Category: Carroll Reflections

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15 Minutes in My Digital Life As a Professor

Professor David Simpson on February 4, 2016

I’ve been so busy lately that yesterday I almost didn’t have time to change out of my academic regalia before beginning my PSY205 Statistics and Experimental Design course. Thanks to Jenny Percy for capturing this “precious moment”.

My social media day usually begins at 5:30 a.m. with a quick look at my Carroll email, my Twitter feed, my Facebook and LinkedIn accounts. If I see an article from the Chronicle of Higher Education or Inside Higher Education worth sharing, I pass it on to Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook followers. My restricted “Twitter feed” often appears on the left of the window of applications I am using like this WordPress software.

Here is what I mean (courtesy of my Snagit capturing software and Screencast.com).

Click me:

Twitter primarily serves me as a personal professional development tool. Facebook is a rich source for my staying in touch with alumni (NO, Kim and Ryan, I DO NOT WANT a party in 2019). LinkedIn has proven to be a wonderful way to reconnect and stay connected to Alumni —So great reconnecting with you recently, Dave Verban!—, Members of the Board of Trustees, and Schneider Consulting Clients.

Time to meet with my colleague and FB “friend” Peggy Kasimatis.

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Changes: How much tinkering should one do with a course that seems to work well?

Professor David Simpson on February 2, 2016

Carroll has become a special place to me. I have been influenced greatly by its students, faculty, staff, administration, and alumni. By its traditions, theater productions and its music.

There are lots of changes these days occurring at Carroll. Some of them are physical, others organizational. Some things never change (read between the lines:); some things never should change.

I asked research assistants Alison and Lizzy to document some of the physical changes. Here is what they produced:

I continue to experiment with my “best” course (Statistics and Experimental Design) to make it better by finding the right balance of technology-assisted and personally- delivered instruction. Here is how I have taught it in the past. I have been pleased at the helpfulness, useful feedback and receptiveness of students past and present as I experiment.

This semester I was influenced in what did the during the first week of class by a Chronicle of Higher Education thought piece about making best use of the first class day.

I began the class wanting to test the sound systems so I shared this amazing tribute to David Bowie:

Instead of calling out the class list to take attendance I give a quiz every day with immediate feedback which goes into a student portfolio. I also call upon a random group of students (selected by students using random sampling software to select the lucky students). Two students won free copies of my workbook!

Since then I have introduced them to SPSS and InStat (i.e. that the latter software exists) and to Survey Monkey.

Here is something Lizzy and Alison produced illustrating one of these tools:

I have also shown them Quizlet, started urging them to read germane articles from the Chronicle of Higher Education, and attempted to alert them to ethical issues about research by sharing lessons I have learned from Diederik Stapel.

To date, I seem to have highly engaged students learning and eager to learn. The first exam is February 10.

I am now invite their feedback and yours.

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Mapping New Directions for the Writings of Curious David: Winding Up or Winding Down?

Professor David Simpson on October 23, 2015

Now that I’ve returned to writing this blog with some regularity, I’ve begun to have a sense of the directions I hope to take it—or it to take me. My present thoughts are to write more regularly, to do more collaborative writing with students (my students write so well—here are Arianna’s thoughts on “engagement”), and occasionally to write a lengthy Chronicle of Higher Education or New York Times quality thought piece (such as a response to this interesting survey about “faculty engagement“).

I have just finished rereading Janet Majure’s wonderful Teach Yourself Visually WordPress, and have benefited much from studying online WordPress instructional resources. Consequently, I feel I now have an ability to master and manage this WordPress.com blogging software.

Some of my most creative bursts of ideas are engendered after extensive manual labor cutting grass, chain-sawing, picking apples, walking the dog and being engaged in other outdoor physical or recreational activity at North Lake.I’m thinking that one distinct thread of writing I want to explore will deal with technology applications to higher education. Another will have the theme of “David in Carroll Land” (perhaps co-authored with invited students, alumni, or other members of the Carroll family). A third will deal with whatever comes to mind (as has been in the past). A fourth focus will deal with contemporary or local issues, and a fifth will just be intended to provoke thinking—perhaps though parody.

I welcome any reader feedback about these new directions. Am I being too ambitious? Will I have any readers? Is this a positive direction to go—or is it, in fact, directionless?

Blogs post topics that I’ve been considering writing about in the near future include:

How can students best be served by academic advising?
My last lecture (things I would finally say)
Thank you, Diederik Stapel, for the lessons you taught me by your dishonesty.
Global Education
My most (in)formative learning experiences
Lessons learned from my dogs
(Oh) Dear Carroll Alumni
On Immortality
Time
How technology distances/enables/empowers/enslaves us
Reaching out, reaching within
How to kill a college
Loss of innocence
Kindness
The psychology of … (curiosity, religion)
Why I ~~don’t~~ give a Twit
Where do writing ideas come from?
What I wanna be when I grow up?
Distinguishing Science from Pseudo Science
Language—Leaving no Rosetta stone unturned
What is meant by “engaged: faculty and students?

