Month: June 2013

Discovering Your MOOC: For What Would YOU Want to be Known?

Dan

I spent the last four days as a fellow at the Interfraternity Institute. I was tasked with helping participants make sense of their experiences and facilitating dialogue in small groups. However, I learned a lot and a lot that while influencing fraternities and sororities are really issues of higher education and student affairs.

Allen Groves, the dean of students at University of Virginia, did a session on issues in higher education. He focused significantly on issues such as the financial climate (so little money), legal issues (so much documentation), and the press towards increasing opportunities for access, affordability, and ease of getting a degree (so many options). One of the things he talked about was MOOCS (Massive Open Online Course). He was so interesting, engaging and informative I told him that he should do a MOOC on issues in higher education! He’s clearly a well-read and well-versed administrator with his finger on the pulse of issues in higher education. I would take his class because he’s an expert – almost a master – of the topic, particularly law and finance.

It got me wondering – what could be my MOOC? On what would I educate thousands of people if I had the opportunity? Ultimately, for what would I want to be known? And what learning experiences should I expect that thousands of people would actually want to listen to me? This isn’t about presentation style or reputation. It’s simply about what I might understand so well and so thoroughly that I should have the guts to declare I am an expert and to invite thousands of people to learn from me.

I present on lots of things, but I wouldn’t go near the idea of a MOOC. Declaring ourselves the expert, requires us to be absolutely intentional about our development as professionals. It requires us to determine our strengths, interests, skills and to focus on some specific aspects of this work to become the expert – not just a person who reads something and then can facilitate it well. There’s lots of people who can facilitate almost anything. I know lots of good to great facilitators, but I’m not sure all of these people should be declaring themselves as “expert” and opening up their message to the masses. Watching Dr. Groves reminded me that I have more work to do even on the things at which I am good. I’ll continue in my small world while letting experts tackle some of these big issues in the big MOOC based world.

What kinds of things do you feel you have expertise in?

How have you developed that expertise?

Are you so good at that subject that thousands should want to hear you?

 

Launching into Writing

Dan

I’m looking at the summer as a chance to focus on some professional development goals. One of them is to increase the time spent writing. I’m launching into a few major writing projects – a chapter for a book and co-editing an entire book. I am also working with a few folks on revising articles to student affairs journals. I’ve been forced to be in a writing mode, but I’m not sure I’m in the writing mood. While I have written a lot, I’ve had a hard time launching into the identify of a writer. In fact, it’s the reason why I decided I didn’t want to be full-time faculty: the idea of producing and producing research requires a certain approach to life, and it’s an approach I have not been able to adopt.

There are numerous things that paralyze me about writing: is the topic worth examining? Is there actually a gap in the literature that needs filling by what I am producing? Have I reviewed every bit of existing research (I may have had the longest reference list in student affairs dissertation history)? Will the editorial board understand the topic, the reasons for my approach to the research, and value my work’s contribution to our field? I’ve had enough rejections and a few of those rejections made sense and a few did not; however, rejection about your writing is a judgment of how you spent your time. Rejection means that the hours and hours spent were for nothing – at least that’s how you look at it if publication is the primary goal.

I’ve viewed writing as an important part of increasing my competence and confidence in student affairs work. Sometimes writing is just a good practice for student affairs professionals. It helps us examine a literature base and propose ideas about how we can work differently/smarter/better.  I’m a decent writer, and an even better editor – I’m a great last author on your collection of three other authors. I’ve used writing to explore and apply concepts and share ideas/thoughts/knowledge. However, as I look ahead to the next two to three months I am going to have to adopt the identity, get in the writing mood, embrace the idea of spending time on fewer projects so that I can spend more time on editing paragraphs. It’s going to require me to change my view of writing.

And I wonder how I will be better off when I am “done” with these projects. What about me and my approach to my work and the world will change?