Category: EMU

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Buzz-kill

I went to an informal workshop/discussion this afternoon held by some folks in Continuing Education about audio files, podcasting, and some other multimedia technologies for teaching, mostly for teaching online. Mostly, a good time was had by one and all– mostly. I think the tech support guys for CE did a good job, and, while I was very much non-prepared and experienced some technical problems (which, on the plus side, gave me a chance to mock Windoze), I think at least some people got something out of what I said. So it was mostly good.

But not completely. Thus the title of my post.

Here are what I saw as the problems:

  • Podcast frenzy! Podcast frenzy! Not all but many of the faculty at this event were there because they had heard of this thing called Podcasting and, based on the buzz, they figured they had better get on the band-wagon and get on right now. But it seemed pretty clear to me that many of these folks– again, not all, but many– really did not know what they would do with a Podcast or if they would ever Podcast or, really, at the end of the day, what a “Podcast” was. I didn’t ask, but it might have been interesting to ask how many of the attendees had actually heard a podcast.
  • Tangent-Land. Somewhere along the line, someone brought up one of those issues, maybe the issue, that always comes up at sessions that involve teaching with technology: what about copyright, what about fair-use? For me, the main reason why these issues are always so frustrating are because no one— certainly no one has not made IP and copyright their full-time business– knows the answer. Furthermore, no one– certainly no one in academia– wants to admit that they don’t know the answer. So what ends up happening is people talk about things they may (or may not) know about IP and copyright, at least until someone says something like “we can’t solve that now, so let’s just move on.” Ultimately, I think this fear of the rules and not knowing them and being afraid of some unknown consequences are enough to chill innovation. But that’s kind of a tangent in itself, so let’s move on.
  • We can’t do that, real and fake. Okay, there is a lot of things we really can’t do with online classes and with things like podcasting. We can’t assume that all of the students have a high-speed internet access (though most of them do). We can’t assume students have this or that kind of computer, which is also probably true. But then there’s the fake can’t due. For example, it became clear after a while that there were any number of things that were just a lot easier to do with a Mac. So someone asked at one point “So, does that mean we can’t do this stuff if we don’t have a Mac?” (And, of course, my answer is why don’t you have a Mac already?)

    The most troublesome “we (or really, you) can’t do that” of the afternoon for me is I was told that it was “against the rules” for me to use a non-EMU server space to host teaching materials, as in any of the pages available here. The conversations I had after this event with various folks suggests this is just wrong, but again, it’s another example of a knee-jerk “we can’t do that” for no good reason sort of rule. Sounds like an administrator to me….

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I wonder if EMU administrators will be my facebook friend?

Bob Whipple sent me an email a few days back about the president at Colorado College, Dick Celeste, reflecting on Facebook on his blog. First off, I think his reflections here seem similar to mine. Facebook doesn’t bother me as much as MySpace, I guess because these are college-aged students, because it’s limited to a particular school (at least I think that’s how it works; someone correct me if I’m wrong here), and because it is a lot more aesthetically pleasing to me than MySpace.

MySpace pages really are interestingly ugly, what with all the silly backgrounds and odd colors and music files. But I digress.

Second, it’s nice to see a college administrator– president of the place, no less!– take a look at what all the students are in to as opposed to just dismiss it.

And third, it’s pretty cool that this guy keeps a blog he appears to update on a fairly regular basis.

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Let the contract negotiations begin! (And cheers to the EMU-AAUP's stand on Continuing Ed)

There’s been an exchange of all-campus emails lately between the administration, faculty council, and the union. Long-story short: the faculty and the union are not happy with the way that the interim provost (who everyone likes, by the way) was made into a permanent provost, and the administration and the union are beginning to build their cases for contract negotiations. What case is that? Basically, the administration is saying a) we have no money, and b) we have plenty of faculty; predictably, the union is saying “do not!” to both of these things.

Ah yes, contract negotiation season….

My guess is that EMU really doesn’t have as much money to work with as the union wants to claim, but there’s no getting around the argument about the number of faculty. Simply put, EMU has fewer faculty now than it did 10 years ago, and the number of administrators on campus has risen in almost direct proportion to the losses in faculty. Even an English professor can do that math; all I’ve got to do is look around the halls and see the rising number of part-timers and of suits.

