I am fortunate to currently serve as the Graduate Student Assembly representative to the AECT executive board. At our first meeting at the AECT convention last week, I was asked with Craig Shepherd to put together a proposal for how to engage and support graduate students within the AECT organization, and also for the annual convention. We have several ideas, but we would like more! I know several grad students from AECT read this blog, so please let me know in the comments or by email what ideas you have for promoting the growth of the graduate community within AECT.

Just a final word on this, however. Whatever ideas we propose to the executive board need to be feasible. We’d all like free conference registration and free lunch along the way :-), but that ain’t in the budget. So what CAN we propose that will be feasible for AECT and beneficial for students?

Tags: aect, graduate student assembly

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An issue raised at the AECT convention this year is whether graduate students should be allowed to review proposals for future conventions. The concern is that if students review, the conference will no longer be seen as "peer-reviewed" for tenure boards. Most people I talked to said this issue will not pose a problem for their tenure committees, but a few said it could. Ironically, several people I talked to said graduate students are often their best reviewers of all.

I think we can find a way to compromise that will make the reviewing stringent enough for review councils but still offer graduate students the opportunity to serve as proposal reviewers.

If you have opinions on this issue, I encourage you to go to Chris Miller’s blog and express them there. The following is what I wrote on his blog this morning:

The issue was raised that AECT (because of students reviewing) is not a peer review conference. But if this is the definition of peer review, then what is AERA? Students review for AERA. They even review for DIVISIONS and not just SIGs. Yes, it’s true. I have done so, as have other students I know. No, we did not all have the requisite "5 publications" AERA asks for. In reality, AERA doesn’t have a set standard. They just ask for your CV, but they don’t make unilateral exclusions or inclusions criteria. They leave it up to each division and SIG to judge whether someone’s CV qualifies them to review.

I think that would be wise for AECT as well. Any unilateral decisions are foolish. As Michael points out, some grad students have great practical experience that qualifies them to review, or even significant research experience. Kay pointed this out in the AECT executive board meeting when she said that many "students" in the Teacher Ed division are former teachers and even school administrators. So they could be considered qualified to review, especially for practice-oriented proposals.

I think what AECT should do (or at least our own division) is create a database of reviewers (drawn from the database of members). Require an abbreviated CV of every reviewer the first time. In subsequent years, a note could be made in the database that they have already reviewed once so that they don’t have to submit a CV any more.

Then, maybe make a base standard that every proposal gets reviewed by 1 or maybe 2 people with terminal degrees. This would allow people to answer with confidence that it was a "peer" review no matter how you define "peer." If students want to be the remaining 1-2 reviewers on each proposal, then let them submit their CVs and let the program officers make the decision on a case-by-case basis based on their research or practical experience. Once approved, put the mark next to their names in the database as well so future program officers know this student is experienced enough to review.

For those students not quite qualified yet to do it on their own, kindly encourage them to do a mentored reviewing experience with their advisor this first year and to continue to work on their publication record.

I understand the need to satisfy tenure boards, and this kind of process would do it. It would also allow students who are ready to review to do so, which is good for them and necessary for AECT. Maybe some program planners like our wonderful Tony Pina will review every single proposal, but we can’t count on that every year–it’s unreasonable. So to get enough reviewers, most program planners will need to tap into the student population to some degree.

And that’s what every other organization does–including AERA.

BTW, if the database idea is impractical, much of what I have said could still be done without it, although it would duplicate work if you asked for CVs every year. But at least there could be, in the system for submitting a proposal, a simple check box for "do you want to review proposals" with a text box for your most recent publications. People could just cut and paste from their vitas.

Rick

Tags: AECT2007, students, GSA, Graduate Student Assembly

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I was surprised and honored to receive a plaque and recognition from the AECT distance learning division today in our member meeting. The award is for my service as communications officer these last two years. It is interesting to think I no longer will have an official role within the division. It has definitely been enjoyable to serve within the division, and I cherish the great friendships I have had with folks within the division such as Michael Barbour, Tony Pina, and Vance Durrington. It’s been fun, and I’ll still be looking for ways to help out the new communication officer improve our division’s online presence, especially with the migration to the new website and new initiatives from the AECT technology services committee.

