Archive for April 23, 2012

Distance Learning (A Godin-esque post)

April 23, 2012 / / No comments

Distance education or distance learning is a field of education that focuses on teaching methods and technology with the aim of delivering teaching, often on an individual basis, to students who are not physically present in a traditional educational setting such as a classroom.

This is not a new concept. 

“…the aim of delivering teaching, often on an individual basis, to students who are not physically present in a “traditional” educational setting such as a classroom…” hmmm I’m pretty sure I did this when I was younger.

This generation is open and willing to take part in distance learning because they grew up with it. Before iPads, the internet, computers, heck even cable tv, distance learning was taking place on public television.

You may recognize the original faculty members.

 

Photo Credit

When you have to say goodbye…

April 17, 2012 / / 5 comments

Saying goodbye is never easy.

Saying goodbye means an end of one thing and the beginning of another.

In the past week I’ve had to say goodbye to two things and hello to the beginning of two new things.

First, as I tweeted last night, I realized last week was the last time I’ll be greeted at the top of the stairs by the 100+ pound Newfoundland, black lab mix named Shadow at my Dad’s house. This was a dog that knew the name of his toys. Seriously. “Go get Duckie!,” would result in a duck stuffed animal at your feet. He may have squeezed it to get a honk too. He was a beast that scared everyone, until he backed his rear into your legs to get a nice rear-end butt scratch. He’d bark to let you know not to stop.

I think the best part about Shadow as you could say, “Ready for a walk? Go get leash!” and he would come back with a leash. He would walk ahead (leash in his mouth), look back to make sure you were following, and keep walking but always checking to make sure you were behind him. My father likes to tell the story of the time they went walking in a dog run field. Shadow for whatever reason dropped his leash halfway through. A good ten minutes or so later my Dad turned to Shadow and went, “Ut oh! Where’s leash?!” Shadow took off in the other direction and came back with leash.

Worst part about Shadow? The dog would make you feel bad for leaving. Not me in particular. Only my father and step mom would get this sort of reaction out of him. The reaction? He could tell when they were going out for dinner. The perfume. The cologne. Shadow knew. What did Shadow do? Remember, 100+ pound Newfie. Shadow would bury his head behind the toilet. Absolutely ridiculous to walk into the bathroom and see a black fur mat between the toilet and tub. Not whimpering. Just laying there.

Without getting into details, the quality of life became an issue as Shadow was in his 13th year. My Dad and step mom rescued him from an abusive home when he was just a year old. He lived a ridiculous life and you could tell he knew it, the love was endless and unconditional. I think that’s why people get pets, their love is endless and unconditional. It’s a celebration anytime you walk in the door!

This week I’ll have to say hello to the new era of going to my Dad’s house without Shadow being at the top of the steps waiting to say hello. Ugh. Not a fun era to have to start. This…left me without words. Thank you doesn’t suffice just know it helped. Immensely.

That was the one of the goodbye/hello moments. The other…well the other I’m too excited to try and tie into some metaphor and analogy to the situation with Shadow and make sound it eloquent. With that I’m taking the advice SarahKPeck offered me. I’m just going to write and hit publish.

As many of you know, Robyn and I have been long distance since pretty much the inception of our relationship. It’s been 3 years. This explains why my car has almost 140K miles and it is not yet five years old. If you know that, you know that my position was posted and I was job searching and leaving Nichols job or no job.

Well…I have to say goodbye to my era at Nichols (in this role) and hello to a new era with Robyn in the same state!! That alone is cause for celebration…but it gets better…I won’t be unemployed!

Last week I accepted a position at the Borough of Manhattan Community College as the First Year and New Student Experience Specialist.  I am stoked. Beyond stoked. I didn’t just accept a position at a new institution, I accepted a new life! Robyn and I get to live together. LIVE TOGETHER! Not just weekend trips and rushed errands. Live. L-i-v-e.

The position is brand new, exciting, and full of all sorts of potential. I can’t wait to be on a campus that is literally opposite of every campus I’ve been on when it comes to size and location (less than 5K students/private/suburban to 24K+ students/state/urban). I can’t wait to serve a community college. I can’t wait to be right in the middle of the city (Tribeca). I can’t wait for so many things that I’m grinning like the Cheshire Cat of Wonderland.