Which of these, dear reader would you like to see and, hopefully, discuss? I welcome your input, encouragement, and assistance.

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Retrospective Thinking: How much tinkering should one do with a course that seems to work well?

Professor David Simpson on September 29, 2015

I continue to experiment with my “best” course to make it better by finding the right balance of technology-assisted and personally- delivered instruction. I have been pleased at the helpfulness, useful feedback and receptiveness of students as we “experiment.”

I just made a Screenflow screencast of what I taught in lab this week (using SPSS to create a scatterplot, calculate Pearson’s r, and do simple linear regression).

This time I published it on YouTube rather than on Vimeo.

I also, in response to student feedback, created some Quizlet study materials. Click the Quizlet link to try them.

A next step will be to involve students in the creation of such materials—rather than my doing so. That may wait until next year, however, since I want to introduce this year’s students to instruction in using Survey Monkey survey creation software.

Please go here to evaluate the video shown above

It would be fun to teach an entire course on these topics.

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The Joys of Teaching: Introduction of Yet Another Successful Carroll Student

Professor David Simpson on March 3, 2015

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Carroll Moments…

Professor David Simpson on March 1, 2015

Tonight I’ll finish reading Meg Wolitzer’s novel The Interestings. I teased my student assistants recently that I’d love to follow the trajectory of their lives over the next thirty years as Meg Wolitzer does her characters.In some ways I have been able to do that for past students, by comparing where they are now (as conveyed to me by Facebook, Linkedin, and campus visits) with the information I have kept in their advising folders—photos, letters, occasionally even a paper they wrote. Recently I was reunited with a former student (selfie available upon request) whose daughter might well be enrolling this year and might even be assigned to work with me. So many memories triggered by the Carroll chimes, familiar places, and familiar faces. Do feel free to share your Carroll Moments with me…

Below are some photos from a number of years ago. Precious Carroll moments which evoke a number of stories about you!

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Decluttering Revisited

Professor David Simpson on February 17, 2015

I seem to return to certain topics—like reducing virtual desk top clutter. I am once again in the process of reviewing “applications”—I’ve installed (first on my Mac, then on my Ipads, then on my PC’s).I read a thoughtful piece in the New York Times this morning suggesting that the urge to declutter or the perceptions of succeeding in the task may be misguided.And I just ordered a copy of a revised Stephen Covey book to assist in my reordering my priorities.

I have a goal of reducing the 37-years of accumulated office clutter by pulling together all the institutional research have done the past 37 years (thank you former research assistants) and combining it with present data collection processes. however, I am amused and annoyed to discover how technology sometimes makes data acquisition more difficult.

Right now two of my student research assistants are helping me pull together a blog piece dedicated to the Carroll alumni I have known as students across the past 37 years. Take a peak at a work in progress.

Let me know if you’d like a picture of you from year’s gone by. I’ll trade you for one of me OR of you today.

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Nifty Shades of Buzz-Transparently Attempting to Engage the Reader as I Move Forward with Rebranding:)

Professor David Simpson on February 15, 2015

Three books that I have reread the past few years are George Orwell (Eric Blair)’s 1984 and Lewis Carroll (Charles Lutwidge Dodgson)’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There.

George Orwell fascinates me on a number of accounts—his mastery of language, his prescience, and his outlook about politics. While I was faculty president, I gave copies of his book to people as a reminder of the chilling threats and effects of totalitarianism and the dangers of doublespeak. Lewis Carroll, though more playful, also is masterful with language and with alerting us to the the dangers of when illogic becomes the norm and when language is misused and abused. I find my institution’s decisions a few year’s ago to redefine the word “department” in our Carroll argot and the changing of our name from “college” to “university” Humpty-Dumpty-like. And the “buzzwords” and evolving (sometime assaulting) lexicons creeping into our everyday discourse are painfully annoying, hinder communication and add many shades of gray to my beard. I am abuzz with buzzwords

Buzz:

hum
murmur
high
bombination
drone
purr
whirring
sibilation
hiss
whiz
sigh
rustle
sough
rumor
report
gossip
heresay
scuttlebut
scandal
small talk
chitchat
fizzle
sizzle
Look here for more here:

It is interesting how the “buzzwords” (e.g. transparency, branding, moving forward, engagement, buzz) have positive connotations for some professionals and create a need create a need for a swear jar or playing buzz word bingo for others.

Gotta buzz the dog outside before buzzing a friend to see if he wants to play buzzword bingo tomorrow. Or maybe I’ll buzz over to Melibee to read some of their wonderful posts about global issues and making the world a better place.