Tag: Carroll Alumni

BooksCurious DavidSummer

Welcome Back into My Life, Carroll!

on September 2, 2016

I’m sitting in my office going through the usual re-entry rituals at the beginning of my almost 39th year of teaching here. My friend and colleague, Phil Krejcarek teasingly reminded me yesterday that he started a semester before me. Our esteemed colleague Gary Olsen started here in 1975.

I smile at the usual beginning of semester chaos. Passwords that don’t work (or I have forgotten); printers that need to be reconfigured because of upgrades; a necessary visit to the book store to make sure that my texts are in.

Today is Move-in Day for freshmen. I read in the Waukesha Freeman that Carroll is expecting 58 international students from 25 different countries bringing the total of international students to 97.

I choose to exclude Carroll from my summer life as much as I can responsibly can and devote my time to family relationships, reading, and being outdoors. Among my favorite “good reads” this year were the following:

  • Umberto Eco’s The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana
  • Paul Silvia’s How to Write a Lot.
  • Evan Kindley’s Questionnaire
  • Julie Lindsay’s The Global Educator
  • J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Cursed Child
  • Jeff VanderMer’s The Big Book of Science Fiction
  • Neal T. Jones’ A Book of Days for the Literary Year.
  • The Annotated Alice
  • Viet Than Nguyen’s The Sympathizer
  • Ayad Akhtar’s American Dervish
  • Ken Liu’s The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories
  • Ethan Canin’s A Doubter’s Almanac
  • Sharon Guskin’s The Forgetting Time
  • Karen Joy Fowler’s We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves
  • Charlie Jane Anders’ All the Birds in the Sky
  • Brian Crane’s 25 Years of Pickles
  • Ivan Doig’s Last Bus to Wisdom

I’ll be giving away all these books to interested students. What books would you recommend?

I also have seriously explored this summer some software tools to facilitate my goals for writing more and giving students opportunities to publish.

This will be an interesting transition year. A nationwide search for a new Carroll President; a Psychology Program Review; personal decisions. But for today, a few meetings and then still time to play at North Lake and continue learning from Leo the Great.

Learning from Leo

Learning from Leo

 

D.

 

 

Curious David

Reconnecting with Carroll Alumni Using LinkedIn Premium

on March 16, 2016

Headshot4blogsWhile my undergraduate research students have independently of me been working hard on their ebook project (which they hope to share with me next week), I have been investing some time (and money) exploring different WordPress “themes” (visual layouts), playing with a new video camera that promises better screencast quality on YouTube and Vimeo, and investigating some of the additional features available to LinkedIn users who pay for a premium account. In addition to my students writing a WordPress blog piece about LinkedIn which can be found here, I explored the LinkedIn platform blogging capabilities and published two pieces there: this piece—and a second one. My thanks to the numerous LinkedIn “connections” who viewed the posts (especially to Carroll alumnus Steve Thomas) for giving us “LinkedIn novices” some helpful guidance!

Here is a screencast of some of my (mis)adventures exploring the paid-for premium versus free versions of LinkedIn:

And here are are some additional LinkedIn resources I have found useful in getting a better understanding of how LinkedIn could serve the needs of my students and my interests:



alumniCurious Davidflow

On “Flow,” “Presence,” “Self-Actualization” and Constructive Mania

on February 10, 2016

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I seem to be having an unusually productive day today. I am in a state of “Flow, “Presence,—self-actualization? I seem to be fully charged even though Leo the Great

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and I went outside at 2:00 a.m. and awakened together at 5:00 a.m. I wish I could identify why!:)

Perhaps it is due to my having a large amount of reasonably uninterrupted time.  Each interruption that occurred was a positive experience. Four students came by the office for some additional help before the exam. Four students walked away seemingly more knowledgeable and more confident. A gem of a student assistant came by to squeeze in an hour’s work,in her busy schedule, and we discussed the next steps of our book. She and the other three talented students are working so well together—- and with me–challenging and supporting each other. They continually delight, refresh, and invigorate me as we learn, laugh, and grow together.

My personal software and learning tools are for the moment working flawlessly across the many different platforms (Mac OS X  11 .3 and Windows 7) and browsers (Safari, Chrome, Firefox) that I use on a daily basis. My student research team alluded to above skillfully shares their work with me via Google Drive and I move and “sync my work across Google Drive, DropBox, EverNote, and my journaling software DayOne.

We’ve arranged for tomorrow two Skype sessions–one session with a dear friend in London (or are you in Bavaria or Kurgan at the moment???) and another in Hungary. I renewed my Skype accounts. Feel free to Skype me at professordsimpson but I need to know of your intent in advance. I still have a “day job.”

On days like this I love being a professor. I’ll miss this.

Time to head home and be walked by the dog.


