Multilitteratus Incognitus

I don't often get to put on my HR/management/talent development hat, but I came across this interesting tweet this past week that got me thinking .  I started to write a tweet reply to it, but it got too lengthy (so here we are - back in the blog😁). A week or so ago I met with some former colleagues and mentors (folks who've already retired), which also reminded me of the mini scramble when I resigned a position years ago, and when counteroffers were considered. The text of the tweet (for posterity) is as follows: Resigned today. Current employer is scrambling to counter.  This is my PSA to those with the power to promote - don’t wait until your best employees want to leave to give them an offer that shows you value them. I couldn't agree more with the sentiments expressed by the tweet.  When someone resigns they most likely have another job already lined up and are least likely to take you up on your counteroffer. At this point, you've already lost your valued employ...

The other day Paul Prinsloo posted this Guardian article on Facebook , and it seems like a popular article because Shyam Sharma (among others in my online educational social network and PLN posted it). As usual my PLN got me thinking (and, as is evidenced by this blog post, creatively procrastinating and not really working on my dissertation proposal...D'oh! 😜).  This blog post started life as a comment back to Paul, but it got too long, so here it is - migrated to the blog!  I should say that two of my master's degrees are from a business school (B-School hereafter) and my views are framed from an emic and etic perspective (hey, why is my dissertation proposal leaking into my blog? get out! 😏) From my own personal experience I think that B-Schools are in part complicit with what's going on, they are after part of the business landscape, but I think that they are only one part of the picture .  I am making my way through Ken Bruffee's book on Collaborative Le...

I came across an article on Campus Technology last week titled  7 Tips for Listing MOOCs on Your Résumé , and it was citing a CEO of an employer/employee matchmaking firm.  One piece of advice says to create a new section for MOOCs taken to list them there. This is not all that controversial since I do the same.  Not on my resume, but rather on my extended CV (which I don't share anyone), and it serves more a purpose of self-documentation than anything else. The first part that got me thinking was the piece of advice listed that says "only list MOOCs that you have completed".  Their rationale is as follows: "Listing a MOOC is only an advantage if you've actually completed the course," Mustafa noted. "Only about 10 percent of students complete MOOCs, so your completed courses show your potential employer that you follow through with your commitments. You should also be prepared to talk about what you learned from the MOOC — in an interview — an...

I don't often write about my dayjob - as manager of an academic program. There are probably a lot of interesting and nuanced things to study academically in higher education administration and non-profit management, things that I also find interesting (from time to time) - but I tend to spend most of my time looking at EdTech, pedagogy, language learning, and the like (more so than higher ed administration. Recently I saw a blog post from a friend who is also pursuing a PhD that made me put on my management academician  thinking cap, and it got me in a reflecting mood as far as my dayjob goes. It also brought back fond memories of me being an MBA student in a supply-chain management. The successful running of an academic program is a complex dance between various external (to the academic department) actors, such as the admissions office, the registrar's office, the bursar's office, and the room scheduling office (if your program is on-campus). This is also in additio...

A couple of weeks after the last session of 806 for this spring aired  I had an opportunity to observe the proceedings from across time and space (aren't recordings grand?).  Looking at the (small) crowd that attended the live session maybe I should have attended!  Anyway! It does should like next fall, or perhaps next spring once I am formally in 806, there might be a ton of people attending, so the check-ins might only be for people who are done with 805.  I like the check-ins as it provides me with a sense of what others are going through (the whole "suffering together" bit), but I also don't want an 806 session that goes on for 2 hours (or more).  I would almost prefer to have more sessions but  have them seriously capped at 90 minutes rather than have marathon sessions.  Something for pedagogical planning I guess :-)  I plan on attending 806 sessions (at least some of them) while I am in 805, so we'll see how that goes. In any case, this s...

I must be the only weirdo who inquires about "taking" a seminar before the 'logical' or programmed sequence of the seminar.  That said, for my doctoral program the final seminar (EDDE 806) is actually open to all EdD students (and alumni) so I have been on-and-off in this seminar since I started two years ago.  When I was in 801 it was easier to attend, so I probably attended 3-4 sessions.  The next two semesters, with 802 and 803 were more challenging, so I dropped from weekly sessions.  Now, with 804 on tap (formally) for this semester, it seems easier (and more conducive) to participate in 806 again.  My goal (even though it hasn't formally been approved yet) is to get as many of these reflections done and "out of the way" as possible so that I can focus on more organic community efforts later on.  So, without further ado, the reflection for last  evening's session.  The main presentation last evening was by Dr. Marguerite Koole of the U...

One of the presentations this week in EDDE 803 was from a fellow classmate that talked a bit about simulations.  In the ensuing discussion I was reminded of a course I took as part of my MBA which used simulations.  I thought that this would be a worthwhile post for here (as well as class) - at the very least it's one chronicle of my learning journey prior to the EdD. Queue flashback visuals and music When I was doing my MBA, one of my courses was a supply chain management course (fun with math and probability). One of the course activities was for us to break up into groups of 4 (so we had 4-5 groups in the course) and we were manager of a widget making factory. We needed to pick production size, route to retail, and predict demand (given certain finite factors) in different stores. The goals was (of course) to maximize profit. The game sort of looked like SimCity - sort of-, so for some of us it was also a bit of nostalgia (having grown up with that game). The game...

