It's not worth the aggravation, not to mention the hours that I spend in just finding a room on campus for each meeting. Informal groups will form within the cohort. People will be left out. I've decided that it is not my problem.

The first was on EndNote, a software package used to maintain a local database of references which then can be used during writing papers and preparing bibliographies. I showed that package as an introduction to bibliography-producing software, foreshadowing a presentation by our librarian that week on RefWorks, the University-owned, web-based alternative.

The second session was one lead by ITSS on blogs and wikis. We talked about not only the tools but considerations regarding choice of the most appropriate tool and how to use it well. Most of the focus remained on learning to use the tool as such. Figuring out pedagogy seems to take a back seat until the user can figure out exactly how to operate the tool, even at a basic level. At this point in our careers, many students have not used any of these tools at all and have rarely, if ever, seen them in use. It will take some practice and experience before they can envision a use for a tool.

Points of discussion:

- Discussion assignment descriptions do not fit our process very well. We all tend to not only summarize the reading but also jump right into application ramifications in the first post, rather than wait until the third post of the week. Some students have difficulty summarizing the reading after the first person has done so. I've run into this myself when teaching online; students question the value of writing mostly the same thing that the first student wrote. The assumption is that the first person got "the answer" and there is nothing more to say. They don't consider that the first author's interpretation may actually have been inadequate or that they may find something unique to write from their point of view. How do we get around this?

- Some of the students who met are going well beyond the requirements of the assignment while still feeling that their contribution is not sufficient.

- Students are starting to work on topic selection for the two three-credit courses and finding a partner for some of the assignments. This is promising, especially since some presentations need to be done in a couple of weeks!

The perpetual problem of scheduling adult, non-traditional students to engage in face to face sessions remains in effect. Also, the constant problem with all students - what doesn't directly result in a grade - may come into play here as well. Location confusion may also be a contributing factor, although this space should be one familiar to all members of our cohort.

I'm not mad. I'll keep trying to get this organized since I know from experience that a lot of the transferable learning in becoming an academic happens in these sessions. But it is a mark of what does not work well with a hybrid situation, especially one that involves busy adults.

We'll see how the session at 7:00 pm tonight goes.

Rod already hosted one informal meeting at the Burrito Union to which about 1/3 of the cohort came. That one was largely to try to get our heads around the course requirements and navigation schema for this fall's classes in Moodle.

Thursday, we start up two meetings (one morning and one night) to focus longer term on how to read and how to write at a doctoral level. A lot of us have been out of school for a long time. Even those fresh out of a master's program may need to adjust to the amount of reading and scope of writing at the next rung of the ladder.

I hope that we can set aside weekly or semi-monthly sessions to work on two prime academic skills together and get enough people in each time slot to sustain the effort. We'll see - and I'll try to remember to post at least meeting dates in this blog - if not specifics on what we covered.

Link: http://www.ncolr.org/jiol/about.html

But both are focusing on making girls in particular and school-aged children in general competent users of information and computation tools. They aim to help the next generation be creators - of art or information or artifacts - and critical users of the current and emerging information tools. As such, they treat the tools themselves as useful but advocate avoiding the study of the tools as significant in themselves. The word of the day is integration. And any attempts I've made to concentrate on information technology and computers (and even science and math) per se have been met with the counter that studying these things out of context is the wrong, old-fashioned mind-set. We're using the FITness standards as our guidelines, which inform schools about how the average citizen should be capable of using computers in their lives. But that set of standards doesn't have anything to say about the understanding children need in order to become the backbone of a scientifically advanced and technologically innovative society. We are still teaching kids to use the tools. We're not opening the box and explaining to them that they can be the ones making the tools.

I find myself concerned. Information technology and computer science are still viable topics in their own right. They are as important as art, as literature, as games, or as education as subjects of study. While, yes, they should be integrated into all studies at a basic level, when do we explain to kids that there are deeper aspects to understanding computers and information? That someone, somewhere should figure out a better way to encode data, to build a faster or smaller computer, or to build a functional 3-D display for all that gorgeous digital art we can only see in 2-D?