Every beginning means a goodbye somewhere and now it’s time to say goodbye to Nichols. It has been one heck of a run. I can honestly say I never saw myself coming back to Dudley in this capacity (or any capacity). Coming back to campus, serving in this role, and working with the students that Nichols accepts reminded me of what a great place this is. It has renewed my love of being a Bison so much so that I am currently pursuing ways to get involved in the Alumni Board of Directors. More on that later…hopefully.

For now…I’m moving to New York (Forest Hills, Queens!) and starting my new position in May. As the Class of 2012 crosses the stage and move on to their new careers, I will cross campus for one of the last times as the Director of the Center for Student Involvement and be moving on to continue the career that Nichols (without knowing) prepared me for.

Hello life. I can’t wait.

Programming at a Conference

April 11, 2012 / / 12 comments

The conversation started by All About Development was (and still is) overwhelming. Allow me to continue my thoughts from that sleep deprived and annoyed post with another one focusing on the programs/sessions that occur during a conference.

There have been a number of great posts that have been shared, written, commented on since that post last week. Check here, here, here, here, and here. I’m also still working on the schedule for the Google Hangout. I’m thinking next week this will happen.

I want to discuss the programming structure. This is nothing new for me. I started this conversation outside of a fantastic panel discussion at NASPA Region I conference in Sturbridge, MA. It was me, Dean Elmore, and Valerie Heruska talking about how there was no talk about Penn State or the economy in Greece at the conference. Two issues at the peak of their attention on news stations around the country and they weren’t even on the table for discussion. Why? Because we do conferences wrong and have been for years.

Disclaimer: I’m not going to argue the point of the professional development of programs. This is purely the process, accountability, and structure. Content I’ll tackle another day/night. 

How does a the call for programs typically go for a conference?

- E-mail goes out TEN months in advance announcing a call for programs (Let’s say May)
- Due date for submissions is SEVEN months in advance (This would be September)
- Successful proposals accepted and presenters notified FIVE months in advance (This is October)
- FIVE months later, the proposal written and submitted SEVEN months before the conference are presented.

We can do better.

How are programs selected?

- Members review and recommend which sessions get approved.
- See above. Yes, read it twice.

We can do better.

Are programs held accountable for what they submitted?

- No.

We can do better.

There are so many paths I want to take right now with this post try to follow along.

First, ten months. TEN months. You are telling me that a notice of ten months is necessary to get the amount of programs needed to fill a conference schedule? Are you telling your students now to plan for their housing deposit for the 2013-2014 housing year? Seems a bit like overkill doesn’t it? Heck, it practically kills any opportunity for someone who joins higher education in the Fall semester to do anything (assuming they are coming from out of industry and aren’t totally familiar with annual conferences). “Hey that program I did last semester (spring 09) would make a great program at the annual conference. I can’t wait to present it in the spring of 2010.” We can do better than this folks.

Asking for proposals seven months in advance of the conference seems a bit ridiculous given the technology we have now. Has this timeline changed since the advent of social media? E-mail? It seems like a timeline fit for a time of snail mail and fax machines. How could we not turn this around quicker to allow for more current topics?

I’ll get into what I would do in a second but let me get to this last point. Peer reviewed sessions. I was a first year graduate student and I was reviewing conference program proposals. This was great for my professional growth in the sense of giving me examples of how to write a good (or bad) conference proposal. Personally, this is a fantastic exercise. Professionally, you are letting first year graduate students decide what sessions get presented at a national conference? We can do better. No offense to first-year graduate students, but what training have you had to do this? Oh wait, it is just personal judgment. “Oh I don’t like Pixar movies so this session doesn’t really make sense to me. It probably won’t make sense to anyone else either.” See the flaw? I reviewed conference proposals for one organization that actually had a portal that let you see what other reviewers ranked it (and who they were!). So much for unbiased opinions. “Wait so this SSAO ranked this low, well I can’t rank it high then. They’ll see it and I can’t disagree with them.” Face meet palm.

Finally, I could write this fantastic proposal with all the bells and whistles. The conference could arrive and guess what? Whoops, the presentation didn’t take the form we thought it would. Instead of the promised laser show, we have some noise makers and will break out to small groups to kill time. Is anyone holding presenters accountable for following through on their proposal? If you say, “well the organization is it’s members,” please DM me or e-mail me so we can talk. My presentation could be terrible but guess what? It will still go on my resume saying I presented at XYZ conference. We must do better.

