Incorporating Social Media and Digital Citizenship in the First-Year Experience Course
MistakenGoal.com
by Kevin R. Guidry
3y ago
Last spring, the faculty senate of my university passed a series of resolutions aimed at updating the university’s general education program. Part of that program requires (nearly) all undergraduate students to take a First-Year Seminar (FYS) course and one of the resolutions updated some of the specific outcomes of that course. In this post I’ll discuss how we’re approaching the new outcome of “responsible use of the internet and other social media” that the faculty have added to the course. It’s important to note that FYS courses at my university come in many different flavors. About 40% of ..read more
Visit website
Baumol, Walker, and Xerxes
MistakenGoal.com
by Kevin R. Guidry
3y ago
In the introduction to Athanasius: On the Incarnation De Incarnatione Verbi Dei, C.S. Lewis discusses the predilection that some people have to spend a considerable amount of time reading about an idea instead of simply reading the idea itself. An optimist, Lewis attributes this to humility on the part of readers who are hesitant to believe that they can directly confront and understand big ideas. It’s better and even necessary for us to have those ideas filtered and explained for us by learned experts. This is part of the reason why I avoided directly confronting William J. Baumol’s “cost dis ..read more
Visit website
Many New Ideas are Quite Old
MistakenGoal.com
by Kevin R. Guidry
3y ago
Now that I’ve finished my dissertation, I finally feel free to turn my attention to other scholarly pursuits.  I feel an obligation to bring closure to the historical work I began a few years ago so I will be spending the next several months working with primary sources and reworking old drafts into publishable articles.  More than feeling an obligation to finish this work, I genuinely enjoy conducting historical research because I find it interesting and comforting to continually discover that many of today’s challenges and issues have been with us for decades or even centuries. Bel ..read more
Visit website
Dissertation Journal: Defended, Edited, Submitted, Accepted
MistakenGoal.com
by Kevin R. Guidry
3y ago
It’s been about a year-and-a-half since my last post about my dissertation.  Two weeks ago, I defended my dissertation NON-RESPONSE BIAS ON WEB-BASED SURVEYS AS INFLUENCED BY THE DIGITAL DIVIDE AND PARTICIPATION GAP.  I’ve included the abstract below if you’re interested in its content but I’ll focus here on some of the process. I originally intended to write a lot more in this blog about my dissertation-writing process but my posts eventually petered out as I got further and further behind schedule.  After a while, I refused to write about it not only because I had nothing new ..read more
Visit website
Perplexing Problems in ACPA Student Technology Infographic
MistakenGoal.com
by Kevin R. Guidry
3y ago
I’ve whined about bad infographics and I try to avoid complaining about their continuing proliferation.  But I can’t bite my tongue about this ACPA infographic purporting to show information about technology usage by undergraduate students.  It’s bad not just because it’s misrepresenting information but because it’s doing so in the specific context of making a call for quality research and leadership in higher education. There are some serious problems with the layout and structure of the infographic but let’s focus on the larger issues of data quality and (mis)representation.  ..read more
Visit website
Going Through the Motions of Active Learning and Engagement
MistakenGoal.com
by Kevin R. Guidry
3y ago
Whether it’s framed as active learning, student engagement, time-on-task, or <insert educational jargon here>, we know that people don’t learn well by simply listening to others talk.  Learning requires repeated practice and adjustments made via feedback.  A recent metastudy in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) is making the rounds but it’s just the latest in a long line of studies reinforcing these facts. This sometimes leads me to forget that active learning is not itself an end but merely a means to an end.  In ot ..read more
Visit website
Is Radical Personalization Antithetical to Sustained Interactions With Others?
MistakenGoal.com
by Kevin R. Guidry
3y ago
One of the more exciting developments at my university is the ongoing development of our new Mathematical Sciences Learning Laboratory (MSLL). Pronounced “missile” and the already the cause of many puns (e.g., the opening of the new lab is already being dubbed “the missile launch”), it’s a space that is “intended to serve students entering our foundational mathematics sequence, in particular, courses below the calculus level.”  It seems to draw part of its inspiration from the math emporium model which, in its most radical form, allows students to progress through lower-level math courses ..read more
Visit website
I’m Not A Programmer But Programming Skills Are Still Extremely Useful
MistakenGoal.com
by Kevin R. Guidry
3y ago
I don’t work in IT, software development, or anything even closely related to those fields so I’m often surprised at how much programming I do in my daily work life.  At times I write scripts or light programs (e.g., this set of Excel macros), usually to save time and ensure accurate, well-documented, and reproducible results.  More often, I directly use some of the skills of programming, especially flow control and abstraction, to make tasks easier, elegant, or possible. When I first entered college in 1996, I began as a computer science major.  After a few years I changed my m ..read more
Visit website
The Psuedo-curriculum
MistakenGoal.com
by Kevin R. Guidry
3y ago
I know this will be provocative for some of you but lately when I’ve heard people use the phrase “co-curriculum” I’ve silently translated it in my head to “psuedo-curriculum.” I’ll explain more below but understand that I am not devaluing out-of-class activities but expressing frustration that we don’t really value them. My frustration here has been long simmering but two strands of experience and thought are mingling and bringing things into focus for me. First, I’m teaching another graduate course in pedagogy this semester. Last semester we focused on smaller details of teaching and learning ..read more
Visit website
Essential Reading for Technology in Student Affairs v1.1
MistakenGoal.com
by Kevin R. Guidry
3y ago
A few weeks ago, I posted a set of recommended readings that I originally sent to a colleague who asked me what I would recommend as essential reading for understanding technology in student affairs.  I’ve updated this list adding two sets of resources.  First, I included danah boyd’s new book It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens now that (a) I have read it and (b) it’s available for purchase and download (for free!).  It supersedes her 2008 book chapter “Why Youth (Heart) MySpace: The Role of Networked Publics in Teenage Social Life” in Youth, Identity, and Dig ..read more
Visit website

Follow MistakenGoal.com on FeedSpot

Continue with Google
Continue with Apple
OR