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George Carlin, R.I.F.P.

2008-06-23T10:20:00.004-04:00

Fresh off of a week's worth of hagiographic logorrhea from the chattering class after the untimely death of Tim Russert comes the truly lamentable passing of George Carlin.

Now, don't get me wrong, Russert will be be missed. I found him an interesting interviewer who did occasionally ask tough questions of his interviewees despite their being his colleagues in the political/media elite.

The loss of Carlin, however, is truly a shame. I know him more from his recent work, as the goofy Archbishop in Dogma and in the work he did for kid's entertainment, like narrating Thomas the Tank Engine stories and playing the voice of Fillmore the spacey VW bus in Cars -- yes, I have a three year old son.

I'm aware, however, that long before this Carlin was a free speech pioneer, that his "Seven Words You Can Never Say On TV" routine dragged all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, leading, unfortunately, to one of their many failures to defend individual liberties. But he didn't always lose, and comedians have cited him as an influence and inspiration ever since. Carlin's sort of iconoclasm is vital for avoiding a descent into authoritarian stagnation. He'll be missed.

Narrowed back down to one

2008-03-31T10:33:00.007-04:00

So as I take the last courses for my Master's I've come to terms with something that's really important to my academic future: When it comes to doctoral work, I'm just not interested in doing another huge chunk of coursework. I'd really rather do some research. That's a big deal, because it means that all the American programs I've considered are off the table, as would be the program at Leicester. In fact, the only one left that I was considering that's conducive to that is working with Johannes at Cape Peninsula University of Technology. But maybe it's good that I've come full circle on this -- I like Johannes a lot, we have compatible interests, he's interested in working with me, and it's the least expensive option by an order of magnitude. What reason to keep looking could there be?

It's unfortunate that that trip to Cape Town I mentioned last year ended up getting scrubbed, meaning I didn't get the chance to visit CPUT. Still, I've never even been to the school where I finished my BS and can count on one hand the number of times I've been to GW, so that's not really that big a deal. It would still be nice to check it out, though, if I get the chance, especially since Johannes seemed so hospitable when I thought I was going to be in town. Maybe later....

Fool's gold?

2008-03-07T12:32:00.003-05:00

Adella and I were recently discussing what currency we'd use for our savings once we hopefully soon can start to accumulate a little. We talked about the practicalities of having a savings account denominated in euros, pounds, or gold (all of which it turns out are essentially impossible with U.S. banks). So right as we were doing that, my Mom forwards me an article from her broker out of the blue arguing against the continued rise of the price of gold.

It reminded me how, because of my prior involvement in online gold-based payment systems, there were a few years there where I would occasionally be asked whether I thought gold was a smart thing to buy. Why they asked me and not some with actual money, I can't say. But I remember always making the same two points:

No matter how clever their analyses may seem, no one really knows what the price of gold is going to do.
Anyone who tries to convince you that they really know what the price gold is going to do is at best mistaken and at worst trying to deceive you into buying something.

The author's point about gold ETFs is a good one, but it's not like mutual funds that track gold haven't existed before that, or just stocks like Freeport MacMoRan.

Moreover, if I had to guess, I'd say that the combination of a growing middle class in India, China, Malaysia, and elsewhere, where there's a strong cultural inclination toward gold as a store of value, combined with the inflation I expect we'll be seeing here in the U.S. for some time to come, means that $1,000 will not be some sort of magic ceiling for gold.

But then, that's just my guess. See point number one.

If you don't get it, you don't get it

2008-01-26T14:48:00.000-05:00

Meet Jorge Cham. He's the creator of "Piled Higher and Deeper", a comic strip about life in graduate school. He's also a cartoonist who's found some success publishing his work through a web site rather than the traditional format of a daily newspaper. One might think that this would lead him to be more receptive to the idea that using the Internet as a vehicle for education is a sign of increased flexibility rather than decreased rigor.

Unfortunately, if one of his recent cartoons is any indication, this is not so. Given the gratuitous use of the word "online" and that the name of the school mentioned is a mix of "Walden" and "Capella", it seems the strip shows more how Dr. Cham feels about online education than about degree mills. Moreover, Walden and Capella are also a conspicuous pair in that they're both prominent proprietary institutions. So it seems his naysaying would also be broad enough also to include on-campus programs at other such institutions, such as the University of Phoenix.

One often sees truly insightful commentary from the best cartoonists. In this case, however, it seems that as with too many others in higher education, Dr. Cham does not understand the difference between academic rigor and mere inflexibility. For an online cartoonist to instead deliver a tired kneejerk salute to "That's the way we've always done it" is a real disappointment.

Yes, but can you really learn that way?

2008-01-22T19:36:00.001-05:00

So, the last step before applying to any of these doctoral programs, is, of course, to finish the Master's degree. I have two courses to go, but now that I work at Marymount I figured I'd rather take two courses there for free this term and transfer them back to GW to wrap things up rather than pay to take courses at GW, however good they may be.

