Back to School for GrownUps

So …I started a new page, did you notice? Nontraditional student resources - it’s one of the tabs up there. 

I’ve only added a few links so far - things I came across in my wanderings yesterday, mostly. 

I already had some links here in my blogroll - but those tend to be links to helpful blogs or other sites - main pages, you know….    

The blogroll thing would get pretty unmanagable pretty quickly if I were to do what I wanted to do there - which is highlight some specific articles within blogs or other sites that are especially well done or relevant to nontraditional students. 

So …. I decided to go with a page - or pages - instead - I will keep adding to it  and hopefully build a useful directory that my visitors will find helpful enough to bookmark.

And why am I telling y’all about it? Well duh…. I’m hoping you will contribute to it, of course :) 

If you come across a specific article, blog or resource that you think might be useful to nontraditional students, please do let me know  so that I can include it.

You can, of course, leave links in the comment section, either here or on the Resources for Nontraditional Students page - or you can email me if you prefer. 

Patricia, over at the Communication Exchange got me to thinking today. She wrote an article about The Communication Connection Between Newspapers and Universities that raises the question of whether colleges and universities are headed the way of newspapers….  will they, too, be offered almost entirely in an online format? And if so, what will we lose as a result?

Don Tapcott, author of grown up digital , which is quickly becoming one of my most oft-quoted books, is very clear that the research done by his group shows that digital generations have very different values and expectations than those who came along before the technology. They have shorter attention spans, for starters  - and they want things when they want them, and most importantly HOW they want them. 

They take technology for granted …. and they know that they can use it to get what they want when they want and how they want it - so they are less likely to be willing to jump through the hoops that come from bad or pre-technology design or from tradition. 

grown up digital should be required reading for anyone interested or involved in teaching - and also for parents, and anyone in business that would like to stay in business over the long haul, for that matter! It really is well worth the investment.

Anyway …. back to the topic…

As Patricia rightly notes in her article , “for every improvement society makes comes loss” - and moving away from traditional on-site colleges and universities is no exception. 

For me, as much as I love my computer and the Internet, there is little doubt that I learn far better in a traditional learning environment. I need the interactions, the face to face time with classmates and professors, the challenges of having to speak my ideas out loud in the group before they are fully formed and ready to write.

I learn from my peers, and often it is a thought or question that someone else raises that gets me going off in new directions (I am called flit for a reason, after all )  I can DO online courses - and do very well in them - but they have so far been much less productive, overall.

But then, I am clearly too old to have grown up digital - so my experiences don’t really count for much, do they?  Although, given that I seem to be the biggest techno-geek in my cohort, perhaps they do :) 

Anyway ….I would love to know what you think would be the benefits - and pitfalls - of moving towards online educational offerings and away from traditional post secondary settings. 

And seriously - you should buy the book!  (And nope, this is not a paid advertisement, and I don’t receive any $$ if you do buy it - I just think it is a really important resource) 

No - not that Congress!

I have signed up to go to Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences , which is being held from 23 - 31 May 2009 at Carleton University in Ottawa . 

I’m not going for the entire thing - that would be too darn long, and besides, it would give hubby even more fits than he is already having about it. 

The issue, for him, of course, is not really about my going… it is about my going by myself. He is a tad uncomfortable with my being unsupervised given that one of my more nontraditional features is an alarming tendency to FDGB* wherever I happen to be. Since my car accident in November, he has been chauffeuring me everywhere and has become quite accustomed to babysitting me… now he seems to be having a bit of trouble letting go again - not helped by the fact that the incidence of FDGB episodes - and the severity - has admittedly increased somewhat of late.

He wants to go with me - there, and to my 2 weeks of summer school at Trent in June, as well. But he has to work and he can’t - and besides, honestly, I am starting to feel more than a ~tad~ constricted and I am rather looking forward to being a big girl and going places by myself again. It is great that he cares - but I SO miss having the freedom to just go be where I want to be and NOT TALK/SOCIALIZE all the damn time. 

