Going back to study…online
This is the first of a number of posts Matt intends (not promises) to post on his experiences of going back to study online with Penn State University. While he has a host of worries about studying again, his biggest fear is that he’s going to be an emabarrassingly bad student and won’t practice what he preaches in his day job to university students – manage your time well and give yourself every opportunity to succeed.
By Matthew Cowan – LSU
A conversation last year with David, our previous manager at the LSU, motivated me to seriously start thinking about where my career was heading. Our conversation hadn’t come about because of my poor work performance or anything, rather he was talking about the leadership and management course at Harvard he was about to take. He told me he had tossed up between two courses – one, the Harvard course which he eventually took, and two, an online institutional research course at Penn State University.
The institutional research course interested me. I’d been looking to do further studies as I was toying with a career change. I’d even recently started another masters degree in a field I wasn’t overly familiar with but had a keen interest in – international and community development. That course was fully online too. Living in Vietnam doesn’t really give you much of a choice if you wish to further your studies. In this case it was with an Australian university but once I’d started I knew it was going to be a struggle. One, because I needed to get my head around finance, and two, the course wasn’t sufficiently supported by online courseware that promotes engagement. As an example, a week or so before the course start date, I received two substantially sized books of photocopied journal articles in the mail. The online component was to comment on these readings on the course discussion board each week culminating in a supposedly well-informed creation of some kind of community development micro-finance proposal thingy. Anyway, you guessed it – I quit.
Institutional researchers provide quantitative and qualitative information and analysis services that support things like academic planning, decision making, accreditation, and assessment for academic institutions. But the cool thing is that the knowledge and expertise gained isn’t limited to educational institutions only. This was a big drawcard for me given that I had already toyed with moving away from the education field and that I may consider moving on again in the future.
I’ve never undertaken any formal study or training in research methods mostly because I’ve never seen myself as a researcher and had very little interest in research. And with our very own in-house researcher Dr Wei Wei, the Unit had always thrown any research possibilities across the office in Wei’s direction who, being the archetypical researcher that he is, duly gobbled them up.
But with so much change underway internally and externally of the LSU, and with the realisation that Wei wasn’t going to be here forever, I thought it imperative that someone in the office skill up to fill the void if and when Wei departs. This motivated me to do something about it. As a result, this week was my first week of class in the Graduate Certificate of Institutional Research at Penn State.
Surprisingly, some may say ironically, the application process for gaining entry into this online course is far from techie or innovative as one may have thought. Penn State requested that most of the application forms be downloaded and printed out then sent as hard copies in the mail to the States. Kiss goodbye to original academic transcripts. They don’t appear to be into scanning things too much or happy with digital forms. The other tricky thing is that because Penn State has such a large student population (approx.100,000), the Graduate Centre that I dealt with clearly had trouble coping with the sheer volume of applications and enrolments. I rarely communicated with the same admin officer twice which meant I had to explain my situation repeatedly, and quite often they wanted me to call them rather than email, which is not only expensive, but inconveniencing given time differences, tiring and frustrating. Looking back, this period was quite off-putting and more than once I questioned whether I really wanted to go through with it.
On top of that, once my application had been accepted, I was trying to enrol over the Christmas/New Year period. At one stage I became so frustrated with the experience that I resorted to Twitter asking if anyone had had such complications. Within two days Penn State had tweeted back saying they were on my case. Both parties were to blame to some extent in this, but the moral of the story is that it could take anywhere between 3-6 months to get started on your course if you were to experience the same hiccups as me.
This week has been great however. I have access to everything online. The course management system used is called Angel and I would say it trumps Blackboard but only just. One thing I’ve found out though with the time difference (12 hours) is that each Saturday afternoon my time, which is 4am Pennsylvania time, Angel undergoes ‘routine maintenance’. This could prove to be a pain if I need to get hold of some urgent course info in the future.
The other thing they set me up with was a Yammer account. It has an interface similar to that of Facebook and is really simple to use. Plus, there’s an app for it so I can check it everywhere I go with my smartphone. Yammer is used for our course discussions and I can already see how useful it might be for our office. And, it’s a fantastic way to network. Although I’m not really a networker, Yammer is a great way to meet likeminded people studying the course without revealing too much about yourself to anyone.