But my sense is that the biggest issues in this coming contract are going to be money (that’s always an issue) and health care. I don’t know enough to know how either of these things are going to play out, but there is plenty of opportunity for drama over the summer. This is simply speculation on my part, but I think that if the administration tries to offer the faculty a contract where we have to pay such a significant portion of our medical insurance out of pocket that we end up taking a pay cut (and, in the nutshell, this is the contract that the lecturers signed last year), then we will certainly strike. But I also think (again, just speculation) that both the union and the administration know this, so I think (hope, really) we will avoid this.

Of course, this faculty versus administration posturing will get much more hot ‘n heavy in August, which is when I (happily) will be out of the country.

Anyway, while I have my issues with the negotiating process and some of the positions both the union and the administration take on some of these matters, a big “thumbs up” to the EMU-AAUP and its president Howard Bunsis for his recent presentation before the Board of Regents on Continuing Education (warning– this is a PowerPoint presentation turned into a PDF).

Continuing Education at EMU exists in this sort of “in-between world,” more or less outside of the faculty contract for reasons I don’t entirely understand. Anyway, CE is charged with all instruction that takes place in non-traditional settings– weekends, off-campus, online, etc.– and, largely because of online classes, it’s been making money hand over fist. And they are really making money because CE teaches almost all of its classes with non-tenure-track faculty or tenure-track faculty teaching some sort of overload for extra money.

In the interest of full disclosure here: I’ve been working with CE more closely since I started teaching online in Fall 2005, and I have been quite happy with the sort of support I’ve gotten from them. This term, I’m teaching an online class as an overload for reasons that are complicated and only partly about extra money. (And for what it’s worth, I don’t think I’ll ever teach an overload like this again.) In Fall 2005, I taught online “in load”– that is, part of my regular teaching. This spring and summer, I’m also teaching online (again, through CE) and I guess it’s “extra,” but all spring and summer teaching at EMU is something faculty do voluntarily for extra money. It’s also worth mentioning– and you’ll see why in a moment– that I don’t take overloads into my online class, mostly for ethical reasons but also because teaching an advanced writing course online with more than 20 students would be way WAY too much work.

Part of what Howard is talking about in this presentation isn’t (IMO) that big of a deal, at least to me. For example, departments do have control over what courses can be offered through CE– at least in theory– right now. But there is one recommendation that the EMU-AAUP is making that is enormously significant: the elimination of the “grading stipend.”

Basically, if there are more than 25 students in a CE course, the instructor is paid $150 per student. So let’s say you’re teaching an online course and, instead of capping the course at 20 or 25 (my online course is capped at 20), you let in a total of 50 students. If you did that, then you would make $3750 above and beyond the pay for the course. Or let’s say you let in a total of 100 students; that’s 75 X 150, or $11,250.

The administration is happy about this situation because it allows them to maximize the student to instructor ratio. The instructors who engage in this process are happy about this because they make a lot of money. And obviously, this practice is a disservice to students. I suppose it depends on the particular course, and I think there is some truth to the argument that some of my colleagues make who engage in this practice: if we’re going to teach lecture hall classes of 200+ students, then there shouldn’t be anything wrong with teaching online classes with 50 or 75 or 100 students. But, as my momma taught me, two wrongs don’t make a right.

I think the majority of faculty at EMU would support a change where faculty get paid more than they do currently to teach overload courses through CE and the elimination of the grading stipend, which is what the union is proposing. But there will be a vocal minority of faculty (the ones who are making the money, of course) who will oppose this, and I think it’s hard to say what the administration is going to say. So it will be interesting to see how this plays out.

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They come in waves/the end is near…

I can’t remember the last time I have felt this swamped with grading/commenting on student work. I’m teaching an overload this term, and while it is a modest overload (one class that I’ve taught many times before and which I kind of feel like I need to teach in order to further a research project), it has really slowed me down the last couple of weeks.

This week is the final wave for everything in my classes. The last day of classes are this coming Monday, and as a result, I’ve got (between my three classes) five sets of projects/essays to comment on. Then, after I finish that reading/commenting, there’s another big wave. Final grades need to be calculated in two of my classes by Monday of next week (students in those classes use finals week to revise things if they want to). And then in my graduate class, another wave will begin as they hand in their seminar projects.

And I’ve been distracted by getting writing.emich.edu to work.

And the weather is really starting to turn nice.

And then the spring term starts in two and a half weeks, though I’m kind of looking forward to that. Since most “school business” more or less shuts down during the spring and summer terms (May to August, basically), I will be mostly just teaching, and the course I’ll be teaching will be online. I’ll certainly have to meet with some MA students for advising and such, but the service burden drops off quite a bit after the regular term.

Anyway, the end is near, and I think.