So because of my concern about using too much leave, and because GW was concerned that the course I was going to take might be too similar to another I've already taken, I found an alternative, a nice course called "Cross-cultural/International Curricula" that, while occurring in a classroom rather than online, is still also an extremely good match for my interests. I sent the syllabus to my faculty advisor at GW, Ryan Watkins, and his response in part was:

Given the situation this sounds like a fine choice to me... it does have a nice match with your long-term interests. My only disappointment with the syllabus is that it will be a campus-based course. Can you really learn in that archaic format? Do they have to check your ID to make sure that it is really you coming to class? Can people really learn with out continuous access to the Web? Hahahahaaaa

It's certainly nice to see butt-in-seat learning get some of the same undeserved criticism that distance learning gets for a change! Of course, at the same time, I'm also glad Ryan approved the course, you know, despite his reservations.

Reflecting on Thanksgiving

2007-11-23T09:16:00.000-05:00

Four or five months ago, Adella and I stopped eating not just meat, but also almost all animal products, such as eggs and dairy. We also started cycling out everything we had that was made from leather, wool, and other animal-based materials. Vegan, for those who know what is. I'd say Ital, but since even vegan food here in the States that doesn't have all sorts of fake crap in it is more expensive, I can't call it that.

Since then we've lost some weight and generally feel a little healthier, but our real reason was that we were aware of and just couldn't keep not considering the truly wretched lives and hideous deaths suffered by animals used for meat, eggs, dairy, wool, and other products. Since we don't need that to live, we decided that in the interest of compassion that we would do without them.

Adapting our diet hasn't actually been all that difficult. What's been more interesting has been the responses from other people. I didn't make it a point to bring it up with other people, not being much of a proselytizer, but eat with or near other people and eventually it comes up. What we've noticed is that people are sometimes simply indifferent, but surprisingly often are hostile, making sarcastic comments, or asking in an annoyed tone whether we're "still doing that". It may seem strange, but I've received more negativity explaining to people that I'm vegan than I ever have telling mentioning that I'm an anarchist.

So anyway, yesterday was the American holiday of Thanksgiving, which commemorates the "first Thanksgiving" in Massachusetts where the Pilgrims (English settlers) and Wampanoag tribe had a big festival together. The modern observance of it is centered on thanking God, having a huge meal at which eating turkey is the centerpiece, and remembering importance of the Pilgrims in American history. So all this got me thinking exactly which aspects of this holiday really still apply to me at this point.

Let's start with God. While what I think on that probably deserves its own post, the executive summary is that I don't believe in one. That doesn't mean that I'm an atheist, since my problem is that I don't have enough information to draw a conclusion, but I'm pretty skeptical. It also doesn't mean that I think people who believe in a god or gods are all fools. I just think that history suggests that organized religion ends up being more about the organization than the religion. Anyway, with a holiday like Thanksgiving, it raises the question of thanks to whom.

Then there are the Pilgrims. European colonization of the Americas didn't exactly consist of a long list of virtuous acts, and I have to wonder how things might have gone had the Wampanoag and other tribes recognized the threat and resisted contact with this bringers of war, alcohol, pestilence, and death. And maybe it's from listening to Jay Winter Nightwolf on the radio, or maybe it's from the history reading I've been doing since recently taking on a course design/teaching gig at LCO Ojibwe Community College, but a legacy that would make the Nazis blush just doesn't seem like something to commemorate.

And turkey's obviously out, of course. So what's left? Well, this year it was unseasonably warm for this late in the year (Native American Summer, if you will), and we went with Mom, my sister Abi and her family into town to drop by the Smithsonian, let Noah and his little cousin run around on the Mall, see a few of the strange monstrosities in the sculpture garden, and ultimately return to Mom's house for dinner. And while Mom thinks our vegan lifestyle is weird, she's supportive in not adding dairy or egg ingredients to things other than turkey so that we can still eat them. She even tried the tofurkey that we brought. It wasn't all blissful, since this year it was my ex's turn to have the three older kids, but it was pretty good.

So they're what's left when God, history, and turkey are taken out of the equation. Family is still there, and in the end, that's all that really mattered anyway.

Fair Use as a Complement to Open Licensing

2007-11-14T11:06:00.000-05:00

Penn State World Campus has a great discussion series on open source software and open educational resources called Terra Incognita. I've written a piece for it on Fair Use as a Complement to Open Licensing. Feel free to check it out.

