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Posts tagged ‘sabbatical’

3
Apr

Do You Ever Dream of Candy Coated Raindrops?


“My love, do you ever dream of
Candy coated raindrops?
You’re the same, my candy rain”

Soul for Real
Tweet from @937RhythmFM

Do you ever dream of candy coated raindrops? No? Well, me neither. However, when I think of dreams it always reminds me of that Soul for Real song from the 90’s, “Candy Rain.” I used to love that group. I loved them so much I named my online persona after them. For the longest time, I was soul4real on everything social media account available. I’ve cut back over the years, but my Twitter handle is still @soul4real. As a result, every time someone wants to share that they are listening to a song from this group, they always tweet it like the one to the right. I get a few tweets a week like this.

So I wrote all of that because for some strange reason I can’t think of anything I dream of. I’m sure that has everything to do with me being on sabbatical. Maybe I should dream of having another sabbatical, but I’d have to wait 7 years for that and I hope to be retired by then. And when I return in the fall, I’ll already be going through a bit of a job change, transitioning back to teaching composition full time. It’s been four years, so I don’t have the barely hidden disdain for grading hundreds of essays every 3 weeks in me. I’m actually looking forward to it. Hopefully that feeling will last a few semesters. I guess I could dream that my students will be the best students to ever take a freshman comp class at GCC, and we all enjoy every minute of our time together. A girl can dream, right?

In the mean time, while I get back to enjoying my sabbatical and trying to think of things to dream of, you should enjoy the soulful stylings of a great group – Soul for Real singing “Candy Rain.”

25
Sep

Sabbatical 2018 Week 5: Not All Work and No Play

If you’ve never taken an extended sabbatical from your job, you’re really missing out. It’s a great experience that I’m grateful to have taken advantage of twice in my 20 years in Maricopa. I really think I’ve worked hard enough to deserve it, and you probably have too. According to the MCLI website,

“A sabbatical leave is an opportunity to broaden or deepen educational interests, to explore new areas, or examine instructional methods to enhance the mission of the college. A sabbatical leave gives faculty a respite from their normal duties in order to provide them an opportunity to grow professionally. The goal of a sabbatical leave project is to engage faculty in the areas of study, research, travel, work experience, or other creative activity, and to contribute to the institution as a whole upon his/her return to the college.”

If you’re into learning new things then a sabbatical in Maricopa is for you. However, in the more generic sense the word sabbatical, which can be a noun or an adjective, comes from the Greek word sabatikos, which means “of the Sabbath,” the day of rest that happens every seventh day. Most teaching jobs come with the promise of a sabbatical, which is a year of not having to teach, though you still get paid. It’s also interesting to know that only 5% of US companies offer paid sabbaticals. So I’m not complaining that I still have to work during my sabbatical. At least it’s something I’m interested in learning and doesn’t involve grading hundreds of essay. It’s definitely a respite from the norm.

The challenging part for me is getting used to doing less. Many faculty do more than just teach a 15 hours schedule, and Maricopa is good about providing opportunities and compensating those of us who do more. For the past 4 years, I’ve been wrapped up in the world of professional development, online learning and OER. I’ve taught very little, but worked more than I have in previous years collaborating, coordinating, and strategizing with our Instructional Designer, CTLE Staff, eCourses faculty lead and faculty developers. My involvement also included working district wide with other CTL directors, elearning and OER leaders. It’s hard to just go cold turkey and not talk to or work with any of those people anymore. My only saving grace is that many of those people are personal friends and we still chat when I sneak on campus to visit or attend a planned happy hour. Shout out to Meghan, my better half for the last 4 years.

One major plus is that my other partner in crime for the past 4 years, Dr. Lisa Young, is also on sabbatical this year, and her sabbatical proposal is similar to mine – Big Data. And as the Faculty Director of SCC’s CTL and Co-Tri-Chair of the Maricopa Millions project, she’s been involved in all the same things I have. So she can relate. Part of our sabbatical plan is to hike every other week to discuss our projects and other stuff. It’s comforting to know she’s learning the same things and good to have someone to bounce ideas off of. And it doesn’t hurt to get some exercise in on a regular basis. Below is evidence of our endeavors.

