The Academy

Chris Gilson and Patrick Dunleavy wrote a post for the networkedresearcher.co.uk on Multi-author Academic Blogs. Their argument is that blogs need to have more than one author.

Why?

The truth is that the single-author blog model has already gone out of fashion, and is in rapid decline. A blog is only as good as its readership and without consistently strong posts, and an easy way of finding them, there will be no readership. In the modern world of web 2.0, RSS feeds, Facebook and Twitter, it simply is not very effective to have a single author, single issue, rarely updated blog; all the effort made in writing and posting will be typically wasted.

Rhetorical analysis of the paragraph:
First, I’m going to rhetorically analyze the paragraph. I’m a rhetorician and that’s what we do.

There are problems with that first sentence. “The truth” in a time of relativism may or may not be the truth. Yes, these guys’ credentials are given, but whether they are experts on blogs is another point entirely.

Then they say “already gone out of fashion” and “in rapid decline.” These two statements are either repetitive–saying the same thing in a different way– or sending a mixed message. If something is out of fashion, it is not presently experiencing a rapid decline but has already experienced a decline.

Then there is the statement that a “blog is only as good as its readership.” I disagree with that too. It depends on the point of blogging for the author.

I blog here to be read. I blog to give ideas out on teaching. Originally I had hoped that my main audience would be professors of English or future professors of English. That is not my main audience. Instead, the people who most often read my blog are students trying to write a character analysis. Does that mean that my blog is good (because I have lots of readers) or bad (because half my readers weren’t my target audience)? I would say that since I wanted to teach, I’m okay with teaching students instead of teachers.

On my personal blog, which is not and never will be linked from here, I write to remember. I write down what I am experiencing and I write down what I feel about those experiences. Sometimes I write ideas about my work or future things I want to try or do. I don’t write that blog for anyone else to read and that’s a good thing, because I only have a reader or two who read it on a regular basis. I have lots of people who come and read single posts and I’m okay with that, but very few people subscribe to the RSS and I’m okay with that too.

Now, if I am writing a scholarly blog, which is what they are really talking about, then maybe readership does matter more. However, if I have a lot of grad students reading it and no professors, I would still think that was successful. If I want to have a blog that is read by scholars in the field, though, I would probably want to write with them, reference their work, and discuss it in detail. Would my blog be unsuccessful if they didn’t read it? Again, it is a question of desire/intent.

Then there is the statement that packs a lot of baggage into it: “not very effective to have a single author, single issue, rarely updated blog.”

I would agree with that as it is written.

However, that is not the point of the statement. They wrote it to say/imply that single author, single issue blogs are rarely updated. That’s why they are arguing against single author blogs.

This is a single author blog. I may have had a guest post once or twice, but I certainly haven’t had many. I have 2,251 blog posts, 2,135 of which are public. The blog has posts from nine years ago. So in nine years I have had 2,135 posts. That is an average of 237 a year. That’s not “rarely updated.”

Credibility and Legitimate Argument:
Despite the paragraph I quoted, which is near the beginning of the post and (for me) dropped the credibility incredibly low, the post has a legitimate argument.

Why I Linked:
It IS easier to create a credible blog with multiple authors. It IS easier to create a strong readership with multiple known authors. For that reason, I have linked to the post. It will get you started thinking.

What does your exterior say about you? Grabbing interest with some street art is a Ubiquitous Librarian post on the Chronicle of Higher Ed.

Walking around campus, the librarian realized the library was boring. It said “old” and “outdated” to anyone coming on campus.

So, he went to an artist for some design suggestions and got two suggestions, one of which wonderfully mixes design and play.

Read the article. See the art. Good stuff.

A comment on Super and Ill Prepared Students gave me significant pause. It was important enough for me, and for my students, to copy and paste it here.

I’ve had recruiters at several multi-billion dollar corporations in New England tell me point-blank that they would rather hire a biz/finance major from a college with essentially open enrollment than they would an English/history/sociology/etc major from a Tufts or Bates or Wesleyan. Their rationale is that the biz major from, for instance, Bridgewater State, has some experience with Powerpoint and Excel and may know the basics of how a company functions, while the humanities grad, while likely a much more capable individual, will need training. Spending time and money on training is anathema to corporations these days (hence the rise of the internship model). Indeed, my friends who went to local colleges and got biz/management degrees are, on the whole, far better off than my friends who went to very selective (although not top 3) liberal arts institutions like myself. I compounded my error by then heading off to law school, which overqualifies me for every non-legal job on the planet.

There’s a “practical” anecdote about students not getting humanities’ degrees. Would it matter, I wonder, if the humanities degree comes with an e-portfolio that shows PowerPoint and Excel and FinalCutPro and Audacity and _(fill in the blank)_ experience? I certainly think it would help them, which goes back to my technology post of a few days ago.

