The Mobile Professor

One thing that #acwrimo has done is to remind me to blog my research ideas and insights as I'm developing them. With that in mind, I've decided to talk about some new research I am considering. Many of the ideas are still in the early stages, but the more I read and participate in online groups, the more I'm convinced this is research that needs to be done.

The Mobile Adjunct

Currently, I am involved in #adjunctchat, a community that meets on twitter at Tuesdays at 4:00 PM, New York time. This is open to anyone in the world who is interested in contingent faculty issues, either as a researcher, an administrator, faculty friend of contingent instructors, or (of course) an instructor that works in a temporary position, full-time or part-time, long-term contract or short-term contract, for one university or multiple, by choice or by necessity.

Recently, we had one of our followers suggest that we discuss online contingent faculty issues. We also have discussed controlling the adjunct's work environment. In many cases, adjuncts either share office space, don't have office space, or work in a virtual office, connecting with colleagues, administrators, or students online.

My own officemate teaches at two different universities, resulting in managing her resources, physical and virtual, between two distinct university cultures (one school is a large public research university with a high level of diversity, the other is a world renowned technical university with many international students, but little diversity). At times, there have been some comical mix ups as she has arrived at school with the wrong resources for the class she is about to teach. She is not as open to new technology, but she does rely on a netbook to access student records, courses resources, and student communication.

The Personal Communication Society

Yesterday, while reading an article I am writing for contribution to a book a colleague is working on, I came across Campbell and Park's (2008) idea of personal mobile communication. They point out that research indicates that people communicating using mobile devices in a public place, in fact don't necessarily perceive the conversation private (they are in a public place), but rather as personal.

This distinction is important because people become uncomfortable if they are forced to hear a personal conversation in a public place, trying not to ease drop or infringe on those who are in the middle of a personal conversation in a public place. In addition, Rettie's (2008) research suggests that there are different ways in which devises are used depending on the level of intimacy between people using mobile devises. The deeper level of intimacy, the more likely communication in a public space and time will be disguised.

In other words, communication perceived as deeply personal can still be conducted in public spaces, but some type of code will be used to allow for personal interaction (e.g. teens using texting and abbreviations when parents or other friends are in the room). There may also be signals given that an interaction should be conducted in private (i.e. change in location or devise) in which the interaction may not be personal. An example of this would be taking a business call in a restaurant.

By separating personal from private, I was able to understand a phenomenon my students and I noticed last year. My students interacted on facebook differently depending on what devise they used. While the privacy settings were the same for computer and mobile technology, they were more familiar (slang, communicated on topics in a way that was less socially acceptable, swearing)on mobile devises than when they communicated on a desk top computer.

It is possible that young adults perceive mobile technology, as Campbell and Park suggest, as more personal, resulting in a more intimate register. This would also explain the dichotomy between published incidences of sexting, uploading of socially unaccepted behavior on youtube, and cyberbullying against Pew's findings that American youth are concerned about their privacy. Pew pointed out this dichotomy in their report saying to teens managed their privacy while also sharing more personal information online.

While I have been looking for data (primary research reports and journal articles) on mobile technology use that supports Campbell and Park's theory, Rettie is the only one that I have found so far that begins to address this dichotomy. One reason is that it may be difficult to operationalize private and personal.

Researching the Mobile Professor

So, combining my interest in contingent and temporary employees, and my current interest in mobile technology, I have decided to create a research agenda looking at mobile devise use of adjuncts/contingent faculty. My first research will be on private, public, and personal in mobile communications. This is especially important for adjunct faculty who may have to use their own personal devises to communicate with students, and at the same time have federal laws that require their interactions be private. However, faculty that do not have private physical spaces to interact with students will need to carve out a public space that allows for personal interaction or personal interaction that needs to be conducted in private spaces such as a car or online space.

