On Becoming a University (Part II)

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Faculty need to make connections beyond the institution.

…Part Two in the series on “Becoming a University”

In order to make the transition from a college to a university……

It is true that many faculty have connections at the UofC and a few have connections to other institutions in the province, but how many really know who’s doing what in their discipline, and how many are known to colleagues elsewhere? Faculty must be encouraged to attend and especially present at international conferences. Faculty MUST be encouraged to do more than prepare for their courses and put in some admin time. Being an academic means learning – EVEN in the TS (Teaching & Service, i.e. no research requirement) stream. Sometimes it seems that MRU tries so hard to make those with no interest in research or any real interest in scholarship feel like they’re OK just the way they are that those who DO do research feel they should do so in secret so as not to seem too keen.

An example: The Canadian Network for Innovation in Education (CNIE) is a Canadian organization that holds an annual conference with an international audience. I have several presentations accepted there so I am going, but I will not be MRU faculty when the conference takes place. There appears to be no-one from MRU going. In academia innovation is communicated through conferences and other publications. I have been doing research and publishing my work without institutional support for many years and I find the attitude of many faculty at MRU to be disturbingly myopic. They don’t seem to understand that building an international reputation is not a selfish act. Building and maintaining a reputation that goes beyond one’s own school can make one a better teacher and bring a currency to one’s courses and interactions with students that are essential for today’s students. It also earns the respect of the students. As an academic, attending and presenting at conferences should not be a rare occurrence – it is part of the profession. It is how we keep current in our disciplines and disseminate the knowledge we gain.

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More Fun with Google Docs…

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If you haven’t tried Google Docs yet, maybe NOW is the time to take the plunge, ’cause it just got better.

To take advantage of the new changes, make sure you set your settings to take advantage of the new improvements. Go to settings > document settings > editing and choose:

New version of Google documents:

Create new text documents using the latest version of the document editor.

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On Becoming a University (Part I)

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I’ve had an interest in Mount Royal for some years. When I was teaching at the U of Calgary I found MRU’s transfer students to be hard-working and quite capable. Last year I even taught there as a ‘temp’ (I had a one year contract). I applied for various positions, as part of MRU’s transition from a college into a university involves the addition of quite a number of new faculty. Mount Royal is a great place to teach, and a great place to learn. They genuinely care about their students and treat their faculty and staff with decency and respect. Mount Royal is very well-positioned to turn into a top-rate undergraduate university.

Except…..

Change is HARD.

Mount Royal was a very GOOD community college. It needs to retain its caring, respectful way with people, but it also needs to add to that. It needs to evolve from a corporate culture into an academic culture. What does that mean? That means shifting from a parochial, small-town perspective where people act like employees to a more global and self-assured one where people act like a community of peers.

Note: I make a distinction between being a “teacher” and being a “professor”. I am not trying to denigrate real teachers (i.e. those who are trained as teachers and have made that their profession). I have tremendous respect for real teachers, if they’re dedicated to their profession. What I don’t have a lot of respect for is faculty in Higher Ed who treat their positions as a job and do little more than teach their classes, manage their students, and put in some committee time. Most of these people have no real training in teaching and should have NO right to call themselves professors. Come to think of it, they should have no right to call themselves teachers either. They’re little more than college employees.

What is needed to make that happen? Here are some suggestions, in no particular order:

Community service is important and it is part of scholarship, but  if you want to be a university, community service is NOT enough. Scholarship also involves doing something new AND sharing that with the larger academic community. That’s what publications are supposed to be for. Each unit should be encouraged to keep track of conferences and make their faculty aware of them. SoTL does an excellent job, but their focus does not include discipline specific events. When I was teaching last year I passed along several calls for papers to various colleagues who had done various things in their classes that could have been written up and submitted for publication, but no-one was interested. This lack of interest is fine for teachers, but NOT for people who want to call themselves professors.

Stay tuned for part 2…

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Ahhhhh! NOW I get it. The Tea Party Folks, that is.

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New University of Washington survey explores attitudes of tea party supporters

http://www.physorg.com/news189959097.html

I think I finally get it. We Canadians can be very dense about such things….