The idea that humanities’ degrees are less tech oriented, if it is pervasive, could be a significant detriment to our students. We should focus on letting them know that learning the technology is important and that they should put the programs they know well on their resume.

Community College Dean wrote a post, Thoughts on the Innovative University. The title is a pun in that it is both thoughts on the book of the same name, The Innovative University and on the question of what makes a university innovative.

First, a disclaimer, I have not read the book. I am not sure, based on what CCDean wrote, that I want to. However, there are some interesting aspects as well.

There is the defining difference in types of innovation, sustaining and disruptive.

Then there is the history of academia.

the history of Harvard, which the book argues (correctly) has been the pace car for traditional higher ed…
My favorite moment was the claim that Harvard invented summer vacations not for agrarian reasons, but because students had revolted one summer, and the faculty decided that hot weather made students cranky and likely to rebel.

I like that and I buy into it too. Since most folks going to Harvard weren’t the kids working on the farms, I can see why this makes more sense.

CCDean goes on to say that the contrast the book presents, BYUIdaho, is not really a disruptive innovation. In fact, it looks just like the Proprietary U that CCDean worked for in the 90s. That wasn’t a game changer, either.

However, he continues, the idea that we are looking at a sustaining innovation (even one that wasn’t innovated by the folks the authors of the books suggest) is interesting. What would it mean if that were a sustaining innovation? What would a disruptive innovation look like?

Then CCDean proposes his own idea of a disruptive innovation.

I expect that competitors will emerge to the bachelor’s degree itself.

As long as the bachelor’s degree requires a set amount of time, and a set amount of “general education,” it will fall prey to Baumol’s cost disease. It can’t not. (The only way I can see around that is something like the outcomes-based degree at Western Governors University; at least that offers the possibility of efficiency gains.) But there’s no law saying that a bachelor’s degree is the only possible model for post-secondary education.

For a long time, college and a BA or BS were not the norm. Apprenticeship in a trade was the norm. Perhaps, as Bill Rankin argues, we are moving back towards a norm like this.

It’s an interesting thing to think about, especially in an economic crisis that may be redefining our jobs or our work’s parameters.

I am continuing to mark posts based on Daniel Pink’s conceptual elements in A Whole New Mind. I will be expanding my thoughts on this at some point. But I needed to post this somewhere/sometime, so here it is.

The Math Curmudgeon has a great post on Game-Changing Graphics.

It is well worth looking at.

Want to see how a Russian Winter decimated Napoleon’s army? It’s there.

How cholera was identified as coming from a septic tank? That, too.

Scary view of sex at Jefferson High. (When did that come out and how did I miss it? Answer 2004. I don’t know. That would be a good place to point some of my students. American Journal of Sociology.)

This would definitely be interesting to read about.

I am writing somewhat in response to a “Brainstorm” from the CHE. The author asks if writing is work. She discusses it in terms of her job in higher education and her friend and family’s limited understanding of what counts as her job.

While she begins her post saying that she is off for Labor Day, I will begin mine by saying that school is in session today. My students have homework due; we will read and write in class; I will have grading. I also have a paper that is due and I will have finished that tonight and sent it off. I am having a graduate student over for brunch; I am her official mentor. I am meeting another professor to talk about the Honors Society we are the co-sponsors for in the afternoon for an hour or so. So I have plenty of work today.

But what counts as work?

I think this issue can be approached two different ways. These are not, however, the ways that author Gina Barreca looked at the question. She looks at her work from the perspective of friends and family. Neither my friends nor my family are my bosses. They are not my colleagues. None of them work in higher education. They do not understand my work and, therefore, their impressions are not the arbiters of my experience.

If I were going to decide what counts as work, I would look first at how my university defines work.

We are primarily a teaching institution. The biggest part of my work is teaching, according to my uni. And they do not limit my teaching to the time in the classroom. They also ask me for seven hours a week in my office, student access via email and texting, and time spent mentoring my students on campus and in my home. So, if I have a pancake dinner for my class, then I am “teaching.”

While my university focuses on teaching, they also want to advance the uni to “global leadership” and have a desire to become a premier uni in our area of interests. This means, among other things, that they value research (and technology, which I will address soon). So when I am working on a chapter for a book or an article for a journal or a review or a creative writing piece or a conference presentation, my college also considers that I am working. This summer, before they began paying me, before I officially went to work for them, I wrote a chapter and two reviews. I have another chapter and another two reviews in the works–that is, I am writing them and hope/expect them to be published. All of that is part of my job at the university.

