recommendations is a pain. One of the nice things about algoTwitter was that if I followed someone with similar interests I'd get recommendations for people like that. That's how I expanded my academic network on Twitter.
Fourth, nothing frickin' threads...For example, I used to follow Cory Doctorow and his 30-post thread would litter my bleeping timeline. Why can't Mastodon collect all that and automatically collapse it unless I expand the view? This is a serious usability issue. Furthermore, when news organizations (or RSS feeds) cycle through and post ALL THEIR CONTENT at the same time, it takes over my feed...which is annoying.
Fifth, there are wankers on Mastodon too. People like to think that the network is all toasted marshmallows and coombaya circles, and we can defederate those Nazi idiots, but let's not discount other toxic individuals (geeks, fandoms, political learnings) that remain and make it unpleasant. Despite the inclusivity "promise" of the Fediverse, people break out in hives about federating Threads, BlueSky, Instagram, and so on. If that's where part of my network is, and Mastodon is choosing to keep them out while technically being able to connect, then - as a user - I have a decision to make about where I want to be. Defederating large social networks who can connect with you is a choice. Many in the Fediverse are virtue signaling in weird ways, and ways that disconnect rather than connect. I don't know what the costs of running a server are, and what the impact is on choosing to keep something federated. I understand the economic argument. I don't understand the ideological one (from people who are supposedly open).
Having spent a lot of time on these three social networks over the past year, as I've been moving away from Twitter, the vibes are different on each network. Bluesky is pretty Twitter-like, which may be a draw for folks (similar mental schemas for use). Threads seems like an Instagramy kind of Twitter. It's fine, but there also seems to be heavy-handed moderation. It doesn't impact my use of it, but some of the mod decisions seem questionable, especially around news source access. Mastondon...I heard it described as the place where nerds go to discuss the relative merits of Linux distros 🤣🤣. Now, it certainly has that vibe, but it doesn't bother me. But I can see how it might be a hindrance to broader adoption.
Sarah H. did make an interesting point about Mastodon: Does it have to scale? Do you have to be in a space where a lot of other people are? Is there value in a small community that isn't too loud/busy? The answer I have to that is "no." Mastodon can stay small. I rather enjoy being part of a DS106 community, and being somewhat connected to a few other folks on Mastodon. It's sort of like being part of a specific discussion forum community running on phpBB rather than being on Reddit. I just don't think that if your mindset is small/artisanal you can complain that people are going to Bluesky and Threads and not to Mastodon. The user experience decisions and the dogmatic approach of some members of the community are repulsors rather than attractors. At the end of the day, the lack of your specific community and the technological/usability decisions impact retention and recruitment.
LLM Powered Research 🧐
11-11-2024, 14:08 AI, AIEd, blackbox, ChatGPT, LLM, MOOC, research, ResearchDesignAll right! With all that pondering and throat-clearing done (see my previous series of posts), I was wondering what piques my interest in this LLM-hyped world from a practical side. I've been somewhat active in critiquing this whole thing over the past two years, but beyond creating AI images for the blog (or to amuse myself), or using ChatGPT to make silly little genre-busting poems (again amusement and play), and or using ChatGPT to give me a boilerplate letter that I can then tweak (marginal utility, but I guess if organization ask for things that can be boilerplated, they get something that is boilerplate). I don't mean to dismiss the value of experimentation or play, they are valuable and low-stress ways to get to know a tool and then you may get an AHA!!! moment of a sort. I've been thinking of something more structured.
I was listening to a relatively recent episode (it was recent when I started writing this darned post!_ of the Vergecast, titled The Chatbot Becomes the Teacher, and I started pondering... I don't like feeding PDFs or other writing into OpenAI's or Anthropic's "ooops, we just used your shit without permission" infrastructure. I also don't want to use open systems that contain a corpus of data that's not pertinent to what I am doing. I was wondering if setting up my own GPT in a Virtual Machine to run a custom LLM, or using NotebookLM (even though I am not sure where that data ultimately goes) to mess around with my MOOC Eulogy project. Yes... I have yet to give up on that 😂. I have a lot of PDFs, but I'd like to start fresh with doing a sustained literature collection (articles, books, blogs, youtube videos). Since NotebookLM can 'digest' all of that, I was thinking that it may be a useful experiment (even though I am bit uncomfortable with not knowing how the proverbial sausage is made). Since I am pretty familiar with the literature already, having read through most of it over the last 13 years, I am wondering what sort of new "has!" might be gleaned from having all this in a custom-corpus LLM that can be prompted to give some responses. I suspect that much of what it extrudes will need fact-checking, but I wonder if it's useful as an idea-generation or lead-generation tool.
