“Online Universities are Gaining Acceptance, Pollster Says”

Kind of an interesting article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, “Online Universities Are Gaining Acceptance, Pollster Says.” It strikes me as a bit dubious because the claim of the headline comes from a book by John Zogby called The Way We’ll Be: The Zogby Report on the Transformation of the American Dream, “which is based on Zogby International polls and other studies, also touches on public attitudes toward politics, consumer habits, spirituality, and international affairs, and on what men and women really do want from each other.”

That sounds a bit too much like everything and the kitchen sink for me to make much about a claim that higher ed and the online world, and there’s a big difference between an “online university” and a university that has some online offerings. According to CHE, Zogby talks about higher ed in the same chapter he talks about car sharing companies, blogs, and microbrewed beer. Sure, those things all go together….

I don’t think there is any question that online courses and online programs are more popular and more accepted than they were even five years ago, and it is not at all difficult for me to imagine a future where the vast majority of college students take at least some classes online. But I don’t think we’ll all be attending college online while driving around our shared cars and drinking our microbrewed beer anytime soon.

Another book for my pile/for English 516: Two Bits

Via Inside Higher Ed, I came across this article, “It’s All Geek to Me,” which is a review of the book Two Bits: The Cultural Significance of Free Software by Christopher M. Kelty. Of course, the book has a web site right here. Not only is the book available free online there; Kelty has also set up a section of the site called “modulate.” Kelty describes this section like this:

As such, “Modulations” is a project, concurrent with the book, but not necessarily based on it, which is intended to explore the questions raised there, but in other works, with and by other scholars, a network of researchers and projects on free and open source software, on “recursive publics,” on publics and public sphere theory generally, and on new projects and problems confronted by Free Software and its practices…

Sounds like a blog to me.

In any event, definitely a book to include to review for English 516 and maybe one to look at myself.

Naughty teacher facebook profiles

This is kind of old news (April 2008), but it was in my email (which I am sorting through) and it’d be good reading for English 516: “When Young Teachers Go Wild on the Web: Public Profiles Raise Questions of Propriety and Privacy.” Basically, it’s about teachers who have sort of questionable Facebook profiles. Besides some amusing examples, I like the fact that many of the teachers in this article were unaware that their Facebook profiles were as public as they are. Just goes to show you that the teachers can sometimes be just as– um, not smart– as the students.

Tip o’ the hat to Nick Carbone for posting this to WPA-L.

Because it’s really hard to properly cite things

That’s an answer to the question “why are there errors in citation, even by academics who should know better?”  Or at least that’s my answer.

Anyway, this came up for me this morning after skimming throw the Inside Higher Ed article “Cite Check,” something that might be useful reading in a variety of classes I teach.  The basic point of the piece is that research of citation practices in fields like management science, health, other sciences, etc., indicates that there’s lots of errors in terms of quoting/paraphrasing wrong, bad references, and the like.  There’s a link in the article to the academic study that might be worth looking at.

In my own scholarship, I obviously try my best, but there are lots of things that are just really hard to cite properly.  And in my teaching, I ask my students to do the same, knowing that perfection in these matters is elusive.

GSU, fair use, and eReserves

I’ve always wondered when some publisher was going to sue over copyright and eReserve systems. It turns out that’s underway right now: “Georgia State University Strongly Answers Publishers’ E-Reserve Lawsuit,” which I found via Digital Koans. An interesting story/case that might make its way into a revised version of English 516, depending on how it all turns out. Not to mention the fact that it might change the way I distribute readings to students.

What Stanley Fish doesn’t know about writing could fill a universe

Stanley Fish has a new book coming out called Save The World On Your Own Time, in which, among other things apparently, he decries the ways in which politics have crept into the classrooms of university professors and how it ought to stop. What professors are supposed to do is teach and that’s that. He has an interview here in Inside Higher Ed where he talks about this and some of his other views.

Frankly, I think he’s kind of lost his marbles.