New Mexico may bite the dust here

2007-10-30T10:25:00.000-04:00

A number of interesting opportunities to travel have been coming my way, so I've been figuring out how I'm going to sort out how much annual leave I have with how much traveling I want to do. Get this:

Marymount is offering a class that I could use as my last Master's elective. The course takes place over a single week in March, all day for five days. I'd have to use a week of leave to attend it, but that's one course out of the way at pretty much the fastest possible speed. Plus it's a course in Technology Leadership that looks genuinely interesting.
Heather Ford of iCommons emailed me asking whether I can come to Johannesburg early next year for a gathering of people who will plan next summer's iSummit.
Wayne Mackintosh has suggested that the WikiEducator Advisory Board should meet early next year in Nairobi, Kenya.
PCF5 will be in London in July.
The 2008 iCommons Summit will be in Sapporo in August.
I'd been considering New Mexico State University, but I'll need two weeks of leave to do their summer residency.

Now, when I went to Croatia, I didn't have to use leave, but that was sort of nice of my supervisor here. I don't expect that items 4 and 5 are both going to be leave-free trips this time around.

It also occurs to me that even if can sort out all these things, I only get two weeks of leave a year, so if I do the NMSU program then barring a change of diurnal activity I will use annual leave for nothing else until 2011.

I don't want to give up on a doctoral program but I also don't want to give up on the work I'm doing through WikiEducator or iCommons. A friend of mine has a colorful way of describing situations like this: "I'm holding a red stick in this hand, and a blue stick in this hand. I'm going to hit you with one of these sticks, but, hey, you get to pick which one."

So I'm trying to decide with which stick I want to be hit, basically. I've only used one day of leave since I got here, and I get just ten days per year (Oh, to be French!) so if I take a normal course rather than that week-long one and take NMSU off the list of consideration in favor of zero-residence (or local) doctoral programs, then between this year and next year I have nineteen days of leave to sort out all the other trips. That I think I could do. Still, sheesh!

Snapshot of Academic Legitimacy Positions

2007-09-27T15:39:00.000-04:00

I enjoy posting to various forums that cover distance learning and academic legitimacy. Different forums on this subject attract people with different perspectives, some where the dominant view is that only regional accreditation is good enough ("RA or no way"), and others where most people believe that so long as a program is operating legally, it's okay.

I participate mostly on forums that tend toward the former position, but as I've thought about these issues, and that thinking has evolved over time, I thought I'd offer a snapshot of what I think now. I've changed my mind about some things, so this may differ from some things I've written in the past. I may change my mind again, so this may differ from some things I'll write in the future. Still, here goes:

Regional accreditation is not the only legitimate sort. There's nothing wrong with the CHEA approved national (including faith-based) accreditors. There are also institutions that are only state approved (i.e., unaccredited) that are legitimate as well. All other things being equal, it's better to have credentials from a regionally accredited institution than a nationally accredited or unaccredited one because of perceptions in the marketplace. It's rarely that simple, however, in that all other things are rarely equal. I've had the opportunity to practice what I'm preaching here, in that last year I convinced the administration at Southeastern University to switch from a policy of only accepting regionally accredited transfer credit to also accepting nationally accredited transfer credit.
At the same time, I don't think it should be a federal requirement that all institutions accredited by a CHEA approved agency should have to accept all credit from all others. This isn't because I think that nationally accredited institutions are bad, but because I don't think that's any of Uncle Sam's business.
Proprietary institutions are not inherently worse than non-profit or public ones. However, since many people perceive that they are, it makes their credentials less valuable, and all other things being equal, credentials from a non-profit or public institution are better to have on one's resume. (In this case, all other things often are reasonably equal, outside of specializations like test piloting, I can't think of a program offered by a proprietary school that's not offered by a public school at the same price or less.)
Just because another country's Ministry of Education approves of an institution in their country doesn't mean it's legitimate. This is the GAAP theory of international education, and while it's a reasonable rule of thumb, it's the start of the process, not the end of it. At the same time I've seen some people respond to universities from small and/or poor countries with kneejerk skepticism, and I find that's unwarranted.
About a year ago, I wrote the following throwaway comment on a forum:

"If I were one of those lucky/smart guys who had a lot of money and not enough to do with it, I think I'd start a Center for Academic Credential Integrity and hire a few people to do nothing but scout out those who have bogus credentials and inform local media and board of trustees of the scandals in their midst."

In retrospect, this is one of the more obnoxious things I've ever said, and I withdraw it. In reality, I wouldn't do any such thing.

So that's where I stand at this point.

Dither, Dither, Yon and Thither

2007-09-18T11:04:00.000-04:00

So as if things weren't already muddled enough, I got an email out of the blue yesterday from the Education department at New Mexico State University. They have a PhD program in Curriculum and Instruction that has emphases in social justice and instructional technology, which means that they'd probably be a good fit with my interests in open educational resources and international education. They also offer in state rates to out of state students not taking more than six credit-hours per term, around which this program seems purposefully designed, making it less expensive than to do a program at George Mason University or the University of Virginia -- the only local options still on the table.