One last thing to mention but arguably the most important is the way lectures are delivered. These are done through Adobe Connect and are called live classroom sessions. I’d never used Adobe Connect before but it worked well for my first live session recording. I was unable to attend the first one in real time, so I watched the recording of it a couple of days later. For anyone who’s used Echo360 it’s similar to that where you have streaming of the presenter, in my case two presenters, with a slideshow presentation. I still haven’t worked out how to enlarge the video screens yet – currently they’re a bit too small for me. The other thing is that when you watch a recorded classroom session and then pause it, the video is inclined to go back to the very beginning when you click on play again and doesn’t respond well to toggling back to where you had paused.
Nevertheless, I’m looking forward to participating in my first live session on the 30th of January to see how user-friendly Adobe Connect is. So far the course co-ordinator has been awesome in giving me every opportunity to participate in these sessions, which means a lot when being a part of an online community can be potentially isolating and lonely. In this case, it’s nice to know that someone is keeping an eye on my online presence, which is contrary to how I usually feel. The scheduled live classroom sessions start at 8am my time which is not suitable for me, but my co-ordinator has arranged for them to take place an hour earlier so that I can participate before I head off to work. They’re only an hour long so it shouldn’t be too much for me to handle at the start of my day. Let’s wait and see.
Wish me luck!
My evaluation of Penn State and my course so far:
Hits: Well organised lecturers; Yammer; live classroom sessions; well organised syllabus; flexibility of delivery; Angel course management system looks better than Blackboard; networking opportunities; course looks very practical
Misses: Archaic application & enrolment processes; time differences; Penn State online doesn’t have an app (as far as I know); Webmail is ugly and clunky (not Google); cost over $USD2,000 per course
The LSU Top 5 #58
This is the 58th of our top 5 bits and pieces about education from around the internet. (Linking doesn’t mean we necessarily agree with these articles!) How Academia Resembles a Drug Gang – Alexandre Afonso The title stands alone on this one! Link Pets in the academic workplace – Times Higher Education If the purpose of […]
The LSU Top 5 #57
This is the 57th of our top 5 bits and pieces about education from around the internet. (Linking doesn’t mean we necessarily agree with these articles!) Don’t Give Up on the Lecture – The Atlantic It’s difficult to go against the grain, especially when you’re labelled as out of touch and even arrogant or undemocratic […]
The LSU Top 5 #56
This is the 56th of our top 5 bits and pieces about education from around the internet. (Linking doesn’t mean we necessarily agree with these articles!) The King of MOOCs Abdicates the Throne – Slate It seems the hype over massive open online courses is being tempered. Two years ago, he was predicting that MOOCs […]
The LSU Top 5 #56
This is the 56th of our top 5 bits and pieces about education from around the internet. (Linking doesn’t mean we necessarily agree with these articles!) Typography Book Explores What It Feels Like To Have Dyslexia – Huffington Post Noticing that dyslexia education seemed entirely focused on helping dyslexics to read better, Sam Barclay […]
The LSU Top 5 #55
This is the 55th of our top 5 bits and pieces about education from around the internet. (Linking doesn’t mean we necessarily agree with these articles!) World’s top 100 universities for producing millionaires – Times Higher Education Here’s a league table that cuts straight to the chase: which university creates the most millionaires? Link Freshman […]
The LSU Top 5 #54
This is the 54th of our top 5 bits and pieces about education from around the internet.
(Linking doesn’t mean we necessarily agree with these articles!)
Are You Competent? Prove It: Degrees Based on What You Can Do, Not How Long You Went – NY Times
This article looks at a new (renewed?) push for competency- rather than time-based degrees. That is, instead of requiring students to attend class for a semester before taking a test, students can instead learn at their own pace and, when they’re ready, demonstrate that have mastered the required outcomes/competencies.
