CogitoVeritas.com

Kojo Nnamdi, a radio host at WAMU interviewed Ryan Watkins and Michael Corry, authors of E-learning Compantion. More than three million students take online courses, annually. Watkins and Corry offer salient advice for both students and faculty who participate in a computer-mediated classroom.

A number of students have commented on the amount of reading that is required in our graduate business program. I agree, there is quite a bit of reading, sometimes well over 1,000 pages of densely-packed text in a single course.

I suggest that you read Peter Kump’s book, Breakthrough Rapid Reading. I have been recommending this book to students for many years, and I receive more hugs of thank you at commencements for having made this recommendation than I receive for my teaching abilities. ;-(

I received a request to explain passive voice. I am glad to help; thanks for asking for my thoughts.

I agree with the process, write as we speak. I frequently recommend to writers that they aurally record their thoughts and then write their comments down, as they play back the recording. I have a microtape transcription machine (it was the only gift that I wanted for my 35th birthday), and I used it for many years, documenting my spoken lecture. Now, I use a digital voice recorder; however, the outcome is the same: I speak first, and then I write. I found that this process of speaking, then writing has helped my podcasting. I am now speaking, writing, speaking.

In general, I judge that you, students, are able to demonstrate a clear command of the course content. Your class discussions are well focused, and your individual formal papers are prepared in a manner that coveys your comprehension the details of each week’s material.

However, in reading many assignments, I have noticed a pattern in your writing.

At the recent Chaos Communications Congress, Steven J. Murdoch, a researcher in the security group at the University of Cambridge, discussed how clock skew can be used to facilitate a digital attack against anonymity networks. Clock skew, the tendency for a computer’s clock to become less precise when heated, can reduce the efficacy of anonymizers, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Tor network.

I challenge us to consider the common phrase, knowledge is power.

Knowledge is power, when it is wielded to advantage. I came to consider this caveat a few months ago, when my wife challenged me with the question, “What are you going to do with all of the books that you read?” What was left unsaid in her question was, what would I do with the knowledge that I gained from reading the books?

Listen to the podcast at Internet Archive.

I hope that I do not sound like a wet blanket with my next comment; it is not my intention to do so. One of the skills that we must learn, as graduate students, is the ability to quickly locate appropriate reference material that leads us to making an informed, logical decision. One of the distractions of having a broad and deep reference set available to us is that we can easily be lead down a primrose path, interesting though it may be, it is still not leading us to an informed, logical conclusion.

In business management classes, academic writing should model business writing. Students should be encouraged to write in a clear, succinct manner; a manner that is most likely to encourage recipients to read the words.

Creating a geographically-flexible workspace* has always been my dream. It took me ten years from the time that I first added this goal to my business plan to finally implement it. Since April 1, 2000, I have been working from a home office, a suite of 1,400 square feet that includes a private conference and reading room, office space, and a work room with a long bench upon which I can repair computers and assemble books. I even have my own kitchen and lavatory. If my refrigerator were a little larger, I could comfortably live here!

Listen to the podcast at Internet Archive.

It’s a tough question, deciding what is common knowledge and what requires attribution (citation/reference in APA format).

Listen to the podcast at Internet Archive.

There is a broad and well-developed distribution set of free software of which many applications are superior to similar commercial applications. Here are a few examples.

I, too, print our digital readings before class. I use the FinePrint program to print two pages of text per side of paper, and I duplex print. So, I end up with only one quarter as many pieces of paper, which makes a significant difference, in courses with texts that run to about a thousand pages. My Hewlett-Packard LaserJet has a multipage printing option built into the print driver, but I found FinePrint to be a smoother, faster alternative.

I am teaching a introductory course this month, the first course for matriculating juniors.

This week, we discussed the academic writing process, and I felt as if I were knocked upside my head. All of the students admitted to never using an outline before writing a business report or academic paper. Maybe I need to remind us all of the importance of outlining our thoughts and research before composing the introduction, body and conclusion of our work.