They also require two-week residencies on their main campus in Las Cruces for three summers in a row. I'm of two minds on this. On the one had, that's six credit hours in two weeks, which it pretty motivating. That also means that out of forty-eight credits, more than one third are earned in a classroom, which ought to make it more palatable to those who are biased against distance learning. On the other hand, that's an inconvenient amount of time away from home, and I'd have to see how my supervisor would feel about what kind of leave I would use. (My preference, of course, would be administrative leave rather than annual leave.)

But anyway, it's yet another program to consider. For those who came in late, that means I'm up to five, in no particular order:

Doctor of Technology program, Cape Peninsula University of Technology (South Africa)
PhD in Curriculum and Instruction, New Mexico State University
Doctor of Social Science in Human Resource Development, University of Leicester (UK)
PhD in Cultural Studies, George Mason University (Northern Virginia)
EdD in Administration and Supervision, University of Virginia

They're all very different from one another, and they all have very different pros and cons. I've been fine with that, since it wasn't nearly time to apply, but now that's changing and I'm going to have to stop dithering and start really deciding.

The Longer and Windier Road

2007-09-15T10:16:00.000-04:00

So this semester I was supposed to take my last two courses at GW, but a number of things that have happened at the last minute have changed my approach a little.

One thing is that I discovered that the University of Leicester has a doctoral program in Human Resource Development that looks like it's about halfway between education and business. Since my ultimate interests are about halfway between education and business, that's a program that has my attention. It doesn't hurt that it's only £11250, which even with the U.S. dollar in the gutter is only about $22,500. Now, that's a lot more than the program at Cape Peninsula University of Technology, but it's on par with the least expensive American or British programs. Leicester also evidently participates in the U.S. financial aid system, suggesting I could defer my existing loans while a student with them and take out more to cover tuition. Leicester is also a top 25 university in the UK, and a top 200 university in the world, which means it ranks higher even than GW, from where my Master's will ultimately come.

So how does that affect what courses I take to complete my Master's? Well, I need Instructional Design and one other course to finish up. I can take courses at Marymount for free and GW will accept them in transfer. Instructional Design at Marymount is in the Human Resource Management department, and there are a variety of other Human Resource Management courses that should transfer as my final elective. If I take these courses instead of the ones at GW, I stand a better chance of Leicester accepting my Master's as sufficient preparation for entry into their program (should I ultimately decided to apply to them).

It's not a downside to me that these courses will start in January, rather than GW ones that would start now. This semester will be a busy one for me at Marymount, so a little more breathing room will be helpful. Besides, I still need to do my comps, and now I can focus on them and take them this semester without also worrying about other courses.

So that's the longer and windier road as it stands now....

Grad School Back in the Crosshairs

2007-08-14T22:04:00.000-04:00

I signed up for my final two Master's courses at George Washington University yesterday. I've waited two extra semesters for them to be available and they're the last two courses for me. I look forward to having them finally done by mid-December and being able to concentrate what time I have for study entirely on doctoral work.

Speaking of, in an interesting twist to the story my prospective doctoral supervisor at the University of Pretoria isn't at the University of Pretoria anymore. Johannes has taken up the post of Dean of Informatics at Cape Peninsula University of Technology in Cape Town. I gather that as a university recently formed from the merger of the Cape Town area's two technikons that CPUT isn't as well known as the more established universities. However, Johannes seems keen to shift their emphasis from exclusively teaching to research, and he's suggested I work their e-Innovation Academy, which is geared toward the intersection of technology, business, government, and society.

Conveniently, I'll be in Cape Town next month for a meeting of OER practitioners sponsored by the Shuttleworth Foundation and by going a little early I get to meet Johannes in person and check out his new surroundings. It should be interesting!

Covering the Public Domain's Back

2007-08-13T12:57:00.000-04:00

One of the things I found surprising about international law was that it's not always possible, or at least easy, for an author to place his or her work into the public domain. There are civil law countries in which so-called moral rights cannot be waived. This has been an issue for me, in that I wish to promote dedication to the public domain as the most practical way of releasing content that can be used, copied, distributed, and remixed without any possibility of conflict.

Now Dave Wiley of the OpenContent Foundation has proposed a license that reserves no rights at all. In other words, it's a license the terms of which are functionally identical to a public domain dedication but with a completely different legal basis. While I'm not a lawyer, it seems to me that if other open licenses (such as those from Creative Commons) are valid throughout the world than this approach would be an ideal complement to a public domain dedication. For jurisdictions that recognize an author's right to disclaim intellectual entitlements, the public domain dedication would apply. For those that do not, the license would take up the slack.

My only objection is that he's referring to it as an "Open Education License", stemming from his original intention to devise a license that would prevent incompatible copyleft provisions from keeping content segregated in separate unremixable silos. He's right that this is a pressing issue for the open education movement, but I think that this license has much broader potential than for just educational materials, and hope that he ends up selecting a more generic name for it as discussion on the matter continues.