Thoughts?🤔
Ponderings on the next degree😂😅
11-10-2024, 18:30 #allTheThings, academicDev, assessment, assignment, asynchronous learning, auditing, MOOC, ProfDev, professional, remoteLearning, synchronous conferencing, xMOOCPart 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 🤓
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 full day sync per week), I've done day-long workshops on Kanban, I've self-studied and done a scrum cert exam, and I've taken a couple of graduate (MA) classes. I've done some things LinkedIn Learning. I've even done one or two xMOOCs, but to be honest I've done far fewer MOOCs than I thought I would. There are a fair number of courses on my Coursera, FutureLearn, and EdX accounts that I probably will return to someday.
So...what have I learned in this romp across modalities and formats these past few years?🤔
My first observation/confirmation is that physical proximal learning (aka F2F to use the vernacular, or pLearning to use Jon Dron's nomenclature) simply isn't for me anymore. I took a course in 2023, which - to be fair - I enjoyed immensely; and the pLearning requirement was warranted because more than half of the session was essentially a hands-on laboratory. However, it was after work, and around 6:30 my mind was thinking "Are we done yet?!" The course ended at 6:45 and those last 15 minutes dragged... For what it's worth, I will do pLearning again, but only if absolutely required for work or something that's unavoidable. Even as a hobby, when things are fun, there comes a point when you're just too tired to enjoy it. The course that I took in 2023 was a course in archival practice, and we were physically active (we were processing a newly donated collection to the University Archives), which kept me moving long enough to not fall asleep 😅. Another shortcoming of pLearning courses (at least the ones after work) is that they have the effect of making one's day all that longer because the day starts at 7am when you leave home for work, and ends at 9pm or 10pm when you return. Thanks, but no thanks 😅. The two reasons I took the course in 2023 were to (1) try out my patience for pLearning and (2) it was an interesting topic that was offered for the last time at my institution, so it was a bit of curiosity-driven FOMO.
My second observation/confirmation is that Live sessions (aka synchronous online learning, or "remote" classrooms) are not bad. The devil, as we all know, is in the details. This is something that I've known from my role as an instructional designer, but ERT brought out a lot of bad live lectures. For what it's worth, if it's a choice between sitting in a classroom and having to deal with traffic and parking to into campus for a lecture, or listening to it (or engaging with it, if it's designed that way) from home, I'd much rather be home😇. I did take the opportunity to take one ERT-style class while we were still sort of quarantining. I did this to get a sense of the medium in a higher education setting; and the course was of similar high interest (unsurprisingly it was also another archives-related course). Over the years, I also balanced this out with some designed and expertly facilitated workshops (day-length, or half-day length). The most engaging ones were ones where people jumped in and engaged. I think this is where I saw the biggest difference. The professional workshops (i.e., coaching, Scrum, Kanban, etc.) were all professionals joining in, and they brought examples and engaged (which made the time fly). The graduate ERT course was a bit different because the newbie graduate students were still learning what it means to be a graduate student, so fewer folks engaged. The classroom dynamics and chemistry between learning community members should not be underestimated in the course setting ⚠️.
My third observation here comes from asynchronous courses. I can confirm that I still have an affinity for asynchronous courses 😂. The time and space allowed for asynchronous thinking, articulating ideas, and connecting with folks online is great! Seeing the forums really active (and listening to posts via TTS is great). Forum posts by participants have been a bit of a mixed bag. Some posts have been super-freaking awesome! The posters were writing a small paper every time they posted and made some awesome connections, which helped me expand my own thinking. There have also been times when the posts were quite 'basic,' which may highlight the inexperienced nature of some participants with connecting complex ideas. There are parallels here to the ERT example above and the difference between more experienced learners and more newbie learners in your learning community, and the norms/expectations of academia. This was also during the beginning of the whole LLM "era" we're currently living in, and there have been one or two instances where I've wondered if ChatGPT wrote the response...🙄. As much as I like forums, the key thing that emerged for me is that learning community skills, background, and chemistry matters. The more novice the community, the more I am personally inclined to just check the box of having done an original post and two responses and not bother much more with the forums. The more advanced and engaged the community, the more I am propelled to go beyond the box-checking.
