Poet Ponders the Digital

There are colleges and universities moving towards 120-semester-unit bachelor's degrees, down from 132 or more in many cases. Others are seeking ways to offer "accelerated" degrees in three years instead of four. Of course, the not-so-secret truth is that many students take much longer than four years to graduate as it is — for a variety of reasons. Nationally, the four-year graduation rate from our state and regional public universities is 31 percent, according to Jeff Selingo, editorial director for the Chronicle of Higher Education. Private universities graduate a slight majority of their undergraduates, 53 percent, "on schedule" based on their degree plans. Consider the following example, which is representative of graduation at state institutions nationally: June 11, 2012. — Middle Tennessee State University is making efforts to increase its graduation rate, but still just over half its students are completing college within six years. According to ...

8-inch floppy disk drive compared in size to 3.5" floppy disk of 1984 (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley June 4, 2012 Deadline July 2012 Issue Data Ghosts of Hardware Past Iomega Zip disks were, depending on your experiences with them, the greatest idea of their time or one of the worst digital storage media ever sold. The Zip disks I own were purchased between 1995 and 2002; until recently, I was unsure why I kept them. As this summer began and I was preparing to teach summer school, my wife stumbled upon a printed version of my website from 1996. There were several pages of text on the topics I would be discussing in class. My wife offered to scan the pages, which was a better option than retyping the content. Then, I remembered we had an old Zip 250 drive and stacks of disks stored in a cardboard box. As readers of this column know, I encourage everyone to make weekly, monthly, and annual backups of their data. I’ve migrated data from one m...

Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley May 7, 2012 Deadline June 2012 Issue Telecommuting : Embracing the Possibilities My wife, Susan, works for a company located in the suburbs of Minneapolis. I work for a university located about 20 miles from Pittsburgh. For us, the promise of telecommuting has become a reality. We are able to live in the foothills we love, surrounded by trees and wildlife, working from the comfort of our home offices. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics website, only 3.3 percent of workers are able to telecommute. Some jobs do require a physical location for meeting with clients or working on physical products, but too many employers are overlooking the benefits of allowing workers to telecommute. When I was in college, my employer loaned me a DEC-VT102 terminal and paid for a high-speed network connection to my apartment. That was in 1988. I worked as a programmer, one of the few professions that could telecommute at the time. My employer was thrilled...

Today, my wife and I will be moving in to our new house. This means we will be without an Internet connection for two or three days, so I won't be online until the weekend or early next week. Also, moving doesn't leave much time to be online for the next week or so. To make matters more complicated, I have a medical procedure in the middle of the day. I started this morning packing boxes, trying to get what I can done before the out-patient procedure. You never know how long it will take to recover from the anesthesia and general discomfort when you have any medial procedure. The notion of being off-line, disconnected from readers and friends, is a little frustrating. What does that say about our culture and our strange need to be connected at all times? It's as if we don't exist without a network connection. Last year, I tried to have at least one "tech free" day a week. This didn't mean no phone, but it meant no sitting at a computer and working...

For those wondering, we have not stopped blogging and nothing horrible has happened to either me or my wife.  We're not dead… we're moving again.  Unlike last summer, when we moved from one state to another, this time we are moving about two miles from our temporary residence to a new home in the same little Pennsylvania township.  The move will give us plenty of material for our blogs. Moving is stressful and chaotic. Moving raises economic issues, especially in this housing market. Moving means shifting our beloved books again. Most of all, it cuts into our creative "me/us" time necessary to recharging and regrouping. There will be new blog posts. This has been a hectic few years.  Of course, we're moving right as my students have finals, my wife has to take a business trip, and a cat is having health issues. The long list of things happening in our lives merely reminds us how overwhelmed we are until the end of May or June. Beyond May we wi...

MacBook Pro Available in 15.4- and 17-inch diagonal size. MacBook Pro (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) Visalia Direct: Virtual Valley April 9, 2012 Deadline May 2012 Issue The End is Near: Deciding to Replace a Computer There comes a time in every computer’s life when, regrettably, it can no longer keep up with the demands of work. We grow attached to our computers, accepting their quirks and (at least some of us believe) their personalities. I love my Apple MacBook Pro notebook, but it is starting to struggle with some tasks compared to the new kids on the block. It is time to consider a replacement. It won’t be easy to replace this loyal companion, but I must. Because I teach technology-based courses, I need to keep up with the latest software and hardware peripherals. That doesn’t mean the MacBook Pro won’t have other uses; we’ve managed to keep a few computers in the family for a decade or longer. I recommend using a computer until it absolutely, positively cannot suppo...

I teach at a small regional and it is making some positive moves to foster online and traditional courses that are compelling for students. We know we have to compete or we will slowly fade. Continuing from my previous post, the challenge facing regional institutions serving the mid-tier student population: what makes your online program special? Or, what makes your on campus programs distinctly "tech enabled" for the future? To thrive online, and on campus, regional institutions must embrace faculty training, cutting edge technology, and an entrepreneurial attitude that embraces quick revision to degree programs. We can survive, and even thrive, but we cannot do so without substantial investments — especially if online education is going to be part of our degree programs. The for-profit Big Box Retailers of higher education are a real and substantial threat to the regional campuses that dot our map. Hundreds, if not thousands, of regional institutions are struggling t...