I Respectfully Disagree With Your Decision to Deny My Travel Request
The very first conference I ever attended after starting work in Maricopa was the TYCA West conference. 1999 “Climates of Inquiry: Classrooms, Curriculum, Theory, and Assessment.” Park City, Utah; October 14-16. My division chair at the time suggested I go, and practically signed me up for it. I was grateful. I was hooked. Not just with this conference, but going to conferences in general and learning from others who do exactly what I do everyday. It’s refreshing. TYCA-West is a unique conference, and I’ve tried to go as often as possible over the years. It’s a small intimate conference, often garnering less than 50 participants. But it’s always rewarding, and even when I can’t go I try to help out in any way I can. Last year I did a redesign on the website for them and have helped them maintain it with backups and upgrades. It’s just what we do to help support things we believe in.
Well, last week I filled out my travel request forms and submitted all the required documents to the proper people for signatures to attend this year’s TYCA West conference in Salt Lake City. I submitted a proposal to present on hybrid course design and was looking forward to yet another awesome conference. But my excitement was put on hold when my travel request was denied. Yep, denied. Rejected. Fail! There is never enough space to write much of a justification on the form, so I didn’t think much of it and typed out a much longer justification and emailed it to my dean’s secretary addressing his concerns. Much to my surprise, it was denied again. The request to add additional wording on how my students will benefit from my travel was addressed in my eyes, but for some reason he didn’t like it. No explanation was given. So on my third attempt, I went back to what I know best. Take the required questions, dissect them and answer each part piece by piece. REJECTED for the third time. Apparently the dean or Vice President of Academic Affairs has his own ideas about what we should write for a justification for our professional growth now. I thought it was my professional growth.
It’s not clear who is denying my request as each secretary has blamed it on the other “boss.” I didn’t even get the courtesy of an email directly from the person rejecting my request. I’ve been going back and forth with the secretary. By the time the he said she said trickles down to me something is lost in translation. I have no idea what they are looking for. It’s obviously not MY professional growth activity any more. It will be what they want it to be or I don’t get to go. Doesn’t sound fair to me, and after 13 years of submitting travel requests in the district, this is the first time where my justification for wanting to attend a conference wasn’t good enough.
Here’s what bugs me the most. On our professional growth website, it states as the guidelines for use of FPG travels funds:
FPG travel funding is monetary support of any event for the purpose of professional growth that will increase knowledge, skills, or attitudes enhancing one’s role at the college.
It doesn’t say anything about “student benefit.” Why? Because that’s obvious. As I wrote in my justification, “Student learning and achievement increase when educators engage in effective professional development focused on the skills educators need in order to address students’ major learning challenges.” What those skills will be is unknown until you attend the conference and how that will directly effect your students is mere speculation. Why bother? The focus should be on my opportunity to “increase knowledge, skills or attitudes” to enhance my overall role at GCC; not just my role as a teacher. But by becoming a better teacher, obviously I become the benefit to my students. Me. I’m the benefit. They benefit from me and my increased knowledge, my increased skills and my postive attitude I will have because my administration doesn’t stand in the way of MY professional development.
To read my attempts at justification for my travel request, click here: Travel Request Justifications Denied
Travel Request Justifications Denied
In Maricopa, in order to take advantage of the available professional growth travel funds ($3500), you need to fill out a travel request form, provide all the proper documents, answer two questions and get the proper signatures: yours, department chair, travel rep and either the dean or VPAA. I honestly don’t know which one is supposed to sign off on it. The form leaves very little room to answer the two questions, so it’s literally a practice in being concise. Following are the two questions (bold) and my responses that were denied by the dean. My additional followup attempt, trying to address his concerns follows the two required questions. This justification was also denied. As of Tuesday, I have not been approved to travel. ;(
Purpose of business travel, including relevance to employee’s position in the District:
The purpose of my travel to the TYCA West conference is to directly support my role as assistant chair and eCourses coordinator for the department. Attending this conference will give me the opportunity to learn about different pedagogical practices in regards to teaching freshman composition at the two-year college. As a leader in the department, I plan to share what good practices I gather from my participation in this conference with my GCC colleagues. I will also be sharing what great things I’ve been able to accomplish here at GCC with participants during my presentation on hybrid courses.