Thanks to the DL division!

Tags: AECT2007, distance learning, DDL

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These are some notes from the AECT Distance Learning division member meeting, held today.

Discussed items:

1. Outgoing officers: Vance Durrington, former past-president; and Rick West (er, me) as former communications officer

2. Renewed collaboration with QRDE. Tony Pina has done a great job re-establishing our connection with the Quarterly Review of Distance Education. IAP (the publisher of the journal) gave Tony books to give away to members, free advertising in their website and journals for the division’s Crystal Awards, and money/sponsorship for the division’s Crystal Awards and other new division awards. So we will now have a great connection with QRDE.

3. Division awards. Joanne Bentley was nominated and accepted the opportunity to run the division awards for the next few years. These are the awards that will be offered (more details on how to apply will come from the division’s listserv in the future);

• Crystal Award for excellence in DL practice
• Research award for DL scholarship
• Special issue in QRDE of the top six papers presented at AECT. There will be also special discussed papers as part of our convention next year.

4. There is a new DL website at http://www.aectnow.org/ddl. They are working with Larry Vernon to develop a way to have a database of best practices in distance learning, as well as a virtual mentoring system for new folks just getting started with online instruction. They are also hoping to have avenues for researchers to get together for collaborations.

5. There was a lot of discussion about the role of students in the review process, and it was decided that each proposal to distance learning next year will have at least three people with terminal degrees, or practitioners with the appropriate certification. Graduate students can review proposals, hopefully in tandem with a faculty member, but their reviews will not carry weight.

6. See you next year in Orlando, for AECT 2008!

Tags: AECT2007, distance learning

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Notes from the session on "Perspectives on Grant Writing" a panel discussion with Ammon Kelly, Chris Hoadley, Brenda Bannon-Ritland, and two others I don’t know their last names (Cindy, Yasmine). This was a great session on Thursday night at the AECT Convention where a panel of folks who have received NSF grants discussed tips and advice for applying for NSF grant money.

Chris Hoadley’s six morals of grant writing.
1. persist and refine
2. ride the waves, you’re surfing
3. proposing is a dialogue that takes place on the timeline of 6 months to 2 years
4. keep a balanced portfolio. Don’t send everything to the same group
5. Keep your eyes on the horizon
6. Your proposal is not you nor your research agenda.

Ammon Kelly
Get a sense of who you are
Find out what area of technology you are interested in. The design? Diffusion? Integration?
Ask yourself if you know anything about assessment. Evidence-based research is the buzzword of the day. You will need to demonstrate with evidence that you have accomplished something.

You don’t need to have an entry in everyone of those diagrams, but you need to know where strengths are. Can you be part of a grant with someone else–an addendum with someone else’s grant.

The NSF Career Award is a good one to go up for because the pool of applicants are small, and they are the same level as you.

NSF website, top left=hand corner, go to awards. Go back to your concept map of your ideas and see if anyone gives a darn about your idea. Are they funding that? It may be a good idea, but it might not be fundable.

National academy of science should be one of your bookmarks. They do reports on everything. You can get a literature review and the hot topics very quickly from them. And many of the people doing that will maybe be on your panel reviewing your grant proposal.

Notes from the second session – invited symposium
I was permitted to sit and listen in on the symposium where the panelists worked with researchers in small groups. These are notes from the discussion with Yasmine.

– be a proposal reviewer so you can learn what people complain about and look for. Email the program officer and ask to do so, they often need reviewers and want a mix of older/younger folks
– Vitas in proposals should be 2-pages, and lead with the most important stuff
– Talk about prior funded research later in the proposal, not in the first page. Think about readability and the story you are telling
– make sure you have lots of good, relevant references. As a reviewer, she looks at the reference list. She looked over one list and remarked about a 1991 reference as being too old, so I guess you need to make sure to have lots of newer citations.
– the first 1.5 pages is an extended abstract. It should tell all of the important parts of your proposal.