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What Apple's "Boot Camp" might mean to me (and many other Apple users in academia)

Just another quick post: while I was waiting for my movie file to upload, I skimmed through this snarky MacWorld article/tit-for-tat comment on an article in USA Today. You can read this exchange for yourself if you’re interested. I got bored.

That is not to say that I’m not excited about Apple’s Bootcamp software, which allow users to boot into Windoze on the new intel chip Macs. I think this is going to be a useful thing for Mac users (like me) in academia in general, and at places like EMU (which is about 50-50 Mac/Windoze), for our labs and for faculty desktops (at least my desktop).

Assuming it all works right and everything, Boot Camp will allow us to reconfigure our computer labs to be both OS 10.x and Windoze. Right now, for reasons that have largely been forgotten, we have a Mac lab and a Windoze lab. What I’d like to see us do is replace the computers in both of these labs with iMacs that are all configured to run either Apple stuff or Windoze stuff. If there’s a particular piece of instructional software that can only run on the PC or the Mac, no problem.

And besides that, students have a choice. I teach in the Mac lab, and I get all kinds of students complain about having to work on a Mac. (I should point out most of these complaints are based on the less then compelling argument, “this isn’t what I’m used to working with!” But I digress…). With this new configuration, I could simply tell this hypothetical and Windoze-obsessed student to just reboot and pick a different OS and stop complaining about the Mac.

Second, it will allow me to run Windoze software once in a while. Of course, no one is going to go out and buy a Mac just to run Windoze– that’d be stupid. But it’d be very nice to be able to do some Windoze stuff, even if it wouldn’t be on the fly. For example, there are a couple of scheduling/admissions-type software programs at EMU which I would like to be able to use occassionally but which are Windoze only. This is stuff I wouldn’t use every day all day long, just once in a while, and this is exactly the strength of this Boot Camp option.

Another example: I have students who come to my office all the time with some sort of problem with their web site, and when I show them what to do, I right now have to say stuff like “now, on your Windoze computer at home, it’s going to look a little different.” Boot Camp will allow me to say “hang on, let me reboot…. okay, here’s how it is going to look on your computer at home.”

Sweet. Bring me my new iMac, please.

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writing.emich.edu : A server in the making…

The dust of the CCCCs and the Jacobson Symposium is starting to clear (though I am late on a different writing project and then there’s that pesky teaching stuff I need to do until the end of the term), and pretty soon, I (along with my colleague Steve Benninghoff) will start setting up the writing program’s new server, writing.emich.edu.

Loyal readers may recall that I have reported here and here that I’ve had a series of problems with the EMU ICT folks regarding serving stuff that involves MySQL and PHP, which is basically any content management system you can think of. Long story short: I asked in September or so the powers that be regarding computer stuff on campus if I could run a CMS like WordPress and drupal on an EMU server. After receiving the run-around for about four months, the answer I received was “no,” and the reason I was given was “uh… security… yeah, security, that’s it.” After a bit more probing, the real answer emerged, which is basically a combination of “we don’t have the resources” and “we don’t want to.”

So, it became apparent that if we are going to do any of these things, we are going to have to do it ourselves, and I am happy to report that my department head, who thankfully understood the issues here, approved the purchase of a Mac Mini, which is chained to my desk and the home of writing.emich.edu.

Or future home. There’s not much there yet.

Frankly, I would prefer to not be in the server business, but if the people who are supposed to be doing this don’t have the will— er, “resources”– to do their job, I guess we’ll have to do it ourselves.

One more kind of funny because it’s sad kind of thing about this: when I was at Creighton for the Jacobson Symposium, some of the folks there thought it was interesting and strange that I was allowed to run a server out of my office. Personally, I found it interesting and strange that the tech area at Creighton, which they call DoIT, seems most interested in trying to provide faculty and students technologies and support to help them do their jobs. What a strange world….

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Welcome to the blogosphere, Linda AK!

My EMU colleague Linda Adler-Kassner has started a blog called browndogsblog. It’s a modest effort so far, but give her some encouragement! Go over there and post! Right now!

All of this reminds me that I need to do some updating/housecleaning around here. Once I get through the mountain of stuff at the end of the term, which is already creeping up, I think I’ll be ready to pay more attention here. But probably not before.

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Online secondary school in Michigan; African-Americans and Internet access

It’s the mad mad MAD dash at the end of the semester (note to self: next time you’re going to be out of town for two weekends in a row and you’re trying to put together a couple of presentations for said out of town trips, AND you need to then turn one of said presentations into some kind of longer piece, make sure you plan ahead), and I’m not sure I’m going to make it. Though given that it is one way or the other soon just going to “end,” I suppose I will.

