To Zoom or Not To Zoom: Week 4 Teaching Full Distance

Resting student Doggies in my campus office.
Students were working on these when we
transitioned from the classroom to online.

Five weeks ago most faculty and students in the United States went home on a Friday for spring break week.  Over the next few days we were told we were not coming back to campus for the rest of the semester and we needed to get our courses converted to 100% online for the rest of the spring semester. This past week was our fourth week back.

The last few weeks for me has been focused on fine tuning my asynchronous course content. I’m teaching an intro robotics course (EGR 110) at Holyoke Community College that was originally scheduled to meet 5 hours per week. Students spend time building and coding Lego EV3 robots. The interactivity in the classroom is a lot of fun and students seem to enjoy the class.

The Lego Mindstorms EV3 kits are expensive and we have a limited supply – not enough of them for every student in the class to take one home. With the shift to online 5 weeks ago we had to find an alternative and pivoted to an EV3 simulator. The students have picked up using the simulator on their home computers and are doing a really nice job completing different projects. I’m very impressed at how the transition has gone so far.

My original intentions were to provide 45-50 minute live (synchronous) lectures twice a week at the start of each class and if a student needed some extra help, hold individual Zoom sessions sharing screens. An attempt at this over the first couple weeks was not successful. 45-50 minutes was just too long and the individual Zoom sessions tended to drag, produce frustration and not lead to much learning.

BBC Worklife interviewed a couple of workplace experts - Gianpiero Petriglieri, an associate professor at Insead, who explores sustainable learning and development in the workplace, and Marissa Shuffler, an associate professor at Clemson University, who studies workplace wellbeing and teamwork effectiveness. Their views reflect in many ways to what I’ve seen in my online robotics class. Here’s a few highlights from the interview that mirror my online classroom experience:

• “Video chats mean we need to work harder to process non-verbal cues like facial expressions, the tone and pitch of the voice, and body language; paying more attention to these consumes a lot of energy.” I wrote about processing non-verbal cues online last week – very difficult if not impossible. 

• “Silence creates a natural rhythm in a real-life conversation. However, when it happens in a video call, you became anxious about the technology.” My experience - as a result students end up either anxious, distracted or zoned out.... crickets chirping is the best way I can describe the result. 

• “The video call is our reminder of the people we have lost temporarily. It is the distress that every time you see someone online, such as your colleagues (or classmates), that reminds you we should really be in the workplace together.” We all miss each other. 

• “Aspects of our lives that used to be separate – work, friends, family – are all now happening in the same space. When these aspects are reduced, we become more vulnerable to negative feelings.” Crowded homes, abuse, children to take care of, loss of income, lack of food, lack of computers and broadband are impacting learning (and teaching) in a huge way. For many the classroom is a safe and comfortable place to get away. 

• "Big group calls can feel particularly performative, People like watching television because you can allow your mind to wander – but a large video call “is like you're watching television and television is watching you”. 

• “Both experts suggest limiting video calls to those that are necessary. Turning on the camera should be optional. In some cases it’s worth considering if video chats are really the most efficient option." 

• “When it comes to work, shared files with clear notes can be a better option that avoids information overload.” I wrote a little about this in Week 1.

• "When online sessions are held, it is important to take time to catch up before diving into business. “Spend some time to actually check into people's wellbeing,” It’s a way to reconnect us with the world, and to maintain trust and reduce fatigue and concern.”

From my experience these observations are spot on when it comes to the online classroom. My robotics class has shifted strongly in the asynchronous direction. I rarely get on one-on-one sessions with students now. I don't do the 45-50 minute lectures at the start of each class but I am on Zoom for the first 45 minutes with student attendance optional. I’m there to help out, answer any questions, talk about how much we all need haircuts and maybe tell a knock-knock joke or two.

Most questions come in during off hours via email. If students have a problem I ask them to first email me a picture of their code (screen shot, cell phone, etc.) I can take a look and send back a hint or two. The student can then make changes in their code. This method is working well and has reduced a lot of student (and my) stress. It does require watching email closely.

 I continue to be impressed with the students in my classes. They are learning and getting their work done!

Hanging Out With Starman - Week 3 Teaching Full Distance

Four weeks ago most faculty and students in the United States went home on a Friday for spring break week.  Over the next few days we were told we were not coming back to campus for the rest of the semester and we needed to get our courses converted to 100% online for the rest of the spring semester. This past week was our third week back.

Another week online. This week I got to hang out with one of my idols – Starman. He hasn’t figured out the answer to life, the Universe, and everything yet but continues his quest.

Back on earth, in the classroom things are settling down a bit and it feels like we’re getting into a groove. Here’s my bullet list for the past week.