Part of the conditions that add (or negatively impact) an adjunct is his or her social network. Therefore, it would be interesting to understand what social networks adjuncts create and how they maintain them. For example, now with mobile technology, adjuncts can create more permanent relationships with their students without a close intimacy. Likewise, as an adjunct leaves a position for a semester, are they better able to maintain professional relationships with administrators? With the potential of mobile technology creating sociomental communities (Chayko, 2007), why aren't adjuncts better socialized within departments or the universities? Are adjuncts now being heard because they are creating sociomental communities because they are being forced to interact with mobile devices? Related to this would be determining how adjuncts find each other (which has been a problem with unionizing specific campuses).

By starting with these questions in looking at contingent faculty and mobile technology, I will be able to then extend this research into all types of temporary and/or contingent workers including consultants (private and government), emergency workers (including local government, hospital, utility, national guard, first responders), temporary or seasonal workers, and per diam workers (nurses, teachers, laborers).

Resources

Mary Chayko (2007). The portable community: envisioning and examining mobile social connectedness. International Journal of Web Based Communities, 3 (4), 373-385.

Scott W. Campbell and Jong Jin Park (2008). Social Implications of Mobile Telephony: The Rise of Personal Communication Society. Sociology Compass, 2 (2) 371-387.

Ruth Rettie (2008). Mobile Phones as Network Capital: Facilitating Connections. Mobilities, 3(2), 291-311.

A series on culture

This semester I'm teaching one of my favorite courses: international marketing. The one area that my students are really having a problem with is culture. As I began to gather new and updated materials on this topic, I began to have a new understanding of what culture is and how it impacts everything in our life.

With this in mind, I have decided to write a series of posts on culture, some of the theories, the impact on things such as learning, technology, and communication, and areas needed for future research.

The dangers of good communication in the networked society

This week was very busy in our region as the president came to one of the community colleges in the region. It was very exciting as both my children were able to listen to his speech, the president's motorcade went by the son's school, and one of my daughter's teachers attended the speech live (they had a police escort for their school bus from the farm where they were doing scientific field work so she could attend in shoes borrowed from one of the students as she was wearing heavy boots coated with mud!).

I took the time out from my day to listen to the speech as it was telecast live on our campus. But for the second time now, I have been disappointed in one of the president's speech. Upon reflecting about my disappointment with the president's speech, I realized what the problem was. I feel as if there is a role for me to participate in the healthcare, economic, and educational discussions going on at the federal level. The White House has done a good job of setting up incoming messages. However, I feel they need to close the loop. I feel as if my messages posted on their site is just one out of a million (just like buying a lottery ticket) and it just goes into the cyber black hole. How are my posts any different than discussing my opinions with my husband as we watch the president speak. I KNOW my husband's not listening to my remarks and could care less about MY opinions. Rather, my husband would like to get HIS point across and have me agree with him. Although it took a number of years of marrige to figure it out, now I just agree with him and keep my opinions (if they are contrary) to myself.

I feel the same way with the communication system the way it currently is set up at the White House. I don't see an online community developing where there are public discussions of what others have posted, nor is there anyone facilitating these discussions online. The closest has been links to blogs where there are some discussions. Likewise, when you send an email comment, you are put on the listserv, but you don't get a message saying, "Thank-you for offering your opinion on ....(the issue, which can be electronically generated). The messages ...(explain what happens to the messages: chosen randomly to be read, all read by volunteers and passed on to policy makers, deleted the next day and not read?)." This at least allows the writer to feel like they are being heard.

Implications for others developing communication policy

As the communication technologies allow us to connect with larger networks and communities outside of our geographic location we can learn from our current administration.

Lesson 1: People want to be heard. This includes having their opinions VALIDATED even if the listener doesn't agree. "I understand what you are saying, but I don't agree," or "that's a good point, but..." Even a message that states, "We have so many comments that we may not be able to respond personally. However, be assured that we are reading your comments."

Lesson 2: Let those you are communicating with know what your processes are. How will communications be used? Who reads and responds to the communication? What are the time frames?