My fourth observation... I'm a picky eater...or perhaps I should say that I am a free-range grazer. What do I mean by this? When taking a course, I like two things the most: I like reading and learning new things, and I like the interactions that occur between participants, either in forums or in synchronous venues like Teams or Zoom. Back in the MOOC days, this kind of interaction was also seen in blogs and microblogging services like Twitter. What I've learned over the past few years is that I am not a huge fan of other people's assessments. For whatever reason, it feels like assessments are often a kind of box-checking mechanism. This is probably due to my experience and that courses I've dabbled with over the past few years have been geared toward newbie graduate students, a category in which I am not. That doesn't mean that the course design was wrong! I've, in fact, jotted down some notes over the years about things I want to try in my own course teaching. I am just saying that they are not congruent with where I need to be. This semester I am auditing a course on corpus linguistics, something I've wanted to do for a while, but it was always a bad time. Auditing has its perks, like I can work on the materials on my own time (and I am, for the most part keeping pace with the class), but I am skipping all the things that I have no time for, or that I am not all that interested in. On the other hand, I am also not getting a grade/credits for the course, which leads me to my last point...
Finally, I like having a bowtie to wrap everything up at the end. This looks like a degree, or certificate, or badge of some sort. The workshops I've done over the years do have that recognition (via a certificate or badge), but random one-off classes do not. To earn that kind of token you need to go through the established and prescribed pathways. Another MA degree isn't as exciting of a challenge to me any longer (or perhaps even useful on the CV, IDK🤔). I wonder if pursuing a degree in another language (like Greek, for instance) would feel like a worthy challenge? A graduate certificate is a shorter journey, so I could learn a lot and I could focus on the things that mostly interest me. I have pondered the possibility of doing another doctorate (PhD this time), but the challenge is finding a university where I'd only need to do a dissertation. I could see myself geeking out on new research over a few years. It would scratch the research itch, I might get some papers out of it, and the degree would be a cherry on top. I've met a few PhD EdD folks over the years at work, but it doesn't seem like a common path, so that could be a worthwhile challenge. IDK yet. I am still pondering the tangible career (or life) benefits of another attainment signifier (degree) versus the psychological dopamine hit of having completed something else 😂🙄😅. So... do I want to do this because "I need it" (probably not😂) or because I want it? And...do I really want? So many deep questions 😬.
Phew... that was a lot. OK. Now you may go back to thinking I am a nutty overachiever... but leave a comment with your thoughts before you do! 😂. What do you think of all this malarkey? 🧐
Ponderings on Connectivity
28-09-2024, 14:31 #allTheThings, #altac, alt-ac, social networks, socialCapital, SocialMedia, trad-ac, twitterMiseristhenes the Socialmediaite |
This is part V of my all the things(!!!) blog series where I attempt to make sense of all the things I've gotten myself into these past 5-10 years, and I figure out how to Marie Kondo my professional hobbies.
In this post, I turn my attention to social media! The topic that connects us, and divides us, and has gotten the "it's complicated" label since Elon Musk bought and fucked up the Twitter sandbox. Yes, while Twitter still eXists, the busting up of Twitter, and the rendering of it useless, has created a bit of an interesting dilemma and has fostered a working reality that is just rather f*cking tiring 🙄.
But first thing's first, let's take a step back and examine the current state a bit. A few colleagues and I started pulling some strings and looking at our digital identities and networks in Lines of Flight: The Digital Fragmenting of Educational Networks. I think a lot more work can be done in this domain, especially during this time of big disruptions, and many more articles can be researched and written about the current disruption. I am not sure if I have the energy to work on another article (see all the things, part III), but I'd be happy to collaborate with folks who have an interesting angle to research.
Anyway, back to my train of thought: This is a unique time (IMO) because of the conditions and expectations associated with life online. I've tentatively defined three eras of the social web.
The first era I call the emergent era and it coincides with Web 2.0 and the Read-Write Web (starting ca. 2002ish - give or take 2-3 years). In the first era, social networks didn't exist in the way we think of them now. Social Networking Sites (SNS), like MySpace and Friendster, emerged around that time, and they weren't alone. There was a plethora of SNS that emerged around this time, from generalist to more interest-based related SNS. These were experimental and folks had not built their social identities (and networks) just yet. Both the SNS and users were trying to figure this kind of stuff out, and folks were most likely innovators and early adopters at this phase. The later parts of this era neighbored the early majority kinds of users. I am thinking here in terms of diffusion of innovation phases. I'd say that a big focus of this era was experimentation and to some extent discovery of like-minded geeks in these spaces. Networks were small and everyone started out with the few individuals that they already had in their addressbooks.
