| Aug. 29th, 2005 @ 12:49 am As the semester closes in . . . |
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Well campers, when last we left ye I was preparting to sally out for three days of mandatory on-campus orientation. My joke at the time was that they'd seem to have packed an afternoon's worth of activities into three days -- humor near the mark but not quite on it. After two days the director, a sensible woman, recognized there was no reason to go three days just because the schedule was written that way. We'd done our work in two days and that was enough.
One thing I was worried about was students who had really come from a distance -- three days is a long time away from home! I needn't have worried, and not just because the period was truncated. More on that as I go into my Ebert/Roeper routine --
Let's start with the positive -- THUMBS UP
- Program director Karen Novick is a good choice for that position -- creative, flexible, organized, intelligent. The selection of the director is important, as it can mean the difference between a program that works and one that doesn't.
So far I have a good feeling about this program.
- The first year is well-defined -- two course the first semester, two the second. Then options open up. But this is also a thumbs down -- see below.
- Faculty seem fine -- the one or two we met.
_ They've got a great library and it should be fun to work in. It's a "distance" program but I live close enough to take advantage of the physical library, and I plan to.
- They have a well-developed digital library infrastructure, including the Digital Highways program, something I hope to work with if I can. I wrote one of their grad students for help/tips/information this afternoon and I hope he answers
The THUMBS DOWN probably seens long, but remember that I'm a trained historian: we put the crit back in critical
- The program demographics seem narrow. This is a distance education program with two programmatic foci: K-12 Ed-Media and Digital Libraries. I expected people from all over the country representing many different local and received cultures, a diversity of gender and an even split between program foci. No offence against my future colleagues, nor noe against a grad committee who could only work with what they were given, but here's how things worked out in the diversity area: Almost everyone is from NJ; in fact the geographical spread differs little from their traditional program. Of the 35 people in the program sex breaks down this way: 34 women, 1 man. Guess who the man is. Finally, from what I can tell I am the only representative from the higher ed IT community. Some of my colleagues adjunct on the university level, some are hausfrauen, and most seem to be k-12 teachers or librarians.
There is nothing wrong with this composition. If I can't learn from someone it is my fault, not theirs. But it wasn't what I expected. The Drexel program -- again, a very good education -- featured much the same mix of hausfrauen and K-12 types. For some bizarre reason I'd convinced myself that the RU gang would be more academically-inclined. That they do not seem to be is no fault of either the students or the administrators, but is one of my imagination, and my imagination alone.
- I'd also imagined we'd be meeting greeting and getting to konw the faculty during this period. One or two slowed down for a wave as a scurried by, but that was it for meeting the faculty. I'd had a lot ot questions - they'll all have to wait.
-- The campus itself seems very nice but access to it is restricted to tiny loop of semi-highway connecting the campus with the turnpike. The exits are confusing; there is a George street exit at the Douglass College end of campus and another at the New Brunswick/Library end, and newbies are left to guess which is appropriate. The fourland road that runs between the river and the campuses was hard to manage in August and is likely to be murder in September.
- Which brings me to the possibility or taking courses there. Not something I want to do -- hence the whole signing up for the distance program. But it turns out they had four courses set out for the DL students the first year. A real good idea until I found the fault: one of the courses concerns technology, and at least one person besides myself has tested out of it. Leaving me free to take another course but, as I mentioned above, they have the first four courses worked out for us and no alternatives. My tough luck. So I thought for this one semester I'd trek down once a week to take an in-person course. The program director was open to the idea and gave me three choices -- one was too advances or me, one was =very= interesting and just as irrelevant, and the third, Metadata, seemed just the choice.
Two things here. First, due to politics on my end I'm not going to be able to take off the Monday afternoons I'd need in order to get down to RU. Second, the director mentioned it might be a good idea for me to take the course now, since it wasn't going to be offered at a distance. And therein lies the rub. It has seemed that the program skews to the K-12/edmedia crowd, and this seems to offer proof. IMHO, If the program was thinking at all clearly about digital libraries, Metadata would be taught front-and-center, no ifs/ands or buts.
There is a suggestion that course offerings for the distance program are undergoing a re-appraisal, and I hope they add metadata to the offerings. Sure, I could probably do it as an independent study, but I'd rather take a course.
All in, all good, it's late, off to bed -- Robert |
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