The best part of a sabbatical is you get to determine your schedule, so there’s a lot of flexibility in there for doing the things you never seem to have time for. The reality is that many of the people you’d like to do those things with are still working hard and stressed out. Ha! (Sorry Beth! Thanks for visiting me yesterday)

And one more for the road. So far we’ve hiked Holbert and Mormon Trails on South Mountain, Cholla Trail on Camelback, and Trail 100 in Dreamy Draw followed by breakfast at Dick’s Hideaway, Scramble, and First Watch. Breakfast is an added bonus. What is up with my hair?! Anyway, I’m looking forward to it cooling off so we don’t have to hike so early. Then sabbatical life will be truly perfect. Well, if they can figure out how to pay me correctly then it will be truly perfect.

27
Aug

Pre-Sabbatical InstructureCarn – Summer 2018

I was checking in on my timeline I presented in my sabbatical proposal and remembered that my FPG travel in July was part of my sabbatical. My plan for Summer 2018 included attending the annual Canvas conference, InstructureCarn, which was held in late July in Colorado. I used FPG funds for this conference travel. At the conference I made some connections with more schools that are using Canvas Data Portal that I can hopefully connect with later during my sabbatical. 

Carnival TentThe conference had a carnival theme and a ton of sessions on Canvas Data, so I had a nice lineup to choose from. Most of the session presenters were actual data scientists, so a lot of what they talked about was over my head – very technical. It will be nice to go back and watch a few of the sessions again once Instructure posts the recordings online and I know little more about the technical side. For instance, the first session I sat in was Concept-Based Data Analysis: A New Method for Organizing and Visualizing Data Using Course Design Principles. Fascinating stuff, but I had no idea how to get to where they were. The presentation explained that by combining sound pedagogical principles with new methods of data collection from Canvas, there’s a method for visualizing classroom data to evaluate the effectiveness of course material, highlight concepts that call for improvement, and present this data to students, faculty, and administrators in a holistic format. Yes, please!

The next session I attended made a lot more sense to me, a novice, and was geared more to what I imagine I could possible persuade our campus to set up. The presentation, Determining Student Activity in Canvas Data, showed how you can efficiently clean and use the data in Canvas Data to build a database and determine student activity and grades from just a few tables. The one thing I’m learning about all these great data projects is that it takes a team to develop them. They get buy-in from admin, IT, Student Services, Faculty and Data Scientist before they create anything. That could end up being a challenge for me.

Candied ApplesOverall, I attended 10 sessions that had something to do with Canvas Data or Analytics. Luckily for me Instructure had a lot of planned fun carnival activities built into the day and evening because my brain hurt after some of those sessions. But it was nice to unwind in the evening with colleagues and friends. We actually attended a carnival with all kinds of different street food, rides and games. I mean, who could pass up a table full of candied apples. We couldn’t!

I think Beth may have had too much sugar.

And yes, I did eat the whole thing. We even got little panda bears and all kinds of other swag.

All in all it was time well spent, both in the conference sessions and all the fun in between. I will say my biggest disappointment was a session I was looking forward to disappeared off the program and no longer existed. It was the perfect session for me: A Non-Programmers Guide to Using the Canvas Data Portal. Yes! Sign me up. Nope. Gone. 🙁  They enticed me with: “The Canvas Data Portal is a great tool, but can be intimidating for non-technical or non-programming professionals. In this session, I will go through my personal journey learning and utilizing the Canvas Data Portal as well as provide tutorials, tips, and strategies for non-technical or non-programming individuals so they can fully utilize the Canvas Data Portal in their Canvas Instance.” But then they didn’t show up. No “personal journey.” No “tutorials, tips, and strategies.” I should track them down.

 

13
Aug

Sabbatical 2018 Week 1: Getting Started with Big Data

Coursera: Big Data Specialization

Coursera: Big Data Specialization

Happy Sabbatical to me and Lisa Young. Today begins my journey into the world of Big Data. I’m starting by taking two Coursera Specializations on big data. A Coursera Specialization is a series of courses that helps you master a skill. I’m beginning with the Big Data Specialization by UC San Diego. This specialization includes 6 courses. Description: “Do you need to understand big data and how it will impact your business? This Specialization is for you. You will gain an understanding of what insights big data can provide through hands-on experience with the tools and systems used by big data scientists and engineers. Previous programming experience is not required! You will be guided through the basics of using Hadoop with MapReduce, Spark, Pig and Hive. By following along with provided code, you will experience how one can perform predictive modeling and leverage graph analytics to model problems. This specialization will prepare you to ask the right questions about data, communicate effectively with data scientists, and do basic exploration of large, complex datasets. In the final Capstone Project, developed in partnership with data software company Splunk, you’ll apply the skills you learned to do basic analyses of big data.”