The second era is the one that just ended in 2022 with Twitter's takeover; give or take 2-3 years as Twitter is still around and a rolling dumpster fire. During this era, we saw a lot of consolidation among the platforms, with some platforms shutting their doors. While platforms are consolidating or dying, additional users are being onboarded to the services that emerge victorious. Here we see early majority and late majority style of users, with some of the early majority perhaps rising to the rank of influencers (still hate this term...🙄). Through this contraction and focus on a smaller number of popular SNS, users coalesced in a few of them. It is during this time that we see the formation and development of various communities, using platform-specific tools; like Google+'s circles and Twitterchats using hashtags. I'd say that a big focus during this era was network-building, and a major part of this network-building was joining existing spaces and conversations.
The third era that we find ourselves in these days is the era of The Great Disruption. Like the emergent era we now have a lot more services to pick from. Some SNS are new, like Bluesky and Threads, others gained a bit more traction, like Mastodon, and the dust was blown off some emergent era SNS, like LinkedIn, and started to be repurposed. There is a bit of a double-lift in this era: We are experimenting with many more sites and we're trying to rebuild our network without knowing where that network is going to end up. In fact, the great disruption is more like a great fragmentation because people are all over the place. Some people are joining all the sites (hey, that's me!🙋♂️), and some people are joining some, and some have exited altogether (although there are few of those in my network, or so it seems). I've started to maintain a presence on multiple SNS and cross-post. This is done for both personal profiles, as well as business-oriented profiles that I maintain for work, because I don't know where the audience is, or where it's headed to.
Trying to make sure that I connect with relevant people from my past Twitter profile(s) is more work than it needs to be. Network fragmentation means more work to be connected and be part of conversations - if those conversations are even taking place anywhere! The second era was really about discovery for me, and even before the muskification of Twitter I was discovering new interesting people to follow and engage with. This current era is about figuring out where people are (if anywhere) rather than building upon what existed. It's a job just to maintain contact with the existing crew! I can't really say a ton about work-related social profiles because it always was a small percentage of my work time (which has increased because of the fragmentation, btw!🙄), but I've noticed that my own professional/personal social media activity is less about conversations these days and more about liking/resharing things on my feed, which can lead to useless endless scrolling...
Before the muskification of Twitter, the network had been built-up over the preceding decade. There were established Twitter chats, and folks had formed their social networks. There were interesting discussion topics that you could lurk on and then join in. Having a mature network means that you don't have to work too hard to find and join conversations, they exist and you gain access to them by seeing them in your feed (say what you will about algorithmic feeds, but they have their utility). Attempting to maintain a presence across the diaspora of SNS these days feels like a job that pays no dividends (not to mention that in addition to no benefit, it sometimes feels exhausting). Now, I am sure that if I didn't have all the things (see previous posts in this series), this may have been OK, but what worked and go us through COVID (as far as social media goes), now seems completely busted and in need of a major overhaul, which feel like a job 😂
Thoughts? How have folks navigated the coming of the current era of social media (beyond cross-posting)? 🤔
Ponderings on Teaching
15-09-2024, 16:53 #allTheThings, #altac, alt-ac, fun, pondering, teaching, trad-acThis is part IV of my all the things(!!!) blog series where I attempt to make sense of all the things I've gotten myself into these past 5-10 years, and I figure out how to Marie Kondo my professional hobbies. Yes...yes... I know that Kondo is no longer Kondoing and has given up the practice, but I am aiming for the gives you joy part.
While I had taught bespoke hour-long workshops in the past, in my training jobs at the university library and in my job as a learning technologist in IT, my teaching side hustle really took off in 2012. I often joke that I got into college teaching as a kind of dare. Once I finished my instructional design degree I was really into curriculum planning and seeing the big picture. And my laboratory for this was the instructional design program from which I graduated. I spent some time in the university archives looking at past course catalogs and graduate program catalogs dating back to 1984. There I traced the development of the instructional design MEd program from 1984 to 2011. I also reached out to past directors to see if they had any program materials that they could send my way for analysis, and they didn't disappoint! I got a small treasure trove of syllabi!
