Twitter: It's What's for Dinner (It's the New Beef!)

Professor Rankin, a History Professor from the University of Texas at Dallas, started using twitter in her classroom last semester. This is a video she created from her experiences:



This year, I plan to write several scholarly articles and blog posts about twitter and its impact in the secondary and post-secondary environments. Today is the first day of the year and I am compiling ideas from several articles on the subject.

If you have any ideas on how to utilize twitter in the classroom environment, please let me know! Send me ideas! I will publish them on the blog! I am motivated for 2010!

Sincerely,

Millennial Professor

How I Spent My Christmas Vacation (Pre-Christmas Vacation Post)

Late last night, I searched through various tweets on my twitter feed and I discovered that the blog was selected as one of the "Top 16 Professor Blogs" by Academe Jobs.com. Here's the link - http://www.academejobs.com/professor_blogs.php. 

This is quite exciting, because I needed an extra "pick me up"! The past few days, I have spent my time searching for grants and fellowships to help others and to add to my tenure packet. I found a couple of grants for which I am very excited about, but the budget planning and research process for each grant is very time consuming. On Wednesday, I had a very productive meeting with two people who seem to be very interested in the grant.



I hope it pays off in the long run! I plan to have a grant for each year of the tenure process (7 years) AND to help the surrounding community! :) Wish me luck!


Millennial Professor

Our College Graduates and Student Loans

This semester is finally winding down. THANK GOODNESS! Yesterday, I wrote an article for the college newsletter that focuses on the "After the Degree, Now What?" conference. This was a very interesting way to reflect on last month's successful event. However, today I received a message on my RSS feed titled, "College Graduates Struggle to Repay Loans".

Many college students do not focus on their student loans until their last month of school. This is when students are required by the federal government to participate in online exit counseling. At this time in most students' lives (including my own), they are not focused on ANYTHING but their final exams and the graduation ceremony.

I think more students should know about the pros and cons of consolidating their student loans. In addition, it seems that many students do not know that they have the option to defer student loans if they choose to go back to school. Last, but certainly not least, if students experience a financial hardship or unemployment, they should know about the option to ask their loan company for a deferment.

My goal is to pay off my student loans in the next four years (before I go up for tenure). My family uses coupons, but I will definitely have to find more ways to save money repay our student loans!

Have a great day!

J. Edwards (Millennial Professor)

Seven Suggestions for Online Professors Who Would Like to Improve Their Online Courses

I plan to modify my entire online speech course during the Winter holidays! Unfortunately, it seems that students enrolled in online courses are more likely to drop out of their course than students taking face-to-face courses (Marry, 2009). During the next few years, I would like to discover what keeps the students enrolled in online courses and what causes them to drop out.

Recently, I discovered an article by Bob Kelly (of Faculty Focus) titled "Seven Ways to Personalize Your Online Course". As the title indicates, the article offers other professors some interesting ways to personalize their courses, which may have an impact on student learning.

The author exerpts information gathered from Jane Dwyer's (a senior lecturer at Rivier College) article titled "Tips From The Pros - 7 Things to Personalize Your Online Course".

Here are the tips:

• Sending the students an introductory letter.
• Welcome the students to the course with a video clip.
• Ask the students some "introductory questions" in discussion boards.
• Create and sustain a "pet gallery", in which students can submit pictures of their pets instead of themselves.
• Create a "bully session" which enables students to contribute likes and improvement suggestions about the course.
• Create an environment of shared leadership, in which students will create and facilitate their own discussion questions.
• Respond to student questions by creating and sustaining a "question forum". This enables all students to see the professor's answers to one student's question.

I am very interested to see if these techniques have an impact on student learning AND if other professors utilize the same pedagogical techniques in their online courses.

Have a great week!

J. Edwards (Millennial Professor)