Ever since the election, I, like many of my fellow Democrats, have been trying to make sense of just what the hell happened. It’s clear to me that I, like many of my fellow Democrats, have been completely asleep at the wheel. So I’ve taken it upon myself to embark on a crash course in political science. I’m starting with Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom. For no particular reason.. Read More
I’ve decided to start blogging again. Almost a year after my last post, and honestly, almost 2 years after my last post of any actual substance. I only mention this because my friend and colleague Carolyn Hank looked at scholar blogs in her dissertation research, and filtered out of her analysis any blog that had been inactive for 3 months or more. (Full disclosure: I was on her dissertation committee.).. Read More
Note: I originally posted this post to the photoblog that I keep about my kids, mostly for the benefit of their grandparents. I wrote it on 17 Jul 2011, right after the announcement that NASA was discontinuing the space shuttle program. Today, the 30th anniversary of Challenger disaster, seems to me like a good time to repost it publicly. I am genuinely sad to see the end of the Space.. Read More
If there’s anyone in the world still subscribed to this blog, you’ll have noticed that I haven’t been keeping it up really at all. In fact, the last post I made here was over a year ago now. In that last post, I mentioned that I was writing a book about metadata. Well, that book is now out from MIT Press. The title, cleverly, is Metadata. It’s part of the.. Read More
As you may know, I’m currently writing a book about metadata for the MIT Press, which will be part of their Essential Knowledge series. The current plan is that the book will be on in the Press’ Fall 2015 catalog. Just in case you want to, you know, buy a copy. So I’ve been thinking about metadata a lot, and doing a lot of metadata-related research. One of the things.. Read More
The second iteration of the Metadata MOOC recently ended, and Statements of Accomplishment have gone out. So now I can share some data from round 2. Recall that back before round 2 launched, I made some predictions about how student engagement in the course would play out over the course of the course. Well, it turns out that I lowballed myself… over the 8-week span, the number of active students.. Read More
Gentle reader, good news. My long-awaited essay was published this morning in the Inside Higher Ed Views section. Long-awaited by me anyway… the IHE editor was very expeditious in moving this piece along, but I started writing the stupid thing 6 months ago. I originally titled the piece “You don’t owe me an apology.” But the IHE editor changed it to the, I have to admit, better title “No Apologies.”.. Read More
The second iteration of the Metadata MOOC launches tomorrow! You may recall that I wrote several posts after the first iteration wrapped up, presenting some descriptive stats from the course. I plan to do the same with the second iteration, of course, because I’m a geek and I love almost nothing more than a big dataset. But that’s 8 weeks away. So to keep myself entertained in the meantime, I.. Read More
I realized yesterday that in my long and storied career in academia, I’ve taught with a pretty fair cross-section of learning management systems. And then, because I’m just that compulsive, I started to try to count them. So for your edification… or maybe for my own amusement… here’s that list. WebCT: I cut my teeth on this LMS, way back as a doctoral student at Syracuse University. I used it.. Read More
I mentioned in a previous post that we’re relaunching the Metadata MOOC. The official launch date is Monday July 14, & like last time it will run for 8 weeks. Which means it will wrap up on September 5 (or that following weekend). Which hopefully means that it will end just in time for the start of the semester… which of course is only an issue for MOOC students who.. Read More