Lesson 3: Understand the networks. Usually, networks are based on common values and ideas. An perceived insult or snub can be very damaging, but a note of encouragment can have positive ripples through a network. Only imagine the impact had the president sent an email (even if it were a form one) to my daughter's school or teacher. This could then be forwarded through each of the students' own social networks.

Lesson 4: Don't ask for feedback unless you are going to use it. This is something marketers and researchers learn early. Related to this is make sure you are asking the right questions. I always begin with very broad questions, then narrow in on the discussion. The broad questions will help you to determine where the conversation/dialog should be steered.

Lesson 5: Understand that those who use new technologies have high expectations. It is difficult to control those within a network and someone that uses web 2.0 must prepare for those who are receiving your messages to disagree and want to give their opinions. As a result, it is important that some policy is developed on how to handle "audience" reaction.

Why I don't twitter

I have read and heard more and more about twitter these days. I don't twitter for the following reasons:

1. I can't write short sentences and not expand on them.
2. I can't imagine that anyone would be so interested in my every thought and movement. And if they were, that's a bit creepy (as my kids would say).
3. I think twitter is great for celebrities, the media, or school officials where there is a need to get information out to a large volume of people. Perhaps I'll think about twittering for my classes in the future to remind students of assignments, etc... However, I think that students should take the responsibility for their own learning and course work. I have other tools that address this need in my class (Ning) where there is more dialogue rather than one way communication.
4. Twitter seems too directive (do this or look at that). I'm more of a dialogue type of person.
5. Most of my students don't use twitter as they have their preferred tools for interaction.
6. I think it would boom me out to only have 5 or 6 followers on twitter!

Truthfully, I don't see the need to follow anyone nor do I see the need for anyone to follow me other than by blog or even IM. I have trouble keeping up the "what I am doing" on LinkedIn. Why start using another tool?

The advantages (and disadvantages) of live webcasts

We just had a new senator appointed to take the place of Hilary Clinton for our state. As I watched the live webcast, and the formal speeches ended, I was amused at the way that the state press secretary (tried) to handle the press. After a couple of minutes of asking the press to return to their seats, he whispered something to the Governor. Then he announced, "If the press does not take their seats in 2 minutes, the Governor will leave." And still the members of the press, like disorderly school kids, wandered around. Finally, someone took the mic and began to call on members to ask their questions.

Just like a classroom, many members of the press then answered. However, some still were walking around and speaking (in none too quiet voices). Also during this time, you could hear the new appointee, Kirsten Gillibrand, apologize to the governor for going over her time. "I was a bit nervous, "you could hear her murmur.

New Access to Information

The new technologies have given those who want it an unprecidented access to information without the commentary. In the press conference that followed, I was very impressed with the level of knowledge that the new senator has on a variety of issues. I was also shocked at the lack of respect and even rudeness that some of the reporters showed during the press conference. I will be interested in hearing what the edited version will be.

What this means is that citizens can listen to either the edited version or the unedited version. When listening to the commentary on the President's inauguration speech, I wondered if I had listened to the same speech. My children were not allowed to hear the entire speech, so we looked for the full speech on line so they could hear it for themselves.

This is not to say that I don't think there is a role for the press. However, the press is not the only opinion or "experts" any more who decide which information "the common person" can hear (or tolerate). In rehearing the President Obama's speech, for example, I was able to pick up on new things I had missed in the original speech (because of the press commentary). It did not mean I agreed with them, but it gave me a different perspective.

Future of the Press

I feel that this is the dawn of a new role for the press. It is important that citizens have access to our govenment processes. We should have access to the bodies of government, including their debates, decision making processes, and even a way to dialog with policy makers. To do this, we need to change our current, old fashioned way of teaching civic education to make government more interactive.

We also need our government officials to be aware that we have access to their decision making process. They should not be afraid of the public, but rather aware of it.

What is appropriate to appropriate?

I encountered three situations that is the encentive for this post.

Yesterday, I was discussing "plagerism" and how our students perceive it, especially when using the internet. As I am teaching a speech course this semester, the question of plagerism becomes a bit dicey. It is not really interesting to hear a number of names when listening to a speech (think of the boring Oscar speeches when winners list all the people they want to thank). However, the information within a speech came from somewhere, so how can it be integrated into a speech without making it boring?

