Thursday, May 26, 2011

Meetings

With the end of the semester and school year comes the meetings and conferences.  Last week I was out at a conference only to come back for a day of leadership meetings and a two day retreat for our school.  While these events take me away from my work and put me further behind in my to-do list, I do gain a lot from these events (my to-do list also gets much longer with new ideas I want to implement).

One of the great things about academia is the autonomy.  I'm free to discover and learn new ideas and methods and incorporate these into my classes and administrative processes.  With the numerous publications and the instant access to the online journal databases, new ideas are easy to disseminate.  The biggest challenge is sifting through all of the great ideas to focus on those that are most important to me.  While there are so many articles and books I want to read, I only have very limited time to explore these new ideas.

Now back to meetings.  These meetings at the end of the semester allow faculty an opportunity to share and learn from each other.  We don't always have to reach out to the literature to find new practices.  We can often find new ideas from our colleagues down the hall or across campus.  While meeting can become tedious at times, they can also offer value in the new insight we gain from collaborating with our colleagues.

New knowledge surrounds us.  It is in our libraries, at the conferences and meetings, and also in the discussions with our peers.  There are always new opportunities to learn.  Now hopefully once these meetings begin to subside over the summer months I'll be able to digest some of these new ideas and incorporate them into my classes and administrative processes.

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Poster Sessions

Earlier last week I posted about using the poster format for the graduate students presenting their projects.  This past Saturday afternoon the students presented their projects using this poster format.

I was very pleased with how the poster format worked for us.  We followed a shift approach where half of the students presented first proceeded by the second group of students.  This gave the students a chance to view the other projects and created a larger audience for the presenters.

The most significant advantage for this poster format was the social interaction this created.  These are students in an online program so most of them, prior to the poster session, had not met face-to-face.  This was a wonderful opportunity for them to meet each other and socialize.  All of the students appeared to enjoy this social time and I received several comments regarding a preference for this format.

We plan to conduct next year's poster session in the same manner.  It is a great way to share our work and carry out social exchange.  I hope our students are able to establish lasting connections with each other as a result of their time in the course room and this opportunity to meet face-to-face.

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

IT Ethics: Extreme Examples

A few weeks ago Computerworld published an article by Tam Harbert titled When trusted IT pros go bad.  The article included several examples of extremely poor decision making and actions by IT professionals.  It should be acknowledged that these are not isolated incidents, but rather, many ethical issues occur without public notice.

In academia there is a growing trend toward weaving ethics into the curriculum.  Faculty at these institutions targeting ethics in the curriculum often try to find case studies related to their topics to demonstrate real world examples of the ethical dilemmas students may face in the workforce.  However, as Harbert noted, many times these ethical violations are not published since organizations do not wish to share these unfortunate experiences and prefer to resolve the issues as quietly as possible.

I certainly understand the desire for organizations to quietly resolve these issues but there is certainly value in sharing these issues.  We need to share these examples so that we are able to learn from these experiences.  Without access to these real world examples, faculty are limited to a small handful of stereotypical ethics case studies.

I was excited to read the Harbert article and find some additional ethical examples but I wish articles like this were more prevalent.  Our adherence to our ethical duties in the field is critical to the creditability of our profession and the betterment of our society.  As faculty, we must be diligent in sharing these examples with our students so that they may be more cognoscente of some of the issues they may face and be more prepared to make the right decision.

Friday, May 6, 2011

Long-Form vs Short-Form Presentations

Next weekend 13 of my graduate students are presenting their projects at our graduate symposium.  In the past, there have been one or two students finishing up at a time and the students were required to present their work at our undergraduate end of the year open house.  However, with so many students completing their research projects at one time, the long-form 20 minute presentations were not feasible.

This year we are moving to a short-form poster presentation.  In this new format half of the students will stand by their posters and carry out short and informal presentations to attendees as they approach the board.  After the first half of the presentation period, the second group of students take over and present their projects.

Students will end up sharing their work multiple times during the session and have the opportunity to visit the other presenters when they are not presenting.  This provides the students with the opportunity to both share their work and to learn from the work of other students.  While this short-form poster style is not a new concept, it is the first time I have implemented it with my graduate students.  I'm eager to see how it works.

Tuesday, May 3, 2011

MICS 2011 Conference Proceedings

The proceedings from the 2011 Midwest Instruction and Computing Symposium have been published.  These proceedings include a paper I presented with a colleague at the conference.  You can find a copy of our paper here and information about the conference here.

Skills to Look for in Project Managers

Today I read a brief article describing the eight skills to look for when hiring an IT project manager. The headlines caught my attention...