Tangible benefits derived from business travel:
Tangible benefits derived from my travel to this conference include knowledge, strategic, networking, and team building benefits. I will learn about different practices my colleagues from other organizations are using at their institutions. That would include anything from technology tools to pedagogical practices. Attending the conference will enable me to see how other institutions anticipate, understand, and adapt to changes both in the teaching environment and in professional practice. The conference will enable me to meet professionals in similar roles and 2-year organizations on the west coast. Finally, as I have encouraged several younger faculty to also attend this conference, the conference will help build our department by providing a forum for faculty members to learn and discuss best practices, new tools, and emerging trends together.
Additional Justification requested by the dean’s secretary. This is my second attempt.
Professional development may enhance student learning through its effects on teaching practices, and effective professional development may contribute to the professional skills of participating teachers, thereby increasing the number of highly skilled faculty available at an institution. What does that mean for students and the institution? It means that I will be able to better my performance as a teacher and raise student achievement (theoretically). Student learning and achievement increase when educators engage in effective professional development focused on the skills educators need in order to address students’ major learning challenges. Many conferences that we attend give participants a variety of learning options in which to choose. Aside from the main idea, theme or major focus of the conference, no one can say specifically what they will learn and how students will benefit from this knowledge.
I could speculate and say that based on the theme of this year’s conference, “Alterations: The future of two year college English departments,” that I will learn more about the recent developments in higher education and how they are putting more pressure on two-year colleges to “move students through the system more quickly” and yet to provide “quality higher education” to some times under-prepared students. I will learn how these pressures impact development of curriculum, courses offered, textbook selection, staffing of classes, admissions policies, uses of technology in online and in-person education, as well as writing centers and academic advising. If I learn ALL that, students will benefit from better curriculum development, courses offered, text book selection, uses of technology in online and in-person classes, as well as better writing centers.
And as professional development should be reflective, I’ll be sure to share what I’ve learned with others who also believe in staying in touch with their profession.
Read More: I Respectfully Disagree with Your Decision to Deny my Travel Request
Creating an Online Class Orientation (video)
Creating an online class orientation is very important when teaching online. A good introduction to your online class could make or break the course for some students. If they can manage the orientation it’s a good sign for both of you that managing the class is possible. This video shows you how I’ve set up my online course orientation for a freshman composition course based on the QM rubric standards. You can download a copy of the QM Rubric from their website.
The Best of Both Worlds – Hybrid Courses at GCC
Image from: tmaworld.com
Hybrid courses, also known as blended learning, are the best kept secret of all things GCC has to offer. We don’t offer many of these types of courses in some departments, mostly because students are unfamiliar with the delivery style and shy away from them. It’s a shame because hybrid courses are great courses offering students the best of both worlds. That would be the world of traditional face to face classes and fully online classes.
We all know that online classes are not for everyone. Online classes required discipline, self direction, self motivation and lots of time. Albeit the time factor is flexible in that you can “go to class” when you want and not on a predefined Monday, Wednesday, Friday or Tuesday-Thursday at 8am schedule, but you still have to be disciplined enough to get your work done. Online courses can be tough, especially if you sign up for these classes for all the wrong reasons.
Hybrid courses are designed to give a taste of that online learning freedom, but with the comforts of having an instructor available to guide you. If you don’t quite have the discipline necessary to do online learning on your own, you can rely on still having to come face to face with your instructor once a week to face the music. Hybrid courses when designed correctly eliminate the boring class sessions when you drive to campus only to sit and listen to your instructor lecture for 50 minutes. Then you turn in your homework and leave. You could have done all that from the comforts of your own home. With a hybrid class, instructors find more creative ways to “lecture” the course material, like using video or audio. The lecture could come in the form of additional reading or multimedia lessons designed for online distribution. Or better yet, you could learn by doing.
With hybrid classes, you’re still held responsible for doing not just your homework on a weekly basis, but also your newly assigned online work. The online work is not just out there for you to figure out when, where, and how to do it. It’s tied in closely with your face to face class work, and most times, if you come to class ill prepared from not doing your online work, you won’t find the in class sessions meaningful. You’ll be wasting your time. So the discipline and guidance most students crave and need is still there, but in-class sessions are transformed into more meaningful, learner centered, and fun classes.