One way is through presentation software. Charts and pictures should have sources on the slides used to augment speeches. Another way is to create verbal "links" by using supporting information such as video clips (which will have the source on it).

In this same class, students are required to give a bibliography they used in preparing the speech. This means that students need to cite references in an acceptable format. I have used Zotero on my computer for the last year. However, one of my students mentioned that the new version of Word includes a citation feature. I still prefer Zotero as you can capture the information as you browse directly from the web. I was pleased, though, to see that word processing software recognizes the importance of including citations (and the tediousness of formating it correctly for each citation).

Finally, I have been trying to redesign the way my blog looks as I don't think it was necessarily reader friendly and perhaps a bit boring. On the one hand I don't want anything that will slow down the download time for those with dial-up (I had it for so long the pain of waiting for a page to load is still fresh!), but I would like to use pictures a bit more. One of the things holding me back is that I own very few usable pictures (although I did think of beginning to create my own library of visuals I could use that would reflect my postings). However, I was surprised to come across a post by Vicki Davis on the use of pictures available through creative commons.

I still am trying to deliniate when to use something (or link or cite ideas) within the blog. If I were writing a paper, it would be very cut and dry. However, blogging protocols are somewhat different. If I appropriate something directly from online (i.e. cut and paste), I, of course cite it and use the quotes. But what format should I use to cite? I have found that I feel much more comfortable linking the orginial document rather than "quoting" from it. However, there are times, such as when there are a number of comments and you want to use that comment in a post, when quotes are more effective. I am not sure I am 100% comfortable using the images from the creative commons sites as some people have stipulations (such as not using for commercial purposes, citing the source of the image) which might vary from picture to picture. What if I don't follow their stipulations (unintentionally)? However, I am beginning to find my own style of crediting others for their ideas.

How do you address this issue? Is it different in academic settings? Professional or business settings? Does it depend on the audience? How do you know what style to use? I would love to get others inputs on this issue.

Contextualizing tools

I have been participating in the Work Literacy Learning Project. This week they are looking at RSS and aggregators. This has been a challenge to me as I had a totally different idea as to what RSS aggregators were. In fact, I had been using one for a while (iGoogle) but did not know it.

Michele Martin gave a very good explanation of RSS and aggregators, much better than I had read in the past. Most just give you as literal definition of RSS (Real Simple Syndication) and don't really explain how it is used or examples of how and RSS is used by readers or bloggers/podcasters.

Michele explained it this way

First, we're talking about two different things here--subscribing to feeds from
other sources and creating feeds for your own blog. Let's start with subscribing
to and reading feeds.When you click on the RSS ("squiggly") icon on a blog's
page, that's going to give you the feed for that particular blog. You're right
that there's often more than one option, like "Atom" or "RSS 1.0." These are
just different feed formats and most readers can support all of them, so it
doesn't really matter which you choose. To be able to read the feed you find on
a blog, you would paste it into your feed reader--Google Reader, Netvibes,
Bloglines, etc. In Netvibes, you can create individual tabs to organize your
feeds, so in my case, I have Learning, Technology, etc. as individual tabs and
then the associated blogs I read are contained in those tabs.Now Feedburner is
what you use to set up a feed for your own blog and to do things like provide
people with an option to get an email subscription, etc. It's also how you can
tell how many people have subscribed to your feed. For the most part, you want
to encourage people to sign up for your feed, as it's more likely that they will
read it if they are getting the content pushed to them every day.As for
tags/labels--Google reader lets you use tags to organize and share--the concept
is similar to Delicious tagging where you can use any words you want as tags. I
don't use Google Reader, so wonder how others might use the tagging feature.
Also not sure if Bloglines has that or not.