Continue reading “What Stanley Fish doesn’t know about writing could fill a universe”

What’s the difference between “fan-cons” and academic conferences?

I took a day off today to go down to Columbus, Ohio to visit a friend of mine who was in town for Origins, which is a very large (10,000-13,000 people) fair/convention/conference about all things “gaming.” Now my friend Chris is heavily invested in this both for fun and for his job, and he made a drive halfway across the country to specifically attend this thing– well, that and travel to some other places. Me, I was doing the drive there/drive back trip solely to see Chris. I will admit that I do have a gaming past– mostly things like Dungeons and Dragons, but generally other role playing games. However, my gaming days were pretty solidly behind me once I left my teens, and in general, I’m not really much of game person. I rarely play computer games or video games, I don’t play poker or many other card games, etc. I probably would play bridge again (a game some friends of mine– including Chris– took up in college) if it didn’t involve sitting around with a bunch of old people, though given that I am rapidly closing the gap age-wise, I might be finding a bridge club sooner than later.

Anyway, I had no plans to go to the “con”; I figured Chris and I would grab some lunch and/or chat about our lives and that’d be about it. But it turns out that I was able to get a “teacher’s pass” based on my EMU faculty ID (membership does have its privileges), so Chris and I toured around a bit. I had a surprisingly good time.

Basically, people do three different but obviously related things at Origins (and I think this is true of most game-oriented conferences). First, they play games– board games (mostly of the war and/or fantasy variety– I don’t think you can play Monopoly at this thing), card games (see above– I don’t think there’s any poker or hearts tables or something), role-playing games, games with miniatures, etc., etc. Second, they go to panels of people talking about games and game related things. And third, people go to the large exhibition area to look at and buy games and game-related things. We just stuck with activity number 3, though we saw plenty of game playing, and there was a program of presentations and other events the size of a small-town phone book.

You see a lot of overlap here with other related geeky cultures/subcultures– people in various kinds of costume and/or “geek appropriate” attire and grooming. There was a lot of stuff on sale that was exactly like the kind of thing you’d see at the RenFest– fake swords and fake armor and stuff like that. Chris and I spent some time talking about the differences between game cons and science fiction cons (Chris, a fan of both, prefers the latter).

But I guess I was was left with two thoughts I’ll post for now before going to bed. First, I really am just not that much of a “fan” of anything, certainly not like the many people who I saw today, people (okay, almost all geeky guys) who travelled half-way across the country to play a simulation game involving armies of tiny figurines of gnomes or card games along the lines of Pokemon or Magic: The Gathering or any number of different games involving pirates. Pirates seem to be a big trend at these things. I don’t really have a favorite favorite sci-fi/fantasy character, and I’m not likely to dress up like one anytime soon. I don’t keep my day job so at night I can meet up with my buddies and the dungeon master and take on my role playing persona of Zandar the Pig Barbarian. These people do, and there’s something about this that strikes an outsider like me as just odd.

Second, I think there’s a lot of similarities between these kinds of conferences– or at least the motivations behind them– and academic conferences. At both, there are presentations, insider lingo, trends, conference badges, and “famous” (for that context) people sightings. People go to both kinds of conferences to attend presentations, to see trends in “the field,” shmooze with people they know only vaguely through email lists and other conferences, and to sell and buy stuff related to the topic of the conference. The outfits at academic conferences tends to be a bit more on the conservative side–not a lot of chain mail at the academic conferences, for example– but there are definitely “outfits/costumes,” and a real insider can spot the differences between the MLA, the CCCCs, and C&W just on the outfits alone– even just the footwear. And let’s face it: most academics treat their work with the same fanatic devotion that most of the people at Origins treat their hobbies.

I dunno, but maybe the organizers of academic conferences ought to see what kinds of tricks they can pick up from these things.

“University presses start to sell via Kindle”

Speaking of things I want to link to that might come in handy for teaching English 516 next year: “University Presses Start to Sell Via Kindle,” in Inside Higher Ed. There’s been some discussion about this on the WPA-L mailing list, and my post there was basically that this just makes sense as the next logical trend for both the device and university publishing.