Doing some academic forensics (I made up the term, don't ask me to define it right now), I tried to figure out why certain things became part of the curriculum, traced how the program evolved, and how individual courses evolved. As part of this process, I was convinced a research methods course would be nice for the MEd program because it would enable students to pursue capstone projects that were more research-oriented rather than the traditional ADDIE capstone that had been standard since 1984. The then-director of the program probably got tired of me and my suggestions (LOL😂) and she offered me the possibility of both developing and teaching that course. That's how I got my start in college teaching. Bonus brownie points: this was designed as a HyFlex class because the program, at the time, had both on-site and online modalities!
Anyway, one thing led to another, and since 2012 I've taught intro courses, capstone courses, and a few things in-between. Around the same time as I started teaching graduate courses, I also got an invite to teach a workshop for the Online Learning Consortium on MOOCs (remember MOOCs?). I guess my Twitter fame on the subject, my blog-ponderings on MOOCs, along with a couple of papers I co-authored, gave me the credibility needed to teach on the subject. When MOOCs became passé, I was invited to facilitate works on Social Media in Learning, and other emerging topics that I was an expert on. I think the pandemic really supercharged this aspect of my teaching (Professional Development courses for faculty and instructional designers) because many more faculty were suddenly thrust into virtual spaces in order to cope with the impacts of the pandemic. As lockdowns and ERT are basically behind us, I am wondering if I should be slowly taking on less teaching. On the one hand, I enjoy teaching, and I have met many fabulous individuals over the years, but free time is sparse, and I find that regular breaks and vacation time are no longer enough to make me feel re-energinzed. One of my workshop participants with whom I developed a good rapport wondered if I was a workaholic 😅. It's quite possible! Someone else has described me as easily bored, which may also be true 😬
On the other hand, I am feeling a bit of the Adjunct's Dilemma. It is true that the more teaching you do the less time you have for other things, which is especially true when your teaching is a side gig. However, if you turn down teaching offers once, those opportunities may never come back, or if they do, they may be in a diminished capacity. I had something like this happen when I took a "sabbatical" from teaching to work on my dissertation (and to recover from burnout, I think). This wasn't a real sabbatical, of course, because I get paid per course taught. When I was at a point where I was happy with my proposal and it was ready to go forward and be defended, I returned to the department I was teaching for before the sabbatical. Let me tell you, jumping back into graduate course teaching wasn't exactly the same afterward! I went from an expected number of courses to one course per year, maybe. It is to be expected, departments gotta run, even in your absence, and the diversity of new faculty is really cool to see, but it does point to the opportunities not rebounding to a previous level. The silver lining here is that less for one department may mean more time to seek new horizons elsewhere, so not a total "loss". Then again, it does bring back the question of overwork (dammit!) 😂
Doing the math, I've discovered that for the past few years, I've been teaching 47 out of 52 weeks of the year. This basically means that 47 weeks of the year, my workweeks are 7 days (10-12 hour weekdays, and 3-4 hour weekends). I'm trying to decide if keeping on keeping on (teaching) is a kind of FOMO; and if I can get comfortable with turning down opportunities due to a lack of time (as opposed to trying to find time), even if opportunities don't come back in the future... Don't get me wrong, the additional money that comes with teaching gigs is also good (it certainly has paid for some unexpected bills over the past few years), but I am wondering if I've reached the diminishing returns phase.
Any thoughts from teaching-gig workers out there? 🤔. How do you balance things?
Ponderings on Research, Writing, and Peer Review
10-09-2024, 22:13 #altac, alt-ac, distanceEducation, EdTech, peer review, research, SoTL, trad-ac, writingPart III of my 2024 all the thiiiiiings (read that with an echo😁) ponderings, and attempt to wayfind my way out around the academy...
This part deals with researching, writing, and peer review. Some things I've already decided that I am not doing anymore. Some things I've decided I may be doing a bit of. And, other things are in limbo...
So let me start with a bold proclamation: I am no longer doing peer reviewing*! Over the last 15 years, I've been peer reviewing for a variety of journals. Initially, I found the process valuable and I was really happy to contribute to the overall discussion in the field(s) that I am active in. Since COVID I've gotten a lot grumpier with peer review requests. I've often gotten requests for fields/research that are really peripheral to what I do. Other times when I review articles (from certain...journals), it's like my review goes into the recycling bin 🚮 and when I get a revised copy of the article for re-review, none of my concerns are addressed. I am not saying that authors need to do what I tell them to do, but at least one would expect commentary back as to why some revision wasn't made, right?🤔.