Carroll ReflectionsCarroll University USACurious DavidJane Hart's Top 100 Learning ToolsMiscellaneous

15 Minutes in My Digital Life As a Professor

on February 4, 2016

Cap and Gown

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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Carroll ReflectionsCurious DavidJane Hart's Top 100 Learning ToolsPersonal Learning Toolstechnology tools

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

on February 2, 2016

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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:

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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.

 

 

 

Curious David

Winding Up—Winding Down

on February 2, 2016

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With baseball season approaching (and a vague but definite retirement date in sight of no later than May, 2019), it is time to focus on accomplishing a number of things in the near future. One goal is to better master the capabilities of WordPress.  A good way to do that is to write a lot. I’ll be experimenting with different WordPress “themes” (and different widgets). I welcome your feedback or advice.

I also want to master creating screencasts and to “publish” electronically some student-written guides to the use of internet learning tools. I envision continuing to write, to teach, and to learn even after I formally leave “Carroll Land”.

I’m discovering that one can indeed teach an “old dog” new tricks:

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This semester I have much more time to reflect, to learn, and to finish tasks (some of which I began up to 10 years ago!) because my Research Seminar was canceled for not having at least 10 students. Hence, I am teaching only one class PSY205 (two sections) with its two laboratories. Fortunately I have four VERY good student research assistants who are willing to learn with me so we’ll have fun, learn much, and be productive. Right now two of them (Arianna and tia) are next door preparing a Camtasia Studio screencast. Let’s see what they have produced. What I am sharing below is TOTALLY their “production” after my giving them guidelines of what I wanted. I am impressed.

We’ll see what the other two team members can do when they come in shortly.

As always your feedback is welcome.




Curious David

What do my research students do in my absence? Exploring Camtasia

on January 27, 2016

IMG_0015Despite the semester only being a month old, I have been unusually busy with other Carroll matters at times when I ordinarily would be working side-by-side with my research assistants. Fortunately, they are reliable, competent, and motivated enough to delight me with independent work. I assigned to several of them the task of investigating the relative strengths and weaknesses of several kinds of screen-casting software. Here is what they produced as part of an e-book project we are about to engage in.



Curious David

Leveraging My Technology Learning Tools

on November 24, 2015

Twitterfeed

I am sandwiching in (actually eating donuts!) some brief writing time between my two labs for Statistics and Experimental Design (PSY205). The students seem to have indeed come in prepared, having looked at the screen cast I had made using Screenflow for them about how to do a two-way, between subjects ANOVA with SPSS. One of my students offered to use Quizlet to make a review for their fellow students of the “language of statistics.”

Student research assistant Alison has been at work in my office since 8:00 updating our Macs with the new WordPress app. With no formal direction from me, she has reviewed our latest blogs, given thought as to how we can (and if we should) move up in the “elearning feeds ratings” and investigated how to use CreateSpace for the book we shall be writing together. I alert her to several more tools i want her and my other three student assistants to explore: Scoop.it, Paper.li, and either Feedly or Inoreader. She bounces the idea off me of my mentoring a Carroll Pioneer Scholar research program about technology learning tools.

I check my Twitter feed and discover  Much Ado about Nothing brouhaha among Wikipedia editors. That might make my colleague and Shakespearean scholar  (and Object Lesson author) John Garrison laugh. I share it with John. Time to head back to teaching my 2nd lab. Technology CAN be a tool as long as I don’t allow it to control me.


Curious David

What is the Role of a Faculty Adviser?

on October 29, 2015

DSCN8480I’ve been reflecting lately on my role as faculty adviser to undergraduates here at Carroll and about those faculty who played such a crucial role in that capacity for me. Without doubt their influence shaped how and why I relate to students and former students as I do.

At Oberlin College my most influential adviser was Ralph H. Turner. Ralph, the first faculty member to invite me to address him by his first name, somehow was able to provide me the right balance of challenge and support I needed both inside and outside the classroom. I fondly and respectfully remember him as intellectually curious, patient, playful, kind, and unusually generous in his time with me. Indeed he was willing to stay in touch with me even across the years that I was continuing my education at The Ohio State University. Thank you, Ralph.

I was blessed with a similar and even deeper rich and enduring relationship at Ohio State with Tom Ostrom, who was my adviser, research collaborator, mentor, friend, and role model until the day of his untimely death. Tom provided emotional support for me while I struggled with the likelihood of being pulled out of graduate school to be sent to Vietnam, listened to me as I sorted out my thoughts about getting married, wrote me a teasing letter about a study I should do if I ended up in jail, guided me in the transition from the intense research world of Ohio State to my current home at Carroll and inspired me to share with others my love of learning. His wisdom, lust for life, optimism, sense of humor, firmness, and candor still guide and humble me.

Both individuals so impacted my life in so many ways. I draw upon their wisdom each time I am interacting with a student in an advising capacity or with my student research assistants. Advising is much more than helping students make the transition from high school, providing advice in course selection, or giving guidance in deciding whether there is an afterlife after graduating from Carroll. The lessons taught me by Ralph and Tom aren’t and can’t be learned from adviser training workshops.

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