My friend Troy has one of these things and loves it; from what I’ve been able to tell (having not actually seen one in the wild), I don’t think these things are quite ready for prime-time. Still, if they come out with one of these things that can handle color, that can do a better job handing note-taking and such, and that is a little more affordable ($359 is a little steep for me), then I could see this being an important tool for both academic publishing and textbook publishing/reading.

U of Minnesota study on benefits of social bookmarking sites and the lack of digital divide

Via NCTE Inbox comes this article/news release from the University of Minnesota, “First-of-its-kind study at the University of Minnesota uncovers the educational benefits of social networking sites; Study also finds that low-income students, contrary to recent studies, are in many ways just as technologically savvy as their counterparts.” Not a very succinct title, but it kind of says what it’s all about. This press release also includes links to some video of the researcher talking about her study; at some point, I’ll want to actually look this study up.

In terms of the graduate class I teach about computers, writing, and pedagogy (ENGL 516), this stuff– access and social networking– was “the line” last semester. I pointed out at the beginning of the class in winter 2008 that I wasn’t going to accept any seminar papers/research projects about a lack of access, because I believed that a) access has been proven to be not a problem, and b) that argument was really an excuse for “I don’t want to do/learn this computer stuff.” This new study will probably add to that argument. But while I haven’t had a lot of students do research/writing on social networking yet, this still seems to be a line that many of my grad students will not cross, particularly those students who are practicing teachers and closer to my age. I ask my students to set up a facebook account for the class, and there are a few who believe that this will end their careers and/or destroy their private life.

The new style manual is here! The new style manual is here!

How big of a nerdy English/writing type of person does one need to be to appreciate the fact that the MLA has come out with a new edition of the style manual?  And does it make me an even bigger looser enthusiast that the first thing I want to look at in the newest issue of The Journal of Electronic Publishing is a review of this new style manual?

Regardless, it’s an interesting piece by Kevin S. Hawkins, who is an electronic publishing librarian over at the University of Michigan.  The rest of the journal looks interesting this time around too.  Based on what Hawkins is saying, it sounds like MLA has made some advances in dealing with electronic resources and in acknowledging the fact that almost all of the writing/editing done in academic/humanities-type journals involves computers.

And for me, this observation brought back unpleasant memories:  “I’m glad to see that two holdovers from the days of the typewriter have finally been put to rest: underlining and double spacing after periods are out, and italicization and single spacing are in.”  Twelve years ago, when I was trying to wrap up my dissertation in the summer before I began my first tenure-track job, I was in an epic (well, for me) battle with a thesis/dissertation reader in the Bowling Green State University graduate college.

In those days (I assume this is still true, though I don’t typically have to deal with such things at EMU because our graduate students do “projects” and not “theses” that adhere to such strict rules), this was the final stop for a dissertation, a hoop soon-to-be PhDs had to jump through even after a defense.  The staff in this office was made up mostly of MA students on an assistantship, and their job was to proof-read for your run-of-the-mill errors and for adherence to a style manual– in my case, the MLA style manual.  This reviewer did catch a number of errors I was able to tidy up, but this person (who was always anonymous to me) also tried to argue that I had to eliminate all contractions (I dare you to find that rule in the MLA style manual) and to change all italics into underlined text.  I had a lot of italics in my diss, both for book titles but also for emphasis— probably a little too much emphasis– and I thought then (and think now) that underlining is ugly.

Well, long-story a bit shorter, I actually went back and forth via email with this person for a while, and I ultimately had to get a “supervisor” involved in order to remind this office that I had successfully defended my dissertation.  I ended up presenting this person with a quote from that edition of the MLA style manual (the second?) which said italics were at least an acceptable substitute for underlining.  I finished, went on with my life, and became the tenured professor you see before you today.  I don’t know whatever happened to this reviewer, but I am guessing they are not happy with these new MLA changes.

Depending on what happens with English 328 next year, perhaps this could be a reading for that class….