Last December was really the final straw, both for peer review and a certain publisher. I reviewed something and (in a very rare review) I outright rejected the paper for serious flaws. You couldn't salvage this paper by adding some more references and expanding on your explanations. Ten days later I got a request to review an updated version (which, dear reader, it wasn't really🙄). This was also during the holiday break and I was away from the office. I filed the email away as I was on vacation and didn't want to deal with it. The article was published anyway, and it was hot garbage. I don't like to waste my time, especially for something that I get no benefits from; for example, I am not in a tenured position, so I can't claim this work as a service component for my day job.
Now, you probably noticed the *️⃣ in my bold proclamation above. I will continue to do some peer reviews for a handful of journals whose editors I know, and I know that they will actually desk-reject something if it's hot garbage.
Turning my attention to writing and research. I've decided that I really like research, and I do want to continue to do it. My "problem" is that I prefer slow research for solo projects, which takes time for something (if anything) to emerge. If I am working with a group of folks, I don't mind faster research with tighter deadlines (e.g., CfP for special issues of journals), because I enjoy being part of an active conversation and an active project. I don't like rushing for the sake of catching a CfP or a trend if it's going to be a monologue (i.e., just my voice). For solo projects, I have also noticed that oftentimes I lose steam. Since no one else is depending on me to get work done (and since there's no benefit to me if I produce zero, one, two, or more papers per year), it's easy for these things to go on the back burner as other interests (or life activities) emerge.
In terms of my own writing, I've been part of group/team projects and I've done some solo work. The solo projects that I've gotten out the door over the past few years were projects that fall into one of two categories. In the first category, I've already done (or mostly done) the work, and the paper is sitting there while I figure out where to submit it; and the universe may provide an alignment through a fortuitous journal or book chapter CfP. In such an instance, I just have to polish up and submit the work. The other case is where the work was part of a larger endeavor (a SAGE Handbook, for instance) and I felt like I should respect the other author's works and submit my own stuff in a timely manner 😅. Either way, I am externally motivated for my writing projects since increasing my publication count isn't a motivator for me, but helping out colleagues is. I've also come to think of my preferred work style as commission work. If I know that my work will find a home, I'll work on it (alone or in a team). If I'm working on something that doesn't already have a home, my motivation wanes.
This brings me to large solo (or solo-ish?) projects: three books that I've had in my mind for the past few years. Three book projects are in the back burner (which probably won't happen 😅):
- A MOOC Eulogy - This has gone back and forth between being an article and being a book. I have a sense that MOOCs are either dead or just floating along and not really innovating these days. My idea was to do a synthesis starting from 2007ish; maybe with Couros' ECI831 - Social Media and Open Education and CCK08 as the kick-off for MOOCs, and coming to 2024. The idea behind it was to analyze the published research (articles, books, book chapters) and the press (news and popular) to do a post-mortem. If I could get interviews from various "big names" in the MOOC sphere that would be a cherry on the top.
- EdTech, the last 50 years - Not really a catchy title, but I've wanted to work on something that covers educational technology, its pedagogical applications, the innovations that came from it, and what we've learned from these technologies - starting with postal-based learning (the OG DE!). Part of my reason for wanting to do this was to expose new instructional designers, educational technologists, and practitioners to what has come before. Oftentimes, I come across newbies who think they've invented the next best thing, or get infatuated with the newest hotness 🔥 because it's something that's "unprecedented," or "most unique," or "it's never been done before." If they knew the history of the field, this is something that would help them curb their enthusiasm a bit and help them get some perspective ;-)
- Modern Aesop - This was an idea that I tossed around years ago on Twitter with Laura Gibbs. The idea behind it was to use fun and cute animals to tell modern parables about teaching, learning, and technology. This is the kind of book that could be used in educational settings (college, grad, technical, workshops) as a conversation piece.
- Bring me a chisel... - The proposed/working subtitle was "The Resistance Manifesto to the Cyborg Takeover of Academia." This isn't my book idea, Lance Eaton suggested this back in 2018 (‼️) and it was going to be an anthology of satirical essays around the field of instructional design, higher education, and teaching and learning in this sphere. This was conceived as a reaction to an opinion piece on IHE "Why I Won’t Teach Online" (LOL... I wonder how this guy did in 2020 😂, but I digress...). I think that this could still be a fun book to contribute to, with made-up footnotes and all!