As part of the course on new learning tools, I have participated in the French Speaking Forum, which has also given me new insight into the use of aggregators. Stephane Wattier made the distinction between the aggregators and "annuaires", which is just a directory of links. I am not sure that we make the same distinction on the anglo web or if there is a difference in the French and Anglo system.

Learning in Context

This experience has reinforced my belief that some people (like myself) just learn better when they are in the context than in a more traditional training room or classroom. Interestingly enough, I was never able to do well in languages within the classroom, but speaking and communicating in a foreign language came easy when I was in the context.

I find for example, that my French (which had gotten a bit rusty) has improved. I thought perhaps that the terms used for technology would make it difficult for me to participate in this forum. However, learning the terms in context not only gives me an understanding of the language, it also has given me an understanding of the tools themselves and how they are used in the culture.

We can extend this to using tools in the context of this course. A very well designed course, the work literacy learning project is set up in such a way that we learn within context, but also are encouraged to use the tools in our own contexts, to understand the bounderies and possibilities of the tools. I think this allows us to expand the possibilities as to how the tools can be used and the outcomes. Just like playing around with the language (which many think is set and static) can give us a new understanding of a situation or concept depending on the the context, playing around with a tool in different contexts can give us new affordances for that technology, dependent upon the context.

Updating new skils

My daughter was telling me about one of her most memorable classes this year when the class received the classic assignment that began: read everything carefully before starting. This is used to ensure students will learn to follow instructions ending in the last instruction being just do item 1 and 2 (there are 50 lines).

I started to wonder how we would update this based on work literacy skills we are trying to develop. Here are some of my suggestions:

• Have clues in a number of links that when put together will give the same instructions (do only item 1 & 2).
• Give students a time limit to complete the exercise that forces them to skim (tell them the assignment is to develop their skimming skills)
• Change the font and format so key words stick out (including the last sentence)
• Have students work in groups to do the activity (someone should catch the last line)

Does anyone have other suggestions?

Literacy Gap

While I have previously written about the trends I see happening in education and the workplace as a result of new technologies, I think there are many other issues that will contribute to the work literacy gap.

First, let me begin by saying that I don't think the technology and its adoption is necessarily the debate here. Studies indicate that, contrary to popular belief, older workers do adopt new technologies. However, their reasons are different than younger workers (Morris and Venkatesh, 2000). Younger workers embrace new technology because it is new and the intrinsic value of anything new, whereas older workers adopt it either because it is required (through policy or, informally, required to stay within the organizational power structure) or because it is demonstrated to achieve results (later adoption).

However, I think this is true of any generation and technology. My generation embraced the PC because it was new and we were learning how to use it in school, whereas my father embraced it after other workers started to use it and demonstrated how it could impact the organization. I am sure the same happened when the xerox machine and telephone was introduced. That said, I feel that work literacy as we are discussing today is really based on two main changes: the change in organizational structures (from vertical to flat, corporate to module, long-term stability to just-in-time) and the change in the basis of our economy from agricultural to service. The result is that we expect more flexibility of our workers, while at the same time expect them to work in a much more dynamic environment, constantly changing. The paradox to this is that "content" is now a product (transitioning to the service economy) which means we want our knowledge workers to "know more".

As I see it, the real problem is that our educational system is still set in traditional structures (due in part to businesses wanting more "content" which will be a product for them to sell in the future). The true gap, therefore, is between those educated in a traditional way and the new "skills" needed to work in a module setting (able to move people, companies, offices, departments around without losing knowledge or the knowledge product) communicating through a network (rather than the old vertical structures) with critical thinking and problem solving skills that allow workers to react to the environment as it changes and create new knowledge (or knowledge products) in a short period of time.

Looking at work literacy from this viewpoint, technology is only a tool with which these knowledge workers will be able to draw on. If students coming out of high schools and college are ill prepared for these new structures, then the workplace will need to start training new workers in terms of critical thinking and problem solving skills, new communication skills (including how to interact without "authority" figures and initiate communication), team and group work skills (as module structures require participation in groups), and metacognitive skills (in order to be aware of what is going on in the work environment and retooling as appropriate).