• Email volume has really increased and it has become a real time suck. My comfortable number of unread emails averages around 30 ~ if I’m close to 30 I’m feeling pretty good about it. My inbox right now is sitting at 259 unopened. I clean it out and a few hours later I’ve got another 50 sitting in the box to go through. I’m hoping our students are not having a similar experience but suspect many are. I’m now closing out my email client and only checking it by the hour.
• The one document instruction tip I wrote about a couple weeks ago continues to work well. Students are comfortable being able to go to the could learning management system (Moodle at Holyoke Community College) to one place to get the most recent information and I’m not burying them with email.
• I’m locked in on keeping my lecture video recordings between 15 and 25 minutes max. This seems to be working well.
• I’ve got a set of Apple Airpod Pros and they have been fantastic. I’m using them for just about everything – Zoom meetings, phone calls and video recordings along with the occasional YouTube Curb Your Enthusiasm segment or two.
• The Apple iPad and Pencil remain exceptional – especially when the Airpods are included. Lecture recording has been easy. I’m thinking about upgrading to a 12.9” Ipad for the extra screen real estate. If you are considering purchasing an IPad for lecture recording I would strongly recommend the 12.9” model. Also get yourself a screen protector for the iPad that adds some texture to the screen when writing with the pencil. I like the Paperlike protector. It gives nice tactile feedback and it feels like you are drawing and writing with a pencil on paper.
• The Pomadoro Technique I wrote about a couple weeks ago makes a big difference when I actually use it. I’ve had problems with stopping and taking a break, walking away from the computer. I think the email volume increase has had a lot to do about that.
• Meeting with classes online has been challenging at times. I did not realize how much I rely on body language in the classroom.  I look at their faces on camera and not sure if they are confused, scared, bored, frustrated, lost, upset….. I’m encouraging them to give feedback (negative and positive) and they are. I think this would be a different if we had started the course online – I got to know these students in the traditional classroom and could usually pickup pretty quickly on things just by looking at them.
• I continue to log my time with Klok 2.

Overall I’m pretty satisfied with the way things are going. I’m still going with supercomputer Deep Thought - the answer to Starman’s question is six by nine, 42.

May the tech remain with you fellow earthlings. Have a nice weekend.

Some Notes: Week 2 Teaching Full Distance

Three weeks ago most faculty and students in the United States went home on a Friday for spring break week.  Over the next few days we were told we were not coming back to campus for the rest of the semester and we needed to get our courses converted to 100% distance for the rest of the spring semester. This past week was our second week back.

This spring I’m teaching the second half of fall/spring electrical engineering circuits course sequence at Holyoke Community College. Students in this class are in the second semester of their sophomore year and will be transferring to a university next year as electrical engineering majors.

The fall Circuits 1 class is direct current (DC) focused and the math is pretty straight forward.  DC frequency is 0 Hertz (Hz) and at 0 Hz things don’t change much. That first course is a lot fundamental stuff like Ohm’s Law, Voltage Dividers, Current Dividers, Kirchoff’s Voltage and Current Laws, etc. These laws and theorems are used frequently in more advanced classes.

The spring Circuits 2 course is much more mathematical. We’re dealing primarily with alternating current (AC) and that means frequencies greater than 0 Hz. Reactive devices (capacitors and inductors) are used throughout the course and as a result voltages, currents and power change with frequency and time. Calculus and complex (phasor) math is used extensively throughout the course and I need to be really on my toes when it comes to lectures. It is very easy to mix up things like units, times, frequencies, etc.

Last week I wrote about how I’m pre-recording my lectures and trying to stay two weeks ahead. In the class session yesterday one of the students picked up on a simple mistake I made in one of my homework solutions. I had added radians and degrees together and then took the sine of the sum. Can’t do that. You can add (radians + radians) and take the sine as long as your calculator is in radian mode. You  can add (degrees + degrees) and take the sine as long as your calculator is in degree mode. But – you cannot add (radians + degrees) and take the sine regardless of whether your calculator is in radian or degree mode! I missed it.

This has me thinking about the value of live in class lecturing. If I had made an error like that on the chalkboard one of the students would have picked up on it immediately. Stuff like this happens all the time. We would have corrected it and moved on. Sitting at home by myself recording I missed it and just cruised right by it.

Here’s where I’m going with this. There is value in traditional face-to-face lectures for students and faculty. Students pick up on mistakes, they can easily ask questions and faculty can look at their faces and pickup when they are lost. Pretty valuable stuff when it comes to learning.

How close can we get online to a live classroom experience? Should I shift to live online lectures? 1.5 hours watching me write on an iPad screen - ugh. Don't think so.