Whenever I hear from someone who is AGAINST universal health care, the question I want to ask is:
So, being against universal health care means you believe that SOME people DO NOT deserve access to health care. Who might those people be?

Now I know. It’s the non-whites (and whites who are poor). Well, Jeez. Forgive me, but that puts these people in the same league as Iraq, many parts of Africa, and most other backwards countries.

Make no mistake, some Canadians are racist, but, as a country, we are not nearly as preoccupied with race as the US. Most of the time, it’s not what we talk about. We don’t ask about race on application forms. As a Canadian, I find questions about race on membership applications kind of offensive.

That difference makes a huge difference. We talk about poverty, lack of education, corruption, etc. but race is almost NEVER part of the conversation.
…
Well, maybe First Nations. We have a huge guilt complex about Aboriginals. Still haven’t figured out how to fix it. For the most part, we’re doing better than the US on that front too though.

Americans think of themselves as a “Melting Pot”. We think of ourselves as a “Mosaic”. You’d be amazed what a difference that can make.

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My New DS XL

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A lot of people are talking about how the new ipad might revolutionize schools…

I’m not sure it’s ready for school:
It is not durable enough – you need to be able to drop it. In a puddle. On the cement. And then step on it. And it must still work. It needs to be able to fall out of your backpack and get kicked around the halls by your ‘friends’ till the bell rings. For school, it has to live up to the promise of the old Timex ads… takes a licking…..and keeps on ticking….

Also, it is too expensive – the base version costs about 3 times as much as the DS XL. This is going to have to come out of the parents’ pockets. The iPad might go over in rich schools, but not in the working class ones.

Nintendo has set its sights on the schools, but as it stands the DS XL is still just a bit too small to make it as a reader – and to be viable in schools such a device must be many things – though I wouldn’t be surprised to see the next version be that too. I’m waiting for them to enlarge the upper screen (and increase its resolution). With that, and more memory it would be poised to corner the Ed-market. Among other things, I’ve been using mine as my alarm clock. It was really handy as my power went out for 6 hours the other night.

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Classroom Tips, Part 1

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After 30 years of teaching, I have found a number of things that work well, most of the time.

Of course, I also keep trying new things and every now and then I come across something new that has potential. This column includes some of these, both tried-and-true as well as new.

Here’s a way to use Google Docs to facilitate in-class group activities that are to be shared with the class. In my case I did this all in the same 1 1/2 hour class, but this could be stretched across several classes (or even lecture sections) just as easily.

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Fun with Google Docs (Part 2B)

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First Contact: The Google Docs Tutorial

Week Three of Term: Jan 25-29

Part One looked at how Goggle Docs compare to traditional word processors as utilities for creation and submission of student assignments.
Part Two (this one) talks about the collaborative editing exercise I did with my class (2A), as well as the in-class “tutorial” that turned out to be a lot of fun (2B).
Part Three goes into using Google Docs as a tool for writing co-authored papers.

When I asked my students if they had any experience with it I was surprised (and more than a little disappointed) to discover that only about 6 people (out of about 100) had even heard of GD, and only about half of those had ever used it. These are 1st year engineers – they like to think of themselves as pretty savvy. Sigh.

What this meant though, was that I needed to introduce the tool in class to make sure everyone would be able to use it. I came across a cute little video that provided a nice intro and showed that. Then we did this exercise.

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Fun with Google Docs (Part 2A)

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A Collaborative Editing Exercise Using Google Docs

Part One looked at how Goggle Docs compare to traditional word processors as utilities for creation and submission of student assignments. Part Two (this one) talks about the collaborative editing exercise I did with my class (2A), as well as the in-class “tutorial” that turned out to be a lot of fun (2B). Part Three goes into using Google Docs as a tool for writing co-authored papers.

I am teaching the “English” part of a communications course for first year engineers. I decided that one of the objectives in this course would be to help students become familiar with some of the 21st-century skills they will need to complete their degrees and after they graduate (see: Learning for the 21st Century, Life and Career Skills, Information, Media and Technology Skills).

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