Anyway, two articles of note here via the NCTE Inbox:

First, there’s this, “Online courses aren’t just for homeschoolers anymore,” which is in The Christian Science Monitor. Talk about learning something new every day– see these three opening paragraphs:

If high school student Kelsey Speaks had taken all of her classes at her bricks-and-mortar school, she wouldn’t now be three years into her Latin studies. Since junior high, Kelsey has enrolled in eight courses in a virtual classroom through Colorado Online Learning, a state-funded program. The junior at tiny La Veta High School in southern Colorado says taking courses online is a great choice. “It’s allowed me to do things I wouldn’t otherwise have been able to do,” she says.

In addition to letting her take courses (for free) that her school doesn’t offer, online learning has made her schedule flexible enough that she can captain the debate team, edit the yearbook, and do volunteer work as well. She also gets to study independently, which she enjoys.

Once considered the domain of home-schooled students, K-12 online learning is a fast-growing option for public school students in rural, urban, and suburban areas. Michigan lawmakers are likely to pass legislation soon that will require high school students to take one course online before they graduate.

The second article is “Digital Divide Closing as Blacks Turn to Internet” and in the New York Times. For the most part, it does exactly what the headline suggests: it reports on the closing of the gap between different groups (particularly African-Americans, but other minorities too) as it relates to Internet access, which I have certainly seen in my own teaching. But it also reports that this “closing of the gap” is somewhat debatable, which I have also seen in my own teaching.

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Scott McCloud Rocks!

This is a belated post about the Scott McCloud presentation on campus on Monday night, late because I left for Chicago and the CCCCs first thing Tuesday. But in any event, McCloud’s spiel was great. I was hoping to link to some sort of news story about it, but I can’t find one at the Eastern Echo or the Ann Arbor paper; it might be too early for the Echo…

It was a huge crowd, pretty much a full house in the union ballroom, an interesting mix between typical EMU students/faculty and area comic geek/enthusiasts. And the crowd was part of the show, at least for me. One of my grad students (this was our “class” for the week) told me that a young person in front of him “would shoot his arms high in the air with the double devils-head ‘rock-n-roll’ hand sign every time he saw or heard something he liked.” Another grad student said something like “With all these people here, I bet it’d be tough to get a game of Dungeons and Dragons going in Ann Arbor tonight.”

McCloud’s presentation, which (of course!) involved hundreds of PowerPoint slides, was basically divided into three parts. The first was about a new book he has coming out in September, a book he’s clearly excited about, and one that sounds pretty interesting, too.

Then he talked about I guess what I would describe as his “philosophy� of comics, which is too complicated to try to explain here, but which involved (evolved out of?) a lot of his own background, which is quite interesting. McCloud’s father, who was literally a rocket scientist, was (is?) legally blind. And weirdly, McCloud lived in a neighborhood that seemed to be weirdly populated with kids who would group up to end up working as comic book artists, graphic novel writers, and children’s book illustrators.

Then he talked about his concept of the “infinite canvas� and comics, particularly about comics on the web. Essentially, McCloud talked about how the technology of print is responsible for the way that we have traditionally read comics and thought about things like panels. The cool thing with the web (not to mention high-speed access and software like flash) is that a lot of those rules can either go out the window entirely or at least be questioned in some interesting ways. And he had some super-cool examples to show too.

All in all, a great show and in interesting talk.

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Pray-Harrold: the web site

As I discovered today via this comment left on my blog by the president of EMU’s student government (Bobby– just send me an email!), student government has put together a web site called “Pray-Harrold Needs YOU!”

If you’re an EMU/Michigan local, it’s worth checking out because it more or less sums up the long and on-going saga of EMU getting the money for this project. I appreciate the effort, though to be honest, this is the sort of thing that should have been done (maybe by student government, certainly by the EMU-AAUP and/or just the EMU administration) a couple of years ago. After all, it is beginning to look now like we might actually get some of the funds in this year’s budget cycle.

It does remind me though of the importance of being careful what you ask for. Pray-Harrold construction is going to be, ah, “disruptive,” to say the least. And when all is said and done, they’re really only talking about significant remodeling of the first four floors, which means the extent to which this is going to impact my department (our offices are on the sixth floor, and we teach lots of classes up there too) is debatable.

In the meantime, check out the web site.