I have one state, two regional, and two national conferences accepted. The university also considers these part of my work. Unfortunately, the budget is smaller than in years past and I may have to make a choice between the big English and the big rhetoric conference. Certainly I have to apply for monies to attend all but the closest and $300 of another. So these are part of my work, a part that the university also often subsidizes. It’s not work I do in the classroom and it may or may not ever be published, though one hopes it will be. Regardless, it is my work.

Additional parts of my work include service. I am required to do service both internally in the university and externally in the wider community. I am not sure that picking trash up off a busy thoroughfare counts as service to the community, since it is not organized, but I hope it will. It is my service to the community this semester. And, if it does, it, too, is part of my work. Certainly the FIVE committees to which I have been assigned, which require time and thought outside of meetings, are part of my work.

Today is Labor Day. While I am making brunch for my mentee, and eating it, I will be working. While I am preparing for class and teaching, I will be working. While I am grading papers and recording grades in the new course management system, I will be working. While I am putting together the chair for my office, I will be working. While I am in my office for three hours of office hours, I will be working. As I am finishing up the chapter and the additional website information, I will be working. When I post on TCE, I will be working… About the only thing I will do today that is not work is eat supper and sit with my dog. I’ve even managed to figure out how to turn walking my dog into part of my job description! (Service. We pick up trash off the road as we walk.)

I spent over six hours yesterday working. My two hours of expected labor on Friday were expanded to six. Thursday I worked about twelve hours. I work well over forty hours a week. I still don’t get everything I need to get done finished.

Someone spoke to me about “time management” but it is a person whose job was from 9 to 5 and rarely, if ever, had work that was required to be done outside that time frame. Of course he would not understand that most of my life right now is centered on working. I don’t work forty hours a week. I work about eighty. And it is work I am grateful for and enjoy.

What counts as work? Anything that contributes to the strength of my university is work. And my uni recognizes that. It is something to be grateful for.

This post is about the importance, and necessity, of graduate students getting their work “out there” into the community, upping their Google factor, and generally presenting themselves as scholars.

It’s something I’ve been thinking about as I become graduate faculty.

While older faculty and many universities still don’t recognize the ubiquitousness and power of the net, graduate students should be taking advantage of the online world to promote themselves. One way they can do that is through their own blog. However, many graduate students don’t have enough information, work, or time to do that. So what could be done instead?

In the Medieval Middle suggests that graduate programs create and maintain a graduate student blog, either internal only (which would not promote) or external, and encourage but not require posting from the graduate students.

I think this would be a great way to promote both the individual students and the degree program as a whole.

If there were limitations on posts, in terms of interest or scholarship, the blog could also hold a higher standard and perhaps garner more cache for the students through a limited “review” requirement.

What do you think? Would having a graduate program blog, where your best work was posted and discussed, have been a help to you?

Have we left the Industrial Age and the Information Age and moved into a new era, the Conceptual Age?

Think about it. Other than our classrooms, what else is all about cogs in a row now? Are those jobs still in the US? Nope. They have been outsourced. We are past that age. What about information? Isn’t that a rare and valuable commodity? Nope. It’s all on the internet and anyone can have access to an “expert” quickly. So what age are we in?

I have been listening to A Whole New Mind. While I have only heard the theoretical chapters, for some reason, those have expanded in my head and I see all kinds of relevance and practical applications in my teaching and my own work.

In the book, Daniel Pink says that we are in a new age: the Conceptual Age. And the elements that are not going to be able to be outsourced in this age are:
design
play
empathy
meaning
narrative
symphony (This means the big picture. Not just the second violinist, but all the violinists and how they work with the cello and the viola and the drummer and the percussionist and where do those bells fit, anyway?)

Having been reading The Innovator’s DNA, I would add:
innovation

These are the elements that I am going to be focusing on in my teaching because I am convinced that most of my students are going to be out reconfiguring work so they can stay employed. Having some notion of which direction to reconfigure it in will be helpful, I believe.

I always begin my classes with my credentials. I do a sort of mini-résumé (though if I am teaching business writing I use a full one). I tell my students that I worked hard to get my PhD and that they are the only people who call me “Dr.” I have never had any trouble with people calling me Ms. or Mrs. I’ve never felt slighted because they call the guy with an MA, “Dr.” and me something else–because that hasn’t happened.

Thus it was with great surprise that I learned during new faculty orientation that this has been and continues to be a problem with the student population here. It was interesting to learn that not only the faculty member who has been here twenty+ years, but also a second-year female faculty member has had issues with this.

I suppose that I have been short-circuiting that issue (remember I taught here before) and that it has not been a problem because I clearly spell out my achievements and my expectations.

I hope I may also impact that happening in my students’ other classes, as I tell them that they can always call someone Dr, even if they aren’t, but to NOT call them Dr when they are is an insult. Maybe my students call everyone Dr. I hope so anyway.