I’m not just about thoughts. Here are some ideas to propose to help move this “issue” forward.

Conference Proposals

First, I know most organizations have buckets that you can say your presentation falls into (leadership, technology, diversity, social justice, etc). That’s a fun way to characterize, organize, and advertise the sessions but there is room for improvement there.

Step 1: Self identify. “I’ve presented nationally and/or regionally…0-3 times, 4-6 times, 7-9 times, 10+ times.” This gives the reviewer some perspective and sets expectations appropriately. Would you stick around for a session if you knew it was from someone who has presented more than 10 times? I would. Guess who gets those morning sessions? Yup. The presentation “pros”, how’s that for a carrot? People will wake up for those. Yes, this is counter-intuitive. Why not give pros the prime time slot? Well, they didn’t get to be pros overnight. Someone had to give them a chance, and quite frankly, presenting to a half full room at 7:30 a.m. is not a way to reward a new presenter for putting themselves out there.

Step 2: Proposal identity. The conference theme determines 1 to 5 buckets/tracks for presentations. Presentations can only go in one bucket. One bucket must be current topics which means the timeline is truncated and much shorter than 10 months. Buckets are clearly defined, with separate rubrics, and specific reviewers. Buckets are structured into the conference. Day 1 =bucket A and B in the morning. bucket C and D in the afternoon. Day 2 = bucket C and D in the morning. bucket A and B in the afternoon. Day 3 = User created buckets voted on starting night of Day 1 and all day until night of Day 2. Could you imagine a conference changing mid-conference to appeal to the needs/desires of attendees by the last day?! The last day is user generated. WHO WOULDN’T WANT TO STAY TO SEE WHAT THEY VOTED ON AND CREATED?! Engagement starts as soon as the conference kicks off. Talk about being bold without boundaries….

Step 3: Send a sample. That’s right, this means no procrastinating. With the truncated timeline, if you are planning on presenting asking for a 3-slide, 60 second presentation preview for your session shouldn’t be a problem. (I’m sure many scripts look great on paper but horrible on film. This is no different for proposals.)

Conference Session Selection

I love the volunteer effort. I really do, I think I’ve benefited from volunteering my time to review sessions. Let me ask you this though, if you are building a house do you want a volunteer who has never held a hammer building your house? (Yes, I’ve done this with Habitat for Humanity but even they have supervisors watching the volunteers.) I didn’t think so. You want someone trained in what you are doing so you know if you are doing it correctly. How come we don’t? What ever made me qualified to say whether or not a presentation will be great for the conference and attendees? We need training. We need a better rubric. We need to have “volunteer” program reviewers have…*cringe* credentials to do so. Back to the house reference, house inspectors need to be trained to inspect houses. If a conference is our home of professional development, who the heck is inspecting it and are they qualified to do so? We can do better.

Accountability

We need secret shoppers. Seriously. Don’t give me the “a organization is its members” sch-peal. Should a room of my peers give me enough incentive to perform well? Yes, yes it should. Would having someone there that is an official “judge” help step my game up that much more? Absolutely. What does this mean? It means that the review submitted by the judge is an official document from the organization. This translates into professional portfolio materials (see LinkedIn recommendations and/or justification for spending department money to present). The reviews that are returned to presenters FOUR months after the presentation are constructive how? Heck, four months later my presentation could have been revamped three times over and morphed into something different. FOUR MONTHS. WE. CAN. DO. BETTER. How can we not do live feedback forms that people fill out as the session goes online? How is this not possible?

If you want to say I’m all talk. Go for it. I hope to be in positions to possibly join conference committees (regional, national, virtual) when the job search process settles down and I can actually be settled in a region. I write as a call to action and believe me I’m ready to serve whoever wants to have me help them make these thoughts reality in any way, shape, or form.

We can do better. This is a call to action. A call to thought. A call to start a conversation.

What do you think of the conference session proposal/selection process? Have you seen something that works really well in a different industry? Engage. Find your voice and share it. I’m looking forward to hearing what you think. 

 

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