One of my resolutions, just before this new semester starts, is to not neglect periodicals that come in from time to time and at least thumb through them.  Don't let too much work, of any sort, detract from the professional development of looking through work related periodicals (sounds oxymoronic, doesn't it?).  Well, at least this way they won't pile up in the office ;-). Anyway, in keepting with this goal (let's see how long I last), I went through the July/August issue of Training Magazine.  This is something I signed up for last year when I wanted to keep more abreast of what was happening in the corporate instructional designing sector.  One of the things that caught my eye was this tidbit at the beginning titled Conflicting Perceptions on Education , which reported on a University of Phoenix and EdAssist report titled Are we playing the same game?: Employee vs. Manager Perception of Education and Career Development . From the report itself: Nearly ha...

"Instructional Designer" - by AK & Net Art Generator - for #CLMOOC Continuing on my quest to read through what I've accumulated in my Pocket account, I came across a blog with the title  Learning Experience Design: A Better Title Than Instructional Design? The title was catchy enough for me to save it to pocket for later reading (which seemed to be forever ago).  In any case, Christy seems to be making the point that people, who are not in the field of instructional design, are perplexed when someone tells them that they are Instructional Designers, or that they earned their degree in Instructional Design.  What the heck does that mean?  What is an instructional designer qualified to do? This is a good conversation to have over a drink or a cup of coffee, but since my instructional designer friends are nowhere to be found, it's blogging time! That's a good question, and I am sure that if you ask 10 different instructional designers what they do, ther...

Image from Flickriver, Brian Hillegas A few days ago, and totally by stroke of chance, I happened upon a twitter discussion between @HybridPed ,  @otterscotter , @actualham , and a few others.  I am not sure what the original topic was but I came in when they were discussing assessment. Do we assess learning or competency? Some regarded learning as transcending competency and some saw competency as transcending learning. It's hard to to really have a meaningful exchange of ideas in 140 characters, especially when the twitter train grows and grows. When I jumped into this conversation I took the stance that what we assess is learning, not competency.  Competency, I would argue, is something that develops over a period of time. It is something you hone and improve.  Your skills (i.e. your competency is something) becomes improved the more your practice it. And, by practice, I mean being present while doing it and analyzing your own performance while doing the t...

This week has been rough in the office.  We learned that our colleague - and my former professor - Pepi Leistyna passed away. Details are scant at the moment and everyone in the department is in a state of shock as his death was quite sudden and unexpected.  I was going to write a blog post about about my history with him, how I knew him as a person when I worked in Media Services (good ol' AV department) where he used to pick up VHS players on carts to show clips of films in his courses; how he influenced my development as a learner and a scholar; and finally as a valued colleague when I started working in the department of Applied Linguistics.  While I think this is valuable, and certainly part of the process, I think there is another area to home in on, thanks to this week on #HumanMOOC: Social Presence! Social Presence is defined as : ...the ability of learners to project their personal characteristics into the community of inquiry, thereby presenting themselves...

Good ol' Zoidberg asking Why Back when I was an MBA student, probably in a project management class, we were told that we should ask "why" five times in order to come to the root cause of the problem (I wonder why this is why kids seem to keep asking "why" incessantly ;-) ). It thus seems quite a propos that the first formal week (two weeks actually!) of Connected Courses are focused on Why we need a Why . As is the case with most cMOOCs there are some reading suggested by the good organizers of the MOOC, but most content will most likely come from fellow participants, which at the moment number to around 180(!). The live session isn't for another day or so, so I've decided  to tackle some ideas that came up in the readings for this week. Luckily most things were in a format that Pocket could read out loud to me so I was able to tackle most in my schedule ;-) First up, I came across Who are you and what are you doing here? which was quite odd. T...

Last week I caught something on inside higher education on the closure of Teaching and Learning Centers (CTL hereafter) in colleges and universities around th country, at a time, where seemingly, there ought to be more demand to keep them open, engage, and train faculty, and be a catalyst for a better college experience for everyone involved. This is what I remember from the article that I read when it came out (currently blogging from a boat crossing the Ionian Sea, no internet to verify, and will be too lazy to go back later to re-read everything). A friend, and colleague, later emailed me about this trend and also included a more snarky (albeit humorous, I think) Chronicle op-Ed which took the form of a memo from a director of one such center to a university big-wig (from memory this is what I recall anyway). In any case, I chuckled a bit with both stories because it's not really about centers for teaching, rather about the value that universities place on continuing profess...

Last year when I put out the call for the  Great Big MOOC Book , one of the submissions came from a colleague in Australia who is going to write a bit about MOOC experiments that they ran on the Australian Open2Study platform , which is sponsored by the Open University of Australia.  I had heard of the platform before, but I never really tried it out since I was testing out other platforms at the time.  Well, since there wasn't much on Coursera to keep me going (too much of the same makes for a dull MOOC), and since rhizo14 is winding down (to some extent) I decided it was time to check out this platform. I originally signed up for two topics: Teaching Adult Learners , and Becoming and Confident Trainer . The Adult Learner topic was mostly to see what others say about the topic since I've already taken courses on this topic as part of my master's coursework.  The confident trainer was a bit of a repetition, but it was also an interesting look into corporate train...