I was glad to discover this specialization on Coursera because it’s exactly what I need for my sabbatical, and the best part is it only cost $50 a month. I’m anticipating I can finish in 3-4 months. The series is designed to be a part time endeavor; however, I have lots of time to devote to the courses. UC San Diego is an academic powerhouse, recognized as one of the top 10 public universities by U.S. News and World Report, so I’m pleased to be learning from this elite group of instructors. The San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) at UC San Diego is a leader in data-intensive computing and cyberinfrastructure.

The second specialization I plan to take is the Data Scientist Specialization by Johns Hopkins University which includes 10 courses. Description: “Ask the right questions, manipulate data sets, and create visualizations to communicate results. This Specialization covers the concepts and tools you’ll need throughout the entire data science pipeline, from asking the right kinds of questions to making inferences and publishing results.” I’m a bit apprehensive about this series, as they do recommend some programming experience (in any language). And they also suggest “a working knowledge of mathematics up to algebra.” Ugh! I’m not sure I have a working knowledge of mathematics. I guess we’ll see. I somehow managed four college degrees (AA, BA, MA, EDD) and only remember taking one math class (college Algebra) which I took way back in 1984. Lucky for me Coursera offers a course for people like me: Data Science Math Skills by Duke. It’s a 4 week course that is designed to teach learners the basic math you will need in order to be successful in almost any data science math course and was created for learners who have basic math skills but may not have taken algebra or pre-calculus. We’ll see how this goes. Wish me luck.

9
Feb

Sabbatical: Supporting Data-Driven Decision Making With Educational Data Analytics Technologies

I’m happy to say that I was awarded a sabbatical for the 2018-2019 academic year. The fancy title of this post will be the focus of my sabbatical. It should be a grand ole dandy time, and I’m looking forward to spending my time doing and learning something new. If you’d like to read more about my sabbatical, I posted a few key points below.

Abstract: Learning analytics is a new and developing field. There is a growing literature base around learning analytics and its impact on student grades and retention. Although learning analytics is still at a relatively early stage of development, there is convincing evidence from early adopters that learning analytics will help to improve outcomes. It only makes sense that Maricopa would want to tap into this new field. Learning analytics has been defined as “the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of data about learners and their contexts, for purposes of understanding and optimizing learning and the environments in which it occurs” (Sampson, 2016). Maricopa with its use of Canvas LMS and SIS has an overabundance of data that goes unused. Becoming a data analysis authority will enable me, as a full-time faculty member, to help support data driven decision making at GCC using education data analytics technologies, which includes Canvas Data Portal.

Goal(s) – what the sabbatical will accomplish. A vital aspect of data driven decision making is Data Literacy for Teachers, which is the primary goal of this sabbatical, to empower myself to use data in the decision-making process, so that I can help support data driven decision-making at GCC using education data analytics technologies. Data Literacy for Teachers “comprises the competence set (knowledge, skills, and attitudes) required to identify, collect, analyze, interpret, and act upon Educational Data from different sources so as to support improvement of the teaching, learning and assessment process” (Sampson, 2016). Our LMS, Canvas, produces a lot of data that presently is not being used. By becoming a data analysis authority and more knowledgeable in Canvas Data, I will be able to help support other faculty and administrators with data driven decision making at GCC using these data analytics from Canvas.

Objectives – steps to achieve the goal(s). The objectives for this project mostly follow the competency set (knowledge, skills, and attitudes) required for Data Literacy for Teachers. They are required to identify, collect, analyze, interpret, and act upon Educational Data from different sources. There are several steps involved in this project.

  • Identify and learn about big data, analytics and data analysis.
  • Identify and learn about Canvas Learning Analytics.
  • Learn about Canvas Data Portal.
  • Learn how to collect the data from Canvas into various tools for analysis.
  • Learn Data Analysis to discover what the right questions to ask will be.
  • Learn how to interpret learning data to predict and influence outcomes (act upon).
  • Assess and identify which BI Tools schools are leveraging to analyze data.
  • Create/Find a collection of example queries that use Canvas Hosted Data to answer questions; queries that could be very useful to solve problems at GCC (act upon).
  • Create awareness guides and a workshop for faculty on Canvas Learning Analytics.
  • Create a resource guide for district CTL’s on Canvas Data Portal.
  • Get Canvas Data Portal turned on in Maricopa.

The only objective I’m worried about not accomplishing is the last. It can be a challenge at time getting things with in Maricopa accomplished, but I’m up for the fight.