Ponderings on Journal Editing
07-09-2024, 13:11 #allTheThings, #altac, alt-ac, ciee, editing, journal, learning, research, SoTL, teaching, trad-acPart II of my 2024 academic wayfinding ponderings! 🎓🤔
Hey, Strangers!
03-09-2024, 14:08 #allTheThings, #altac, alt-ac, learning, research, teaching, trad-acI guess that's me, in the style of Albert Uderzo |
OK...so it's been a while since I last blogged! (checks his notes... December 31, 2023!!! Great Scott!😬🤯) You'd think that I had given up the blogging practice, right? 😅. Well, you wouldn't be blamed if you thought so!
Contrary to appearances, I'm still around! It's been a busy Spring semester...and a busy Summer...and now it's looking like it's going to be a busy Fall semester too! It's been so busy that at times I feel like I am running from project to project, and then I am left with little time to ideate, ponder, or react in a form that is longer than 280-500 characters... 🙄, or even just empty my mind and think of nothing. I can't complain though, because I think it's a calamity of my own making 😅
This might take more than one blog post to collect my thoughts and write about. In fact, to get to a completed post it's taken me a few weeks (this tab has been open in my browser for more than 17 days). But... as the saying goes, every journey begins with one step...so here's that proverbial step! I asked Dall-E (via Bing credits) to create an image of a busy 40-year-old academic man in the style of Albero Uderzo (of Asterix fame). While I love the comic depiction of me (much more in shape than I am!), I am worried about the white hair at 40 😂. Anyway, it's all in good fun.
Like many folks, I've been messing around with Dall-E, ChatGPT, Claude, and Google's offerings to see what they can (and more crucially) what they can't do. I've read too many articles over the past number of months, for peer review, that make wild claims about what AI can do, or will be able to do in the near future, without these things being labeled as speculative futures. Speculation and fantasy are being packaged as fact, which is challenging to my critical leanings...
Soooo...circling back to having no time and feeling overwhelmed, I think I've finally cracked it! And...I think that some of you may respond with 🚫💩🕵️♂️ (lol).
Anyway...For quite some time now I think I've been trying to do "all the things" (btw, tried to get AI to make me an "all the things" image and it failed spectacularly). While I've mostly written off a traditional academic career (mostly because I find the tenure system bonkers and don't wish to subject myself to that), I still have this little demon on my shoulder telling me that I should still be attempting to do some trad-Ac things,...things like researching and writing articles (which can be fun), and/or peer reviewing academic articles (😒), and/or trying to write a book (which could also be fun, but who's got the time?), and/or adopt CIEE-J (which is a separate blog post), and/or continue to take on teaching loads.
Keep in mind, dear reader, that I have a day job, and all this stuff would be done on my off time, which brings up a job-and-a-half syndrome (or perhaps the 2x job syndrome...😫). All this stuff (or rather "all the things"), done in my free time, are crowding out other activities (like going for walks and smelling those metaphorical roses) and ultimately have me feeling a tad bit burned out (ooof😓). Oh, I am also now my union's grievance secretary, so add that to the mix for the next few years (✊). It's important work, but it does take time, cognitive energy, physical energy, and socioemotional energy.
Part of me is wondering if all this is a sense of FOMO manifested to the extreme, or if it's something else. I wonder what other PhDs (or EdDs in my case) out there who are on an AltAc path deal with not going the trad-Ac path. Is there self-imposed pressure to do all the things? How do you deal with it? Do you want to do all the things just in case something on the tenure track comes along that might be appealing? What do you choose to focus on?
Part of me is wondering what exactly I can jettison and what I should retain as hobbies; in other words, finding out what is an energizer and what is a drainer. To add to the challenge, some things pay (hobbies with benefits? Is that a thing?)...and some do not. Should I keep the things that pay? Or should I stick with some purely volunteer things? If it's a combo of things, what is the right combo? 🤔. What have you discovered in your neck of the woods?
That's all for now. Thoughts and ideas are welcomed!
2023 Academic Year in Review
31-12-2023, 14:37 academics, AI, article, book, ChatGPT, cMOOC, futurelearn, GAI, instructionalDesign, JIME, learning, MOOC, research, teaching, xMOOCSpring 2023
Summer 2023
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Looking back, looking forward
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