Chris Hoadley
– to get on a review panel, have someone nominate you works better than volunteering, although you can do that. Have your advisor or someone who has received NSF funding to nominate you.
– Program officers can sometimes give a little bit of grant money without reviewers. Say for exploratory research. So it’s good to develop a connection with the program officer.
– There needs to be trust on that panel that they can trust you will be able to do the work. You can develop trust by having a famous co-PI, ideally someone who complements you but not similar to you. You can also do pilot studies sometimes with pilot study money (?) to show you can do the work. You can also try citing who they expect you will cite.

Great session, thanks to NSF for funding this symposium.

Tags: AECT2007, grant writing, NSF

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Hearkening back to my post on "Sexy Research," I attended a presentation today, not because I was particularly interested in the topic, but because it was such a cleverly-written abstract. Now, for the life of me, I can’t find the session’s abstract in either the online or the printed schedule. I must be blind. If you know what session I am talking about, please tell me in the comments. It was a catchy abstract about how the great debate is on over F2F and online learning and that the audience would determine the winners.

I say I wasn’t interested in this topic, even though I study online learning and have published on this topic a couple of times. I am interested in online learning, but I am NOT interested in simple debates on the benefits of the two mediums. These kinds of talks seem to lose the importance of other contextual variables related to the quality of the teacher and the students. Medium is not the only factor. But attend I did because the abstract was snappy.

I was disappointed, as I felt I would be. The first presenter argued for F2F learning, reporting on examples when teachers tried to do a class online and it "failed miserably." The obvious question is, "why did they fail–can you prove it was because it was online?" Knowing nothing of the context here–which is the problem–I would guess that the teachers had never taught online, and rather than teach in a way that is different and reflects the positive aspects of distance education (DE), they probably just threw their same powerpoints and materials online and tried to use their same teaching methods in this entirely different context. THAT will never work. But the failure is not in the medium, it is in the pedagogy, as well as the probable problem of the teacher being someone struggling with a new technology. You can’t evaluate the success of someone’s first venture into online learning after the first year of any significant pedagogical change..

Whe second presenter argued for DE, and discussed, rightfully so, that whether we like it or not, we NEED DE or we’ll be ignoring many large groups of potential learners. That is true. We normally think of nontraditional students, but he also discussed the rapidly-growing prison population. This is a good point I had not considered, as probably one of the biggest keys to helping prisoners reform and change is through education–and they don’t have the luxury of attending the university course in person.

My biggest complaint with the second presenter was his criticism of blended learning, using an awful metaphor of pieces of old ships (I think that’s what they are) being dropped onto new ships, causing massive malfuncture. Well, that’s simply not true about the blending of online and F2F, which DOES work and work very well. I have found in my teaching that by blending the mediums, you can help students make social connections F2F, which then aids them as they work together in the more productive atmosphere of DE.

This was the position of the third presenter, who argued for blended learning. Obviously, that’s my point of view too! This was also the overwhelming opinion of the audience, who responded through an informal raise of hands at the end of the presentation.

Tags: AECT2007, online learning, distance education, blended learning

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Today at the meeting for the Graduate Student Assembly, we had elections for executive board member, representing the graduate students to the AECT general board. What happened, was I think, unexpected. A good friend of mine and I both volunteered to run for the position, and in two elections, we remained tied. So now they are going to have all the students who enter the graduate student lounge this week vote. They probably should have done that anyway instead of limiting to those attending the meeting today.

Anyway, if you’re reading this Theano, I think you’ll do a stupendous job! Whether you or I win, I think the graduate students will be well represented! (at least they will be with you–I hope they would be with me too! :-).

If you are a grad student at AECT this year, go to the grad student lounge and vote!

Tags: AECT2007, graduate student assembly, graduate students   

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Preston Parker, an intern from last year’s AECT conference, asked me if I would give a presentation this year in the Graduate Student Lounge about "How to Get Involved with AECT as a Graduate Student."

I’m honored and excited to do so! To anyone reading this post, please offer me any ideas from your own experiences by adding them to this wiki I have created to facilitate the discussion. I’m not sure yet which day I’ll be presenting at AECT, but I’ll post it here when I know.

Here’s the wiki link:

http://growingtogether.wikispaces.com/AECT08Grads

Tags: AECT2007, AECT, graduate student assembly

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