Right now I’m going to back off trying to stay two weeks ahead and make it one week. I’m also going to segment my future lecture videos up as best I can, trying to keep each to 20-25 minutes. That will get me a little closer to real time. I’m hoping the segmenting will allow students to focus for 20-25 minutes, digest, take a break and process the material. It will also give me a chance to do the same as I put materials together.

We’ll see how it goes!

Some Notes: Week 1 Teaching Full Distance

A couple weeks ago faculty and students went home on a Friday for spring break week.  Over the next few days we were told we were not coming back to campus for the rest of the semester and we needed to get our courses converted to 100% distance for the rest of the spring semester. This past week was our first week back.

It has been an interesting week – frustrating at times sure but I feel like we’ve worked through a lot of the startup problems and overall right now am feeling pretty positive. Here’s a few things I’ve jotted down in no particular order.

1.     The one document instruction tip I wrote about a couple days ago is working very nicely. Students are comfortable being able to go to one place to get the most recent information and I’m not burying them with email.

2.     Making your content mobile friendly is critical. Most of my students are accessing course materials using their phones. We’re using Moodle at Holyoke Community College and the Moodle mobile app works great. Zoom runs nice on mobile.

3.     Live lectures? Recorded lectures? It does not matter. I’ve been recording (see #4) lectures and using class time on Zoom for homework problem review, general Q and A, etc.

4.     I’m recording my lectures on my iPad and posting online. I wrote about how I do this a couple years ago when I was faculty at the University of Hartford. I’m trying to stay two weeks ahead with my recordings in case I get sick.

5.     Live sessions for my circuits class are done using Zoom running on the iPad. The screen shot here is from my circuits class yesterday. Briefly (I’ll write up a post with detail on how to to this over the weekend) I share the iPad screen and launch GoodNotes, a note taking app. I use the Apple pencil to draw circuit diagrams, work through problems etc. Zoom allows sessions to be recorded and those mp4 recorded files can be posted online for student access. Sessions can also be recorded directly on the iPad. GoodNotes allows export to PDF. So during a classroom session I can:

–      Write on the iPad screen while talking and recording using the GoodNotes app.

–      Save the recording as an mp4 video/audio file either using Zoom or direct on iPad.

–      Export my handwritten notes from GoodNotes to PDF.

–      Post the mp4 file and also the PDF online for student access.

            Better than a classroom chalk or white board? I sure think so!

6.     Routine is important for us all. I’m meeting with students at the start of each class period and maintaining regular office hours. The tips I posted in an earlier post have also been very helpful.

I’ll be writing about a few of these in detail along with a bunch of other stuff.

Overall at the end of week 1 - I’m sooooo impressed with the way students, faculty, staff – every single person I’ve had contact with at Holyoke Community College has pulled together and really gone to task on this. Flipping a course midstream to distance is not easy, especially for our students. Pile the fear and unknown of COVID-19 on top of that it is all pretty daunting. So far so good!

Thanks especially to all of the great students!!

Engineering Faculty - How Not to Talk to Parents and Potential Students

We’ve been making the rounds with my youngest daughter who is a junior in high school. She’s interested in a college that has a strong Mechanical Engineering program. She’s not interested in going to a large university - she’s looking for something a little smaller.

So far we’ve checked out some really good schools and have had some great visits. One in particular was so bad though I just have to write about it. No names.... Here’s how the day went in bullet form:

• 3 hour ride so we leave early.
• Get to the school and find the admissions office.
• Admissions office staff tells us about our appointment with the Mechanical Engineering Department Chair. We get the name and “office” location of the chair and head over to the Engineering building.
• We get over to the Engineering building and find out the “office” is actually a small conference room. 
• There are two other families with us. Two of the potential students are female and one is male.
• The department chair (at least I think he was the department chair but not 100% sure) shows up.
• The professor/chair spends 15-20 minutes talking about himself. The awards he has received, the grants he has. When he found out we were from Massachusetts of course he just had to tell us about all the time he had spent and great work he had done at MIT.
• So far, just a waste of everyone’s time. No real damage.... yet.
• It gets bad though when someone breaks in with a question.
• One of the parents asks about curriculum. He goes into a diatribe about how he is teaching the same courses as MIT using the “big thick classic books”. He mentions ABET but does not describe what it is or means. Other families are so lost.
• He then stressed over and over again about how much time students have to spend reading these classic textbooks each week. He indicated with his fingers (about an inch) saying “this thick” for each class. He says "this thick" and indicating with his fingers at least 10 times. Each time he does it is with a scowl on his face. 
• He then tells us the problem with American students is "you are lazy" and “you will likely fail”. This time with a look of disgust on his face.
• “You will have at the most 4 hours per week of free time. You can use this time to go to the mall (and that is a "waste of time") or to do your laundry. You will have no other free time and must constantly study those classic textbooks reading "this thick every week.”
• Then we got more of the lazy American student language.
• At this point I cut it off and told him we had another appointment and had to leave. The other two families got up and followed us as quickly as they could out the door.
• I did tell them don't listen to that guy.
• 3 hour plus ride home with traffic. What a wasted day.