Excuse my French

2007-08-12T12:24:00.000-04:00

There's a lot of discussion in the free culture movement about the two definitions of "free" that we use to describe our work. Summarized well by Wikipedia, the definitions are often described as:

"Free as in beer", or gratis, where those using free content or software don't have to pay any money to do so; and
"Free as in freedom", or libre, where those using free content or software have the right to make derivative works.

What I find interesting are the suggestions to use the words gratis and libre to make this differentiation clear. The argument is that it's necessary to borrow these words from French because there aren't separate words in English that denote these different meanings of freedom.

Whatever flaws the English language may have, however, a stilted vocabulary is not among them. Rather than import more words, why not simply use ones we already have? Specifically, I suggest that free as in beer can be described as costless, and free as in freedom can be described as unencumbered. They're accurate, unambiguous, and already present in English. Let's use them!

Goals for the Free Culture Movement

2007-06-29T12:13:00.000-04:00

Over at Free Culture, Kevin Driscoll has asked people to write a brief bit on how they see the world being different after five more years of the free culture movement. While I appreciate the artistic creativity of multimedia mashups and the like, my concerns are mostly in the open education part of the free culture movement. So in keeping with that, I'll briefly set forth three goals and add some explanation.

Goals

Commonality Goal: We as an open education movement will have drafted a declaration of commonalities similar to the Budapest Open Access Initiative, and that policymakers will have begun to sign on to it.

OER Output Goal: At least in the English language and hopefully others, we will have made significant progress toward the goal of a set of free curricula in all disciplines at the primary, secondary, and tertiary levels.

Diversity Goal: There will be an expectation throughout the open education movement that open educational resources (OERs) will be available not just in English, but whatever languages on instruction parents and students think best, and that different societies with different contexts will be able to localize content to suit their needs.

Narrative

The recent iCommons Summit in Dubrovnik, Croatia was well represented by different segments of the open education movement, and one of our conclusions was that we would like to take the main points on which we all agree in time for next year's Summit in Sapporo so that we can walk away from there having drafted a Sapporo Declaration.

Having a complete set of free curricula in all disciplines at all levels by 2015 is a goal of WikiEducator, a Commonwealth of Learning project. I think that it's possible, but that it will be difficult and will require momentum now. Eight years may sound like a long time, but it really isn't.

The output and diversity goals may seem to be putting in opposite directions a bit, and to some extent I suppose they are. It will be challenging enough to have a single set of curricula by 2015, much less have localized variations. Still, I can see that we as a movement will have to balance these objectives.

The "Playlist" Model of Course Development: Using Closed Content to make Open Courses

2007-06-28T11:43:00.000-04:00

Note: The following was published in the 2007 iCommons Annual, although it appeared there in a much more colourful and polished fashion. Kudos to Rebecca Kahn for it coming out looking so fantastic!

Introduction

Much of the discussion surrounding the development of open educational resources has revolved around the development of open content, whether in the public domain or released under a permissive license such as the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license.

An alternative approach, best suited for developing online courses, is the model of courses as "playlists". This model builds an open educational resource by referring to materials that are available online. For example, a course could be built as a sequence of readings, video clips, and other materials that while proprietary and closed, still cost the student nothing to view online. These can then be combined with lecture notes and quizzes that are developed specifically to tie the disparate elements of the course together.

The purpose of this is to retain as much of the freedom of open educational resources as possible, while also taking advantage of the vast wealth of proprietary closed materials. The cost to the student remains zero, and the course itself can be released as an open educational resource, free for all to use, copy, and modify.

OpenCourseWare from MIT

One example of this model is the OpenCourseWare (OCW) project from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Widely praised as one of the premier initiatives developing open educational resources, the lion’s share of the project’s output consists of courses that are made up of a syllabus and related lecture notes. Typically, the syllabus will specify a commercial textbook that accompanies the course, and the student will gain most of his or her instruction from reading the textbook. The lecture notes, tests, and other course materials serve the secondary purposes of elaborating key points and evaluating the student’s retention of the material.

A typical OCW course is thus similar to the playlist model in that it refers to an external resource, in this case various chapters of a commercial textbook, which are used during the instruction phase of each unit of the course.

Playlists: The Next Step

While the MIT model is a step in the right direction, most of its courses still rely on expensive commercial textbooks to cover the bulk of the course’s material. To take the model to its logical conclusion, the course designer must start with the syllabus as an outline, and select from among various articles and other online resources so that for each lesson an appropriate resource is covering the material to be learnt.

For example, a course designer might begin by creating an outline of a course divided into weeklong units. After determining the educational objective for each unit, the course designer will draw on his or her own expertise as well as those of colleagues, subject matter experts, librarians, and the like to find the best online resource to cover that material.

