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Nathan Heller's "Laptop U: Has the future of college moved online?" (New Yorker, May 20, 2013) does an excellent job of covering the continuing debate over the promise and peril of MOOCs as a way of "saving" higher education -- or at least creating savings for students, or maybe profits for somebody somewhere at some time in the future. I especially appreciate the coverage it gives to the problems that online teaching presents for the humanities, which are never as easy to translate to the online environment as science or math courses. Because of all the complex issues it takes on, I think this article is more useful than Amanda Ripley's "College Is Dead. Long Live College" from TIME Magazine (October 18, 2012) which featured in my class this past term and I will likely use it when I teach the course again in the Fall.
Kate Zernike's "Pressure Builds on Rutgers President" (NY Times, April 4, 2013) does an excellent job of framing the national controversy surrounding Mike Rice's bullying of his basketball players against the back-drop of ongoing changes at Rutgers. There is no question that the failure to respond more aggressively to Rice's behavior has damaged the Rutgers brand, and I can only hope that it has not ultimately disabled President Barchi during this critical time for the University.
I just came back from a little tour of the Livingston Student Center where the Writing Program is running an Undergraduate Research Writing Conference on Wednesday, April 10th, 2013, from 9:00 am - 4:00 pm. It's going to be an awesome event. Over 50 students will present their research projects completed in writing courses (most from Research in the Disciplines), so it will be a great opportunity to pick up some presentation tips and ideas. Registration is free in the main lobby of the student center, not far from the Dunkin' Donuts, and you will get a program directing you to the sessions at 9:00 am, 10:30, and 1:40 pm. The awards ceremony will be at 3:20, where free snacks and refreshments will be served and raffle prizes awarded to students who attend any of the sessions.
Bonus: if students from my class attend the conference (getting a stamped record of attendance, with your name on the sign-in sheet) AND write at least a brief blog post about the event on their class blog, they will receive 2 points of extra credit toward the final grade.
Historian Claire B. Potter will be presenting a talk titled "Higher Education Off the Rails: How Students Can Turn the Crisis Around" on Thursday, April 4th, starting at 7:30 p.m. in "The Gathering Lounge" at the Livingston Student Center on Livingston Campus. The title announces quite clearly that this talk will speak directly to issues raised in our class, and I think anyone who is looking for some inspiration on how to address the issues we have raised could find it here. Potter is the author of The Chronicle of Higher Education's "Tenured Radical" blog, which often assumes a critical stance toward the way things are going in higher education. Highly recommended. If you attend, you can get a point extra credit if you write about what she says in your blog.
Those looking for free help in putting their citations into proper MLA format should check out "Son of Citation Machine," which is a free (ad supported) internet app that guides you through the process and generates MLA format by just having you fill in a few blanks. It even tells you how to cite the work properly for in-text citation. So no excuses!
Today we are going to have an introduction to the resources of the Rutgers Libraries, so I thought I'd give you some useful links to material that we will likely cover today. I will update this later to include any resources I may have left out.
Useful Links
Rutgers RIOT
See the screenshot above. This is a great animated tutorial on using the libraries.
Searchpath
A more print-based tutorial on the RU Libraries.
English 201 Research in the Disciplines
A research guide for 201 students, this is a great place to start if you are looking for some guidance in finding the best library resources.
English 201: College!
A research guide designed for our specific section, put together by a librarian last year. This guide is no longer supported, so the links will eventually die, but it looks useful -- especially links to RU-specific data.
University Faculty and Staff Experts Directory
This could be a very useful resource for identifying subject area experts to interview on your topic. Remember: one of the requirements for the final paper is to interview an expert.
Refworks
Refworks is a great tool for organizing your research, and you can find information at the link above. The Libraries also invite students, faculty, and staff to attend a workshop on how to save time and trouble in creating bibliographies and endnotes, by using RefWorks - a resource on the homepage of the Libraries' website (www.libraries.rutgers.edu). The Libraries will be offering the same two and a half hour workshop in the mornings on two different days - Friday March 8th and Friday March 29th. Both workshops start at 9:30 am and will be held in Room 413, on the fourth floor of Alexander Library. To register for one of these workshops, please go to: http://ctaar.rutgers.edu/workshops/register/
RefWorks is a web-based bibliography and database manager that allows users to create and manage their own personal bibliographic database. RefWorks is free to members of the Rutgers community. The Basic RefWorks workshop helps users create RefWorks accounts, acquire references of all types (books, journals, media, etc.) from numerous sources, organize and manage their bibliographies, and insert references into MS Word documents. This workshop will also introduce several useful RefWorks tools, such as RefShare (to share bibliographies with both Rutgers and outside collaborators) and RefGrab-It (to acquire bibliographic information from web- based resources, such as Google Scholar). Finally, the tool Write-N-Cite will demonstrate how to easily incorporate references into an MS Word document and automatically create end notes and a bibliography. No prior knowledge of RefWorks is required.
"Diverse Millennial Students in College" is the title of a new book and of a lecture at the Rutgers Student Center on College Avenue, Thursday, March 7, from 10:30 am - 1:00 p.m. with a free lunch reception to follow those who register. Like the book, the lecture will deal with the unique challenges and circumstances faced by the current cohort of African-American, Latino/a, Asian and LGBT students. Speakers include Dr. Lonnie Booker, Dr. Samuel Museus, Dr. Nana Osei-Kofi, and Dr. Stephanie Waterman, whose contributions to the book cover a broad range of issues, as described in a recent review. The lecture is part of the Samuel DeWitt Proctor Lecture Series and is the first of two parts, the second of which will run April 4th at the same time and location. I recommend it to anyone whose topic touches on diversity issues.