Anyway, I signed up and booked myself a residence room from May 23 - 27. That puts me there for some sessions that looked particularly relevant and interesting on the Sunday, and 3 days of having to choose between career corner workshops in all kinds of things that sound great, Congress speakers and sessions , and the  Association for Research in Cultures of Young People Joint Sessions at ACCUTE that are taking place on the 26th, one of which my thesis advisor is chairing. 

I see the specialist about the FDGB thing next week - hopefully she will have some help to offer, although I honestly am not expecting a quick or easy solution - but even so, I am hoping that once we’re on the road to diagnosis/treatment it won’t seem like such a big scary thing…. for hubby, especially! 

Anyway, I paid my money and I am going - and I am very much looking forward to it. There are SO many sessions that interest me, and it is a great opportunity to get to know Carleton a bit, as well, which is a plus, since the Phd program I am entering in September is a joint program and Carleton is the other university. And if I make a fool of myself by doing the FDGB thing, well then…will just have to deal with it, won’t I? It won’t be the first time!  

* FDGB  = fall down go boom 

I was mucking about over in hubpages today and happened to come across this article about how to become an online class instructor for a university .

That is definitely something that I would love to do - I have the computer skills - and I love to teach ….but I wonder if I would still enjoy the teaching without the face to face interaction with students? Probably - I enjoy my online interactions with people I meet on Gather and through blogging and other social networking sites - so why not through teaching as well? 

My own experience with online course instructors has not been very positive on the whole though. I have taken online university courses both through Laurentian University’s Envision program , and through Athabasca University . 

In both cases, the materials provided were excellent. The instructor support, not so much. 

Both of my Envision courses had the same professor. First mistake, I guess. At least, if I had had different profs I might have had a shot at getting at least 1 that was…. well…. I don’t want to say good, since that would suggest that the one I did have was bad - and I didn’t have enough interaction to know that. The professor I did have was just totally unresponsive, mostly. 

No welcome email, or acknowledgement…. and when I emailed her with a question about an essay, her response took more than 2 weeks. It finally came about a week after the due date for the essay. Helpful. 

The courses I took at Athabasca all had different tutors - but again, so little interaction as to be pretty near useless. Honestly can’t even remember the names of either of the Shakespeare people …and the psychology one I remember mostly because I sent her my final essay back in January and am still waiting for a mark for it and for the course. Because of my car accident in November, I was late (with permission)…so some delay is understandable… but I would rather like to know how I did on the course… have the credit show up on my transcript… you know…  I did, after all, pay in excess of $600 for the course. It is a little frustrating. 

And if I had NEEDED that course to get accepted into the phd program I applied for, it would have been a lot frustrating. 

Anyway - when I am the prof, I will do a better job of it! 

Have you taken any online University courses?  How did you find them? What would you do differently if you were the prof?

Well finally!

Ross + I are on the way home from Peterborough and I have been wanting to write my blog but couldn’t find a way in to do that. The dropdown box that allows us to change from our main blog to the second doesn’t show up in the Blackberry browser any more. I knew I’d managed to get here before but it took me a while to think of how. Spam, that’s how. Had just finished telling Stephanie that and an email notification of a new comment showed up. First time I have been glad to see spam in my inbox

It has been a busy day. Had class early for canLit today to allow time for our field trip to see sights in the area that are relevant to what we have been talking about this semester. Went to a small church that Catharine Parr Traill’s daughter was married at. Thomas Traill and several of the Stricklands are buried in its small cemetary. We also visited the cemetary where CPT is buried, and saw her house and also Margaret Laurence’s house. Oh and the Moodie homestead as well. I took a few pictures. Most didn’t turn out so well but will try to upload 1 anyway.

After the field trip, Ross and I still had hours to kill. Usually on Wednesdays we go back to the motel and he reads/naps while I futz around on the computer. But since we were coming home after class tonight that wasn’t an option so we went and had a leisurely lunch at the Panda Chinese buffet near the school. Then we went back to the campus and hung around there until it was time for class.

Today was the last time I saw my seminar students as a class and I wanted a good turnout for the evaluation forms and for exam review so I bribed them with pizza. No surprise there - it worked quite well

Now we are on our way home - still about an hour to go. Tomorrow Ross writes his exams and after that it will be time for me to knuckle down and knock off some essays

I’m looking forward to getting them DONE.