In addition, a variety of different materials can be assigned for each unit, thereby accommodating students who have different learning styles. For some students, a series of online encyclopedia articles may be appropriate, whereas for others a set of video clips or a Flash-powered interactive demonstration may be better for teaching the same material. In an advanced implementation, a course designer can produce multiple paths through a set of different materials, and students can be tested on their learning styles in advance, and shepherded through a playlist of course materials that are best suited for them.

Updating Playlist Model Courses

The modular design of playlist model courses brings certain advantages when it comes to keeping courses up to date. By consisting largely of smaller learning objects from disparate sources, these courses can be easily modified in keeping with a variety of objectives.

First, and most obviously, when a course covers material that changes rapidly in the real world, such as those on Finance or Accounting, or those that cover recent history, it is easy to change out a reading or other linked component than it is to rewrite an entire course. Even if a course covers material that does not change, as new online resources become available, or as those who maintain courses simply find resources of which they had hitherto been unaware, the courses can be quickly updated.

This is especially advantageous for courses that are set up as OERs, but which by necessity link to closed and proprietary resources. As OER development projects release more and more material, references to those closed resources can be changed out for references to open resources, with the ultimate goal of there being enough open resources that it is no longer useful to link to closed ones.

Responding to Anticipated Objections

Some may say that a course will have more consistency and thus be easier for a student if it is based primarily on a single text written by an author or team of authors with a unified style. However, in practice, instructors often assign secondary texts to cover important units of material, and even within a primary text will skip around in a sequence unintended by the author.

Others might argue that most of the materials available to be used in the playlist model are not intended as course materials, and thus will be pedagogically inferior to texts that are designed specifically for that purpose. However, not only is there an increasing amount of material designed for the purpose, but the inclusion of lecture notes designed specifically for the course can smooth out any rough edges that such materials might have. Furthermore, practitioner literature is increasingly available online, such as through FindArticles.com, that is used for continuing education in many fields, and academic working papers are available from several sources, such as SSRN.com.

A major objection is that this model of course development is useful for courses meant for students with access to the Internet, but is not useful for those on the far side of the digital divide. While this is correct, the model at least is of value to some, and insofar as it promotes development of open resources to replace closed ones, it ultimately builds an environment that will help those who cannot yet use the Internet.

Conclusion

Course design on a playlist model provides many of the advantages of Open Educational Resources even when a great deal of useful educational material is closed and proprietary. Such playlists are easy to build and maintain and help students today even as they serve as a catalyst for the development of new materials that all can use freely tomorrow.

I'm on BBC Caribbean!

2007-06-27T15:39:00.000-04:00

I often read BBC Caribbean, and a few days ago I saw that they had a Have Your Say about the role the diaspora can play in helping countries back home. I made a brief comment, saying, "It would be exciting to see distance learning initiatives that match those in the diaspora who have become well educated with students back home." I make brief comments online in various places all the time and don't really think much about them after that. No big deal.

So the next day, my phone rungs, and Caller ID helpfully informs me that it's from an "Unknown ID". Must be some bill collector, I think, and proceed to ignore it. But then I think, hmm, I don't actually owe anyone for a change, so it can't be a bill collector. Maybe an international call? I think I'll answer!

I picked up at the last second, and suddenly I'm speaking with Debbie Ransome (pictured) from BBC Caribbean. She wants to speak about my thoughts on the role of the Caribbean diaspora for a piece she's doing for their Caribbean Magazine radio program. Now, this was a fascinating thing to be as I'm not exactly part of the Caribbean diaspora, being American and all that, but it's not like I was going to say no, right?

So it aired yesterday. Here's an mp3 of an edited recording of my segment. It's a good thing that she used the bit about education and not the follow up questions she asked me about financial and electoral matters, as I think on education I sound reasonably coherent.

Consolidation

2007-06-25T15:42:00.000-04:00

I haven't posted anything here recently, but that's kind of a shame because there's been a lot going on. I'll have a few more posts up in a bit. I needed to put both my sites together, then set up a fresh design. I'm not entirely happy with it all, but at the same time it would be nice to get back to updating this blog, and I've been putting it off while I get everything together.

Go Tukkies!

2007-03-04T21:13:00.000-05:00

I finally had the chance to speak live (albeit only by phone) with Dr. Johannes Cronje, the fine gentleman I've been referring to as a prospective doctoral supervisor at the University of Pretoria. After that great, positive conversation, I'm willing to commit: I'll be doing my PhD through the University of Pretoria.