Give hybrid courses a try. We have plenty still available for Fall. They come in many different “blends,” so make sure you sign up for a full semester hybrid (08/22/2012- 12/14/2012). If the time period is shorter than 16 weeks, you will be registering for an accelerated class and that might be challenging your first time out. Also note that hybrid courses can be one day a week (my favorite) or even two days a week. It’s like making a smoothie in the blender. You decide what goes in and how much of each (F2F and Online) goes in.
Gmail to Gmail Migration in Maricopa
Today was go live day for Google Guides at GCC. We are switching our email from an archaic MEMO system to shiny new Gmail. All I can say is finally. I’ve been using Gmail for at least 5 years both with a Gmail address and my own domains (freshmancomp.com), so I’m very familiar with the perks. So I’ve been waiting for this moment.
My excitement was dampened a bit when the first thing I tried to do didn’t work. What? All I wanted to do was get all of my emails, folders and filters from my existing Gmail account moved over to my new Gmail account. Can’t be that difficult, right? Well, actually it’s not, but I just couldn’t get it to work.
I found instructions for moving from Gmail to Gmail here: http://www.twistermc.
- Download Thunderbird and set up both the Gmail account and the work Gmail account in it.
- Both accounts would then show in Tbird and then you can just drag folders from one to the other – Easy Peasy.
- The work Gmail account kept giving me an error when I tried to set it up. It said that either my username or password was incorrect. I tried both the alisa.cooper and MEID at the beginning of the email address AND I reset my password in PAT to the same thing and it said it was synchronized in MEMO.
- I also made sure both accounts had the IMAP option turned on in Gmail.
I was stumped, so I kept playing around with it, asked everyone I knew on Twitter, Facebook and CyberSalon if they had a solution. I even called the Helpdesk. Nothing.
In the mean time, I paid yippiemove.com to do the migration for me, but I still wanted to find the answer to the problem. Not everyone is going to be willing to pay $15 to have it done for them, even if it worked great. So after a few more inquires, one of my CyberSalon pals pointed me to the MCC wiki and I found this article: Google Apps – Setting Up Thunderbird on Mac.
The information provided here was much different than the basic directions found elsewhere. The main difference was the need to input both the First.LastName and the MEID parts of the email address in the setup process. Also I had to really change my password first. Doh! Previously I had just updated it by inputting the same password in the PAT tool. Not sure if that worked, but the settings below did after I changed it.
Make sure everything matches what I have entered above and it should work.
If you want to move your filters too, you will need to do this separately, as IMAP doesn’t import/export filters. Just export/import them right in Gmail. That worked flawlessly as well. Don’t forget to turn on “Import Filters” in Labs first. Here’s how to do it.
Impossible Working Conditions – Forget Accountability
Working on campus the last few weeks has been nearly impossible. Forget 6 hours of accountability. It’s not happening. Not on campus at least. Here’s what’s happening instead. Nothing. Lots of meetings for HLC. More nothing. Go home. Work. Yep, I literally show up to campus to make an appearance. I can’t get anything done because the network is slower than (fill in with appropriate simile). Last week we got this message from IT:
The GCC OIT networking team has been working diligently to try to resolve the Internet connectivity issues we’ve all been experiencing. In some critical applications, this has resulted in connections being “dropped” entirely. Just as frustrating has been the overall slowness of those systems that are working.
At this point, we basically have two choices: 1) live with the situation the way it is, or 2) deal with some slowness during peak times but keep as much application integrity as possible. We have decided to go with option 2 so that key applications like Blackboard, AccuPlacer, and others, are able to run without “timing out”.
Those were our only two choices? I found that odd. Am I the only one who is finding it nearly impossible to do my job while on campus? I can’t grade anything. I can’t create anything. Basically I can’t teach. I can’t even goof off and watch YouTube videos, not that that’s what I would want to do, but hey, it was a district email that sent the links. 😉
So yesterday we got an update to the system and supposedly the problem has been fixed. The email states:
With the assistance of Tempe support services, a firewall bottleneck was isolated and removed. Network performance monitoring confirms the effectiveness of the change.
We wish to thank our GCC community for your feedback during this trying time. Your comments helped our technical staff identify the root issue.
Is it any better. No, not really. It still takes forever to load pages. But I’m not really complaining. I like working from home better, and I’m getting good at composing quick tweets about nothing important while I wait for my pages to load. It’s like I’m encouraged to goof off and to fill my idle time while sitting here staring at my browser window. I also love having an actual excuse for why I didn’t get those essays graded sooner. And some times we just need a mental break from non-stop work, work, work. So it’s all good that our network stinks. I’m not mad at ya! In fact, I was able to write this post in between page loads as I try to grade journal posts for my ENG102 class. Now I’m off to help faculty create hybrid courses – not on campus obviously. We even have an excuse to meet up at the local pub! W00t!
