Higher Education Observer

That is the title of a book I am going to write when I finish my doctoral program.  It will be based on my research.  I am interviewing college professors about their self-directed learning and how they learn to be better teachers.  So far I have only interviewed ones at my college, but I will spread out eventually, at least in the state.  It's fascinating research, but the transcription is miserable. If any college professors would like to be interviewed for this book or research, please contact me through this blog and we can set up a Skype or Google hangout.  

I have finished four semesters of my Ed.D. program in Adult Education.  Some observations. It is an eclectic field. I wish there was more about the brain and brain science in this field.  We use the brain to learn. Some of it is far too New Agey for me and I just "bracket" that (code word for "ignore"). I am annoyed by the assumption that liberal politics is the only politics.  These are people who depend on the government for sustenance, so how dare the politicians demand cuts! I find most of it fascinating.  

I am a novelist.  Novelists create intricate, detailed worlds of characters, spaces, actions; fantasy novelists create a cosmos with its rules about magic; science fiction novelists create the "what if" based on physics no one can understand.  I am currently reading Ender's Game and encountering such world creation. I bring that intricate world creation to my classroom and I have recently decided that is not such a good thing.  It means more work for me and confusion for the students. Consequently, my goal for the new academic year is to simplify my teaching.  For example, I am teaching English 1101.  The departmental syllabus requires six essays and gives the teacher discretion about how much of the class can be homework and daily participation.  I have decided that only 5% will be and I will not grade a lot of quizzes and homework.  I have also decided that I will progressively grade essays--look for Type I errors on the first, Type Is and some ...

I believe I am allowed to plagiarize myself.  This is also posted to my other blog. In the Ed.D. program I am pursuing, it is an interesting, sometimes baffling, mixture of touchy-feely procedures and hard core empiricism.  That is ultimately a good thing, although I have had some trouble fitting into both categories at once.  I can do positivistic social sciences thinking; that's what my first master's was immersed in.  I can do liberal arts, reflective, hermeneutical thinking; that's the second master's.  But doing them at the same time is another matter.  Our goal is an action research project (dissertation), which I think it is fair to say we are struggling with.  I have sent a draft of the prospectus to my advisor, but I was dissatisfied with it as soon as I hit the SEND button.  How nice it would be to retrieve emails before they are read!  No such luck. In class last Saturday we had a guest speaker, whom I will not na...

Argyris, C.   (2000).   Teaching smart people how to learn.   In Strategic learning in a knowledge economy , Cross, R. L. & Israelit, S., Eds. (pp. 279-295).   Woburn, MA:   Butterworth-Heinnemann. Aronson, L. (2011). Twelve tips for teaching reflection at all levels of medical education. Medical Teacher , 33 (3), 200-205. doi:10.3109/0142159X.2010.507714 Akyol, Z., & Garrison, D. (2011). Understanding cognitive presence in an online and blended community of inquiry: Assessing outcomes and processes for deep approaches to learning. British Journal of Educational Technology , 42 (2), 233-250. doi:10.1111/j.1467-8535.2009.01029.x Akyol, Z., Vaughan, N., & Garrison, D. (2011). The impact of course duration on the development of a community of inquiry. Interactive Learning Environments , 19 (3), 231-246. doi:10.1080/10494820902809147 Akyol, Z., & Garrison, D. (2011). Assessing metacognition in an online community of inquiry. Internet ...