My reasons include:

I like my supervisor, and think we'll get on well. He's interested in my topic, open educational resources, and we seem to share a dismissive attitude toward bureaucracy. Critically, he also has a great deal of experience supervising doctoral students, including externally. (I have the feeling he's fun at parties, too.)
It's not on the North American model, so I don't need to do any coursework, other than to gain specific knowlege. I may take a course in Statistics to bone up on quantitative research methods, but I can do that for free at Marymount and that's fine with Johannes.
I can write a series of articles rather than a monograph. This interests me because I'm interested in several different aspects relating to OERs, so once I have a lit review done I'll want to go in a few directions, but doing so at article length rather than a monolithic monograph is better suited for my temperament. This is also good in that by the time I'm done I'll have at least five publishable scholarly articles.
Pretoria's on the list of the top 500 universities in the world as ranked by Shanghai Jiao Tong University. It was in the 401-500 list, which it shares with such institutions as Boston College, Drexel University, and the College of William and Mary.
It's a South African institution, which means it has the developing world perspective I want, but without the lack of resources that usually accompanies it. And since South Africa's a Commonwealth country, a degree from Pretoria ought to be locally well received when Adella and I eventually return to the West Indies.
The cost is one tenth what an American school would be. That's not to say that's how one should choose one's alma mater, but saying that saving a truckload of money didn't interest me wouldn't pass anyone's straight face test.
I won't have to go to South Africa to do this. However, I'll want to visit, should circumstances permit, say for defenses, even if they could be done by videoconferencing. And there's graduation. I haven't gone to one yet, but for the PhD, that seems worth it.

So that's where I am. I'll apply for provisional acceptance now, and start doing my literature review while finishing my courses at GW, then hopefully in January I'll be registered there. Go Tukkies!

The Waiting Game

2007-01-24T09:59:00.000-05:00

One of the problems with doing a research-based program mostly by email correspondence is that one is limited by the other person's rate of response. For example, I sent my prospective doctoral advisor an email regarding the possibility of meeting him when he comes to Atlanta next month, but have not heard back after almost a week.

I suppose emails get lost, and people are busy and respond when they can. And I realize I'm only a prospective student. But I'm reminded of a friend's experience trying to do a PhD through South Africa's University of the Witwatersrand, in which after almost a year of correspondence, suddenly there was nothing but silence from his advisor. I suppose this is a somewhat scary way of doing it.

At least in the meantime I've found even more to like about the University of Pretoria. It turns out that one of the two well known global rankings of universities, the one from the Institute of Higher Education at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, lists it among those that are 401-500 on the list. It being considered among the top 500 universities in the world is not too shabby. There are only three others in South Africa that made the top 500: Witwatersrand, Cape Town, and KwaZulu-Natal.

Anyway, back to waiting. I remind myself that it's not like Johannes owes me a quick reply or that when I sent was particularly time sensitive. I suppose it's just that I'm just excited to move forward.

And Then There's Doctoral Work

2007-01-20T22:52:00.000-05:00

I said yesterday that not everything was bad for my grad school endeavors in the last few months. The good thing that may be happening is that I've corresponded with a potential doctoral research advisor.

See, I knew way back when I was going back to finish my Bachelor's that I was starting a long road that would culminate with a PhD. I know that may make it seem like I'm a glutton for punishment, or that I'm taking going back to school to an unreasonable extreme, but my goal is to be able to start my own institution, or at least to be able to consult on distance learning, and that pretty much means a PhD is a requirement.

The next question was where. Doing my Master's through George Washington University was an easy choice, as it had an unbeatable combination of ideal subject matter, high prestige, and low cost. There was no obvious doctoral program, though. At some point in the last two years I've considered all of the following:

The insanely expensive Executive Doctor of Education in Higher Ed Management at the University of Pennsylvania. Sure there's a $100,000 price tag, but it's an Ivy League school and it's ranked seventh among U.S. graduate schools of education. Moreover, the entire program can be completed start to finish in two years -- including dissertation. Ultimately I succumbed to sticker shock. Some people may have their employers helping them pay for that program. I would not.

Staying on and getting an EdD through George Washington. The thing is that the tuition rate for that program would be a lot higher than what I'm paying for my Master's there, and my total would ultimately be something like fifty grand. That's still a lot of debt to incur, especially with four kids who themselves will be starting college in just eight years.

The local state school, George Mason University, has a PhD in International Education. Total debt incurred on this one would be about twenty to twenty-five grand, still a lot, but less obscene than some other options.

One major problem with all of these is that they'd require me to darken the door of a classroom again. Sure, I'm burned out for now, but I'm mostly tired of coursework that desn't pertain to my interests. Besides, I like distance learning and don't really want to go back to the hassle of parking in remote lots and running through the rain to try not to be late for class. Unfortunately, in the U.S. that doesn't leave a lot of good options. All of the American institutions I could find that had PhD programs in Education by distance learning were (1) the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, which is inexpensive and well regarded, but has little track record with my particular research interests; (2) Fielding Graduate University, which is expensive and also has little track record with my particular research interests; (3) evangelical schools like Liberty University (Jerry Falwell is not my cup of tea); or (4) poorly regarded for-profit institutions that I wouldn't want my CV to touch with a bargepole.