The Lumina Foundation has been one of the champions of the approach. Jamie P. Merisotis, president and chief executive, says the rationale is not just lower cost but better education. “The time-centered system says if you take the coursework, get passing grades and meet our academic standards, you get the degree,” he said. “Competency is a student-centered, learning-outcome-based model. Where you get the education is secondary to what you know and are able to do.”
Others are less in favour of the changes:
“It’s a red flag to me, the idea that this is going to be more personalized, more flexible, more accountable to the consumer,” [Amy E. Slaton, a professor of history at Drexel University,] says. “If you are from a lower socioeconomic status, you have this new option that appears to cost less than a traditional bachelor’s degree, but it’s not the same product. I see it as a really diminished higher education experience for less money, and yet disguised as this notion of greater access.”
Still room for learning skills, then!
South Korea’s education system: The great decompression – The Economist
South Korean students dream of being recruited by one of the few big firms, called chaebol, that drive their country’s economic development. With competition so intense, preparation is pushed back even into early childhood education. There are high costs for this phenomenon, such as great psychological strain on the youngsters and a low birth rate due to the expense of education. A few solutions are suggested in the article.
Vietnam levies cash fine on exam cheaters – Tuoi Tre News
The Vietnamese government has just issued a decree to allow for fines of up to 20 million VND for breaking education rules, such as cheating, sitting exams for others, abusing students or hiring under-qualified teachers.
Link
When College Students Have an Audience, Does Their Writing Improve? – Ed Tech Magazine
This article looks at how giving students an audience – a real one, not a hypothetical one – can improve their writing and learning. The author interviews an English professor on what has and hasn’t worked for her in finding this audience for her students.
Educators doubt int’l joint programs using Vietnamese translation – Tuoi Tre News
Educators warned students about the quality of international joint masters and doctoral programmes because of their easy entrance requirements – both for students’ academic and English backgrounds. Even non-English speaking students can gain admission to such programs offered through partnerships between Vietnamese and foreign universities, with students allowed to hire translators and complete thesis defences in Vietnamese.
Bonus #6!
7 Awkward Places You Could Be Meeting With Your Professor This Semester – Buzzfeed
You like gifs, don’t you? Because all the answers are animated.
We love hearing your thoughts on these articles, so feel free to comment below!
The LSU Top 5 #53
This is the 53rd of our top 5 bits and pieces about education from around the internet.
(Linking doesn’t mean we necessarily agree with these articles!)
Nick Brown Smelled Bull – Narratively
A plucky amateur dared to question a celebrated psychological finding. He wound up blowing the whole theory wide open.
A 50 year old first year part-time positive psychology Master’s student saw some maths that didn’t add up (so to speak) in a prominent paper. Cooperating with two academics, he wrote a detailed response that tore apart the paper’s findings. The resistance he and his collaborators encountered on the way and the total wrongness of the initial findings raise questions about just how much we should trust academic findings.
Are we teaching ourselves our degree? – The Guardian
University students are expected to learn independently. But where do their tuition fees go when their courses consists of little more than independent learning?
…guidelines should be put in place to ensure that all students receive adequate direct contact time. Interactive learning with successful academics cannot be replaced by independently learning from textbooks.
The Decline of Wikipedia – MIT Technology Review
This article looks at some major problems that Wikipedia has faced in the past few years, and the prospects for solutions to turn things back around.
In their paper on those findings, the researchers suggest updating Wikipedia’s motto, “The encyclopedia that anyone can edit.” Their version reads: “The encyclopedia that anyone who understands the norms, socializes him or herself, dodges the impersonal wall of semi-automated rejection and still wants to voluntarily contribute his or her time and energy can edit.”
Universities told to strictly examine lecturers’ degrees – Vietnam Net
There have been several cases of counterfeit degrees being used to apply for lectureships in Vietnam. It seems the shortage of lecturers results in lowering requirements for candidates and substandard procedures in checking the authenticity of their profiles.
Welcome, Freshmen. You Don’t Deserve to Be Here. – The Chronicle of Higher Education
This is an imaginary convocation speech to Stanford University first year students that in no uncertain terms puts them in their place, telling them that admission doesn’t necessarily make them worthy of the university.
We love hearing your thoughts on these articles, so feel free to comment below!