And when to do we explain to girls that they can be the ones who go deeper? The next big breakthrough in storage speed and capacity could be a woman as much as a man, if only we would stop dumbing down the curriculum and spewing platitudes about teaching technology, science, and math "in context"!

The current project I'm working on is trying to raise the bar on defining the basics, and making sure that the majority of children get a chance to meet that bar. But I'm trying to encourage women to be among those who are jumping well over the minimum. How do we do that?

Teacher, proof-read your own writing!

Imagine my vast amusement then, as I read syllabi, email, and even articles to be submitted for publication with multiple, common errors - all coming from professors who would castigate their students for an equivalent quality of work. None of these people are young. Marc Prensky would put them firmly in the digital immigrant category. They grew up reading the classics in print, so they cannot claim that they were misguided by the errors of the digital age and the denigration of quality that has supposedly resulted.

It may be true that students read less than they once did. Or it may not. But it is dead certain that students are exposed to poor writing by the very people who hold themselves up to be the standard of excellence, which can only be confusing at best.

Teacher, be a good example. Proof-read your work as you would a primer - because, quite frankly, it is.

The initial issue (table of contents) featured articles by Jim Gee, Ian Bogost, Constance Steinkuehler, and Yasmin Kafai. There is even an article for beginners in the gaming world!

After the pent-up flood was released, however, the river seems to be drying up. Game studies are still hot, but articles seem to be finding their way into more established peer-reviewed journals or are just not being written quickly enough to fill a long table of contents.

Potentially, this journal may also be developing a more rigorous selection process, but I doubt that is the sole reason for the decline in number of articles per issue. I do not even recognize any of the authors in the most release. These are probably acceptable scholars on the subject, but they are not the pillars of the game studies club.

So, this is a journal to keep an eye on. The occasional gem might fit into a literature review or even form the spring board to your own research. But it does not look like an essential item for an individual's library - or even the school's library. More likely, it is worth bookmarking for selection of individual articles and to use as a place for submission of your own articles.

So, we end up with an unexamined assumption in higher education that somehow, students need to socialize together outside of class as well as discuss in class. This gives us difficulty when we think about both distance-delivered doctoral classes as well as commuter students. Somehow, as I've noted before, such non-traditional situations are looked upon by many academics as less rigorous, although they often cannot say why.

This gets at the aspect of mentoring and acculturation that are presumed to be part of a doctoral program. Somehow, we need to create academics through not only class but also this nebulous cloud of epistemic practices that surround members of the academy. With the increasing number of working, older adults who are returning to school, we need to consider what is an essential aspect of being a well-educated academic. Do we need to remake people who are already actively teaching in the academy? Do we need to change people who are functional practitioners in their fields who want to increase their already existing skills?

A "traditional" doctoral program aims at taking unemployed young, potential scholars and turning them into employable academics. That brings in a lot of assumptions about the amount of time and attention that students are capable of spending on the nitty-gritty details. There is an assumption that students are entirely focused and are generally available to their professors.

An adult-focused one assumes that students are already teachers or otherwise employed in their field. The opposite assumption applies: students are not assumed to have time to spare.

This has large ramifications for the advisement process! Upon entering my previous "traditional" program, I had to chase down my advisor. I only managed to meet her regarding my program ONCE in a year. She couldn't tell me what basic courses I needed to take as a foundation. This lead to serious concerns on my part about my ability to get through the program in a reasonable amount of time.

In my new program, I have already met with my initial advisor. In fact, she made sure that the graduate office assistant tracked me down to schedule an appointment. I know that I will meet with her every other month throughout the program. I already have a schedule of courses (which can be revised as I go) as a framework for the next two years.

For some people, this sort of structure will be considered "hand holding" - but it is really a reflection about how teaching adults is different than teaching the traditional grad student. Yes, I know that grad students are statutory adults, but there is a large difference between people whose job is to attend school and those whose job is to teach or run a company.

For me, I'm grateful that I have found a better fit. And I hope that I can encourage other programs to wake up and consider the different needs of a different student population.

Link to the publisher's introduction to the journal: http://baywood.com/journals/PreviewJournals.asp?Id=0735-6331