Fortunately, unlike many Americans, I'm aware that the world doesn't stop at the border. Because of my inclination toward seeing what foreign systems have to offer, I found that there are a number of universities in South Africa that are ridiculously inexpensive because of the rand being so devalued even compared with the U.S. dollar, yet are well regarded internationally. Better yet, having come from the European model, doctoral programs consist of the dissertation only, and do not involve all the coursework that is attendant with American programs. Given that my research interest involves developing world issues, I also appreciated the potential usefulness of studying through a university that, while having developed world standards and resources, is itself in a developing country. I also found that there were more people interesting in Open Educational Resources internationally than were in the U.S.

I kept South Africa options in the back of my mind as I went through all the local options, but when nothing American seemed right, I started shaking my tree to see if any good contacts in South African academia would fall out. And as of recently, I've been corresponding with an interesting Education faculty member at the University of Pretoria, and so far I feel strongly that this is the right path for me. It's not the lower cost, although I'll admit that's not exactly a drawback. It just seems like a better process, and a way of moving forward that's more in tune with my long-term interests.

Anyway, I may be meeting him in late February or early March, the next time he'll be in the U.S. I suppose we'll see.

The Story Thus Far: Grad School

2007-01-19T17:18:00.000-05:00

So the last few months have been pretty tempestuous for my academic career, although not all bad.

First, some background. In 2004 I decided that since I was working in a university setting, and planned to do so for the foreseeable future, it was time for me to go back to school to finish my Bachelor's, and then go on for graduate study. In addition, I'd long had the back burner idea of starting an online university, and realized that it would be completely impossible to move forward on something like that without academic credibility.

I had a little bit of credit from each of a pretty large number of places, as I had often taken a few courses here and there at whatever schools were convenient. I found out about a Connecticut state school called Charter Oak State College, which would allow me to transfer in all of my credit, as well as a Microsoft certification I'd picked up along the way, and would let me finish most of the rest through CLEP tests. By the middle of 2005 I had done this and had finally knocked that out of the way. I'd settled on a Master's program by then, the Master's in Educational Technology Leadership at George Washington University in D.C. GW is ranked in the top 25 nationwide for graduate schools of education, and the program was a steal at $12,000 total tuition.

I'd chosen early on to take an unusually fast clip, taking three courses at a time while still working full time. This was difficult, but meant I would finish in four semesters rather than six. Especially working in a university environment, I felt far behind my colleagues, and wanted to catch up as quickly as possible. I worked hard, and after three semesters I had a GPA of 3.77 and felt I was in the home stretch.

I was wrong.

In what was supposed to be my final semester, Fall 2006, I started off with a number of drawbacks I hadn't faced before. Attrition on my team at the university where I was working meant I had a lot less time in the day to devote to studying. The demands of my family were as strong as ever. I switched to Marymount near the end of the semester when I was trying to catch up. And worst of all, when I did find time to study I was constantly enervated by a terrible feeling of burnout.

The result of all this was that I managed to flunk not just one, but two of the three courses. Worse again, one of them was a required course that is only offered annually. So much for completing the Master's in December 2006, now I was looking at December 2007.

So that's where I am now. There's nothing I can take in the Spring, although I do plan to take my comprehensive exams and get those out of the way. I'll take my last elective in the Summer, and retake that required course in the Fall. Then I'll be done with it. Well, until doctoral work, but that's for another post....

Happy New Year!

2007-01-11T14:53:00.000-05:00

...and then some! I had meant to get an annual message of sorts up here, but the new job and all that hasn't really lent itself to that. Soon, though. Soon!

Happy Newton Day!

2006-12-25T10:00:00.000-05:00

I suppose I'm steeped in my own culture too much not to feel nothing strange at wishing others a Merry Christmas even though I am not a Christian. However, thanks to my friend Bob Klassen I also think of December 25 as a great holiday in celebration of reason and science. It is, after all, the birthday of Sir Isaac Newton, and while it's said that he loved the Bible even more than science, it's his work with the latter that caused Alexander Pope to write:

Nature and nature's laws lay hid in night;
God said "Let Newton be" and all was light.

Happy Newton Day everyone!

New Day Job!

2006-11-19T16:41:00.000-05:00

As of December 4th, I'll be the new Director of E-Learning at Marymount University in Arlington, Virginia. I didn't dislike either student services or international student advising, but I have to say that I'm excited to be doing something that's more commensurate with my abilities. I've also wanted to get back into technology a bit, and this is obviously in that direction.

Credit where it's due: I hadn't planned to look for a position like this until I finished my Master's, but the day before leaving for Jamaica, good ol' Mom emailed me asking whether I'd seen the vacancy for it. I hadn't, but went ahead and threw together an application, thinking that I'd be one a hundred qualified applicants, and that I probably wouldn't even get an interview.

I was wrong. Thanks, Mom.