WSU Teaching & Learning Blog

A great collection of writing about wikis in the higher education context is available online as a wiki (no surprise there, eh?). It is entitled The Wild Wild Wiki/Wiki Writing: Collaborative Learning in the College Classroom. Perhaps more interesting is the news that the University of Michigan press will be turning the collection into a book. Here’s the contents you can read online.

Volume Introduction “WhatWas a Wiki, and Why Do I Care? A Short and Usable History of Wikis”
Wikis and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
- “Wikis in the Classroom: A Taxonomy”
- “Wiki Justice, Social Ergonomics, and Ethical Collaborations”
- “Building Learning Communities with Wikis”
- “Content and Commentary: Parallel Structures of Organization and Interaction on Wikis”
Wikis in Composition and Communication
- “Disrupting Intellectual Property: Collaboration and Resistance in Wikis”
- “Wiki Lore and Politics in the Classroom”
- “An (Old) First-Timer’s Learning Curve: Curiosity, Trial, Resistance, and Accommodation”
- “Above and Below the Double Line: Refactoring and that Old-Time Revision”
- “Success Through Simplicity: On Developmental Writing and Community of Inquiry.”
- “Wiki as Textshop: Constructing Knowledge in the Electronic Classroom”
Wikis and the Higher Education Classroom
- “Is there a Wiki in this Class? Wikibooks and the Future of Higher Education”
- “Agency and Accountability: The Paradoxes of Wiki Discourse”
- “One Wiki, Two Classrooms”
- “Glossa Technologia: Anatomy of a Wiki-Based Annotated Bibliography”

Writing and publishing is a major area of concern for most academics. Many of us struggle with finding the time to write within our daily routines. The OTL recently sponsored a workshop conducted by Dr. Tara Gray, called Publish and Flourish. Dr. Gray provided many wonderful, concrete strategies for increasing writing productivity, and faculty who attended have let me know that they found the experience to be extremely beneficial.

We would love to invite Dr. Gray back next year, so for those of you unable to attend this year, be on the lookout for the workshop in the upcoming 2008-2009 academic year. In the meantime, some of Dr. Gray’s suggestions include:

• Post your thesis statement and write to it
• Write EVERY day for at least 15 minutes, preferably the same time every day
• Make time by scheduling writing on your calendar and write without interruptions (shut your door, turn off the phone, and close your email)
• Document your progress by keeping a daily log of the minutes you wrote and report it to someone else

I noted a theme in Tara’s presentation, which often comes up in other discussions around writing, and that is the notion of consistency and accountability–writing every day and reporting your writing results to someone else.

To jump start your writing, you might consider joining an online Academic Writing Club. There’s a small fee involved, but many who participate claim the expense is offset by their increase in productivity. Check it out and let me know what you think!

Faculty might be interested in following the growing campaign focused on reducing the costs of textbooks. Perhaps the fastest window into this work is the maketextbooksaffordable.org website.

Recently, legislation passed in the House of Representatives that would, if passed in the Senate as well, involve 3 components.

1. Requires publishers to disclose textbook pricing and revision information up-front to faculty
2. Requires publishers to offer textbooks and supplemental materials “unbundled” (separately)
3. Requires institutions, to the maximum extent practicable, to provide the list of required and recommended textbooks (including prices and ISBNs) when students register for classes.

There is also growing support for open access textbooks. Faculty are being encouraged to sign the Open Textbooks Statement found online here.

Last week, UNESCO released a report (authored by Susan D’Antoni) entitled Open Educational Resources: The way forward (.pdf). A wiki version is available as well. George Siemens from the University of Manitoba has put together a short online presentation (using Articulate) that summarizes key points from the report. It’s a good way to get up to speed on some of the current buzz on OER’s.  

As one possible indication of the sea change we’re headed for, Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences has just adopted a policy that requires faculty members to allow the university to make their scholarly articles available free online, making it the first U.S. university to do so. Here’s a link to more details.

The Connexions clearinghouse at Rice University offers a wide variety of open learning content. One very useful jumping off point for faculty and students interested in the growing wealth of shared learning content is the online course Introduction to Open Educational Resources. 

Developed by Judy Baker, the course walks the user through the major topics in the OER world, namely Open Courseware, Fair Use and Copyright, Finding Sources (including discipline-specific ones), Public Domain Textbooks, Primary Sources, Development of OER resources, and mechanisms for the Delivery, Storage and Organization of free content. Plenty of links and examples provide a quick entrance into an exciting area of growth for instructors at all levels of our educational system.

While this isn’t exactly about teaching and learning in the traditional sense, conference blogs provide an important resource for staying up-to-date on the latest information in your field. At our Virtual Citizenship conference for instance, WSU faculty member Kevin Deegan-Krause did an impressive job covering both the speakers and audience participation. Just in case you are going to a conference and want to try blogging about it, or if you are hosting an event and want to encourage blog coverage, you may want to have a look at this idea-packed 6-page booklet presenting Tips for Conference Bloggers developed by Ethan Zuckerman and Bruno Giussani. Here’s the direct link to the  PDF.

Join us this Thursday, January 3rd for a workshop on Blogs and Wikis in Academia. We will explore the use of these tools in academic contexts. UPDATE: Slides from the session now available  http://www.slideshare.net/warters/blogs-and-wikis-in-academia/ 

Here are the details:

• Thursday, January 3rd
• 1:30 – 3:30 pm
• 150 Purdy Kresge Library
• (TRC Instruction Lab)

Getting your work published in academic journals is a key aspect of the university experience for graduate students and faculty, and especially those on the tenure track. If you have been waffling about publishing, or just don’t know where to start, you’re in luck. A new online course has been developed that will help you get focused and hopefully make the process more understandable and efficient. Publish, Not Perish: The Art and Craft of Publishing in Scholarly Journals is an information rich tutorial developed through a collaboration among the libraries of the University of Colorado. As the name implies, it focuses on publishing in scholarly journals. In the 5 module online course you learn how to:

• Describe the role of scholarly publishing in an academic career
• List the essential steps of planning and writing a scholarly paper.
• Develop a personal publication plan
• Compare and contrast the different publishing models currently in use
• Describe the types of articles you can write
• List the pros and cons of collaborative authoring
• Describe the tools and resources a scholarly writer needs to have on hand

The five modules provided are, not surprisingly, quite text heavy, but the content is good and the reading is interspersed with interactive components to help keep your interest. Here’s the basic structure:

1. Module 1 - Overview of Scholarly Journal Publishing
2. Module 2 - Laying the Groundwork: Ideas, Journal Research & Queries
3. Module 3 - Deadlines & Details - Manuscript Prep & Submission
4. Module 4 - From Good to Great - The Editorial Process
5. Module 5 - Making it Yours - Customizing Your Publishing Plan 

This is a valuable resource, and it is costs nothing to use. Nice going University of Colorado library people!