Is It a Degree or an Education That You Seek?
It’s been a long time since I was in undergrad, so maybe I’m a little out of touch with the reality of today and today’s college students. Today is a technological world and times are tough. People work hard to make ends meet, and many people return to college seeking better opportunities and a chance to get ahead. Others rush to college to update outdated technology skills to better compete with the new net generation. In a competitive job market where the college educated and tech literate are winning the jobs over the less educated and tech savvy, I understand the rush back to college. I get that. But I’m not sure if all students understand why exactly they are here. When I ask my students why they are in college, I rarely here a response like, “I want to learn about space,” or “I’m really interested in improving my writing skills.” I know. Who says that? Everyone wants “to get a good job,” “make good money,” “get enough credits to get to ASU, NAU or U of A,” and “get a degree.” That’s great! Those are all worthy goals, but there’s something missing for me. Don’t students want to learn anything? Don’t they want to be educated?
Earning a degree doesn’t guarantee anyone anything. Trust me, in this economy I know plenty of degreed individuals seeking meaningful employment. These people have years of experience in the workforce and yet employment somehow escapes them. Maurice Johnson is homeless with 2 master’s degrees (VIDEO). Is earning a degree enough today? No, it’s probably not, but it is a good start. But that shouldn’t be the only goal. Along with that degree students have to learn the skills and knowledge necessary to compete with often better educated, better experienced, and more seasoned individuals who are now willing to take less pay just to have a job. The key to success for students today is knowing what skills employers are looking for. Degree? Check. Educated? Check. Skilled? Check.
So what does it mean to be educated? Here is a list of the top 3 skills employers are looking for and how students in college today can learn these skills. “The one skill most often sought by employers is the ability to communicate well – to listen, write, and speak effectively” (Barnes, 2009). It’s interesting to me how many students sit in the back of the room and don’t participate in class discussions unless called upon. What faculty are trying to teach students is that by participating in class discussions, students can practice those much needed communication skills. So speak up and show those teachers that listening and speaking effectively are important to you. Don’t hide in the back of the room. Come to class prepared and participate. That is part of the education we are trying to teach.
Another sought after skill is the ability to work with others in a professional manner while achieving a common goal. This skill has become increasingly important in today’s work environment, yet in the classroom before I can get the two words (group project) out of my mouth, there are groans from my students. Very few want to work in a group. The complaints are numerous. I tell my students they should be thankful if they end up with a “dud” in their group. Think of all the valuable experience one can gain in overcoming all the obstacles. Working with people is often going to be difficult in many different situations, including the work place, so learning how to deal with those difficulties and still accomplish the goal is valuable. Sometimes all it takes is someone stepping up and taking the lead even if it might mean taking on a bit more of the workload. Be that leader.
The last skill, not to imply there are not many more necessary, is “the ability to find solutions to problems using creativity, reasoning, past experiences, available information and resources.” Demonstrating good problem solving skills can indicate how well you will lead when you are put in charge. So all those excuses about why that essay didn’t get submitted on time only demonstrates to your professor that you lack problem solving skills or initiative to get started in a timely fashion. We’ll save the latter for another time. Instead of excuses, try solutions. Be creative. Faculty have even been known to learn something from students who have taken the initiative to solve problems in the classroom. And it’s much more pleasurable to listen to creative ideas than excuses all day.
The choice is yours. Are you just seeking a degree or do you really want to be educated, to learn what it takes to be successful in today’s world? What your teachers are trying to teach you in those college courses goes beyond the subject matter of the class, which is important. But being educated doesn’t mean just answering all the questions correctly on the test. Being educated is “a demonstrated ability to listen carefully, to think critically, to evaluate facts rigorously, to reason analytically, to imagine creatively, to articulate interesting questions, to explore alternative viewpoints, to maintain intellectual curiosity and to speak and write persuasively. If we add to that a reasonable familiarity with the treasures of history, literature, theater, music, dance and art that previous civilizations have delivered, we are getting to [sic] close to the meaning of educated” (Denning, 2011). And I’ll leave you with that.