The LSU Top 5 #52
52! A year! Or it would be if we hadn’t missed a week, so it’s a year and a week of our top 5 bits and pieces about education from around the internet.
(Linking doesn’t mean we necessarily agree with these articles!)
Asia’s parents suffering ‘education fever’ – BBC News
You can have too much of a good thing. This article covers the ways in which parents are perhaps putting too much pressure on students in a lot of Asian countries.
“It is not easy to dampen education fever. In South Korea as in other East Asian countries, “it is deeply embedded in the culture. It’s also based on reality that there is no alternative pathway to success or a good career other than a prestige degree, this was true 50 years ago, and it’s just as true today”.
“As long as that’s the case it’s actually rational for parents to spend so much and put so much pressure on their children,” said Prof Seth.
This picture shows how many exams a Chinese student took in three years of high school.
http://i.imgur.com/njulvZq.jpg
If your Chinese is up to scratch, there’s a TV piece to go with it (link).
TMI From Professors – Inside Higher Ed
Professors are sometimes advised to connect with their students to make them engaged in classes by telling self-deprecating jokes or sharing life stories. However, a recent study suggested that there should be limits to this teaching approach, with such informality reducing the perceived credibility of the teacher, leading to student behaviour that is less conducive to learning.
Students for hire in Vietnamese schools – Dan Tri International
Too busy to go to class, but want a degree? Pay someone 100,000VND (US$4.80) or less and they’ll pass you the notes.
Nguyen Hong Hanh, who works in the media sector, said, “I’m busy with work during the daytime and then my kids at night, yet I still need time to study for a second degree, so I need some help. I pay VND80,000 per class and additional fees for phone calls and lunches. I only come to class to take tests.”
Check out some requests and offers (in Vietnamese) for ‘class attending services’ on Facebook (link).
Beyond learning styles – The Brilliant Report
The idea of learning styles isn’t as fashionable as it once was, having been quite thoroughly debunked.
While students do have preferences about how they learn, the evidence shows they absorb information just as well whether or not they encounter it in their preferred mode…All learners benefit when information is put forth in diverse ways that engage a multitude of the senses.
This isn’t to say that things shouldn’t be mixed up a bit. The author encourages teachers to focus on the ‘universal learning style of the human mind’, where novelty and different learning approaches help everyone. She also suggests that teachers focus more on whether students are surface, strategic or deep learners rather than look at the traditional distinction of kinaesthetic, auditory or visual.
We love hearing your thoughts on these articles, so feel free to comment below!
The LSU Top 5 #51
We missed last week, but we’re back with the 51st of our top 5 bits and pieces about education from around the internet.
(Linking doesn’t mean we necessarily agree with these articles!)
SparkNotes – Exploring the Matrix
I’m pretty open about the fact that summaries, like those on Wikipedia, are a decent place to start researching. This article does a good job of explaining why reading should never stop (and maybe not even start) there.
It is the very experience of reading great literature that is the point of university courses which assign such texts for you to read. Tests that ask about details in readings are means to ensure reading is done and to evaluate comprehension. But the details asked about on the test are not the point. The reading itself is the point.
Don’t be that dude: Handy tips for the male academic – Tenure She Wrote
The title says it all. There are some new things for me here so it’s worth a read and some thought.
Graduate school vice chancellor found plagiarizing PhD thesis – Tuoi Tre
The PhD and professorship might be revoked from Hoang Xuan Que, vice president of the School of Banking and Finance, after it was found that his PhD was ~30% plagiarised.
Top 5 major economies with “corrupt” education systems – Times Higher Education
The Global Corruption Barometer 2013 for G20 major economies shows that the Mexican, Indonesian, Japanese, Indian and Russian education systems are, in increasing order, most corrupt. The report suggests that the lower public investment in the higher education system facilitates corruption worldwide.
The Predator Press Scam – Writing Wrongs
This article describes a scam in which students are flattered with offers to publish their work. The only catch is that the dodgy publications will offer no credibility to their work or their CV, they’ll lose the rights to their work, and the student will see none of the potential financial returns.
We love hearing your thoughts on these articles, so feel free to comment below!
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