Lucky for us my wife and I are both engineers and we were able to prevent some of the damage to our daughter. I cannot help but think about those other two families and those two 17-18 year olds whose dreams of studying engineering were likely destroyed in about 20 minutes by this guy. One of the families had a younger sibling and that kid has likely been damaged too. Nice work.

Again, no names here. I am sending a link to this post though to the admissions director at that school.

UPDATE 3/30/12:

The Dean of the Engineering school called late this afternoon and we talked for a long time. Good honest discussion and he is going to be sure this does not happen again. I was impressed with his understanding and dedication to the program and especially the students. 

I feel confident the problem will be taken care of. You know I'll be checking! 

I spend a lot of time (it's 100% of my own time, not work) writing and I wonder sometimes if what I'm doing is having any impact at all. Today was pretty good!

Community Colleges - The Jobless Solution

The August 24, 2011 issue of Business Week has an upsetting article titled The Slow Disappearance of the American Working Man. Here's some details from the piece: 

The portion of men holding a job—any job, full- or part-time—fell to 63.5 percent in July—hovering stubbornly near the low point of 63.3 percent it reached in December 2009.

These are the lowest numbers in statistics going back to 1948. 

Among the critical category of prime working-age men between 25 and 54, only 81.2 percent held jobs, a barely noticeable improvement from its low point last year—and still well below the depths of the 1982-83 recession, when employment among prime-age men never dropped below 85 percent. 

In 1969 95 percent of men in their prime working years had a job.

Median wages for men between 30 and 50 dropped 27 percent—to $33,000 a year— from 1969 to 2009, putting them back at their earnings capacity of the 1950s.

Both men and women have confronted job losses in the weak economy. In July, 68.9 percent of women aged 25-54 had jobs, vs. 72.8 percent in January 2008. 

Unemployed men are now more likely than women to be among the long-term jobless. 

The piece goes on to discuss how women (who currently account for 57% of jobs in the U.S.) have made up the majority of college students over the past 30 years and fit better into our data-driven economy. However, women continue to earn about 16 percent less than men and struggle against gender discrimination and career interruptions. 

All this going on while, at the same time, we've got companies struggling to hire workers with the right skills.     

President Obama will layout a new jobs plan shortly after Labor Day and community colleges must be a major part of the solution. They are the perfect place for long-term jobless women and men to go and get the education and training needed for stable and well-paying careers. 

If you are out of work and feel you have no prospects well..... you are 100% wrong. There is a ton of opportunity at your local community college. The fall semester has either just started or is starting soon. There is time right now to get yourself on track. The American Association of Community Colleges has a great interactive community college finder on their website - click here to link. 

Community College Blogging: A Conversation with Dr Troy Swanson

On Thursday I had the pleasure of talking with Dr Troy Swanson, an Associate Professor / Teaching and Learning Librarian at Moraine Valley Community College in Palos Hills, IL. In December Troy completed his PhD in Community College Leadership at Old Dominion University. His dissertation is titled The Administration of Community College Blogs: Considering Control and Adaptability in Loosely Coupled Systems. In the podcast, Troy discusses some of his findings.

Here’s some dissertation background from Troy:

Web 2.0 technologies present an unlimited potential for outreach to the public by college employees. This presents a conundrum for community college administrators that David Weinberger calls "the conundrum of control." This conundrum is that organizations need to find a way to organize people around technology to ensure that it is used to further the organization’s mission. Yet, in terms of 2.0 technologies, the more controls that are put in place, the less useful the tools become.

There is also a second conundrum around technology that challenges mangers. This is that the more controls that are in place around a technology, the easier it is to communicate and transfer that technology across the organization. But, the more difficult it is for organization members to adapt the technology to meet new needs.

As one of oldest form of 2.0 technology, the management of blogs presents lessons that we can use for other, newer, 2.0 technologies.

I interviewed administrators and blog authors at community colleges across the US to see how colleges were managing their blogs. The focus was on administrative blogs as opposed to course-related or faculty blogs that discussed their research.  The larger purpose of the study was to see how easily the technology could adapt to new needs and whether campuses were restricting the use of blogs. What kinds of guidance were campus leaders giving to bloggers who were representing the college?

The study’s findings offer a peak into how the administrative structures of community colleges impact technology and Web 2.0. Listen to the 30 minute and 40 second podcast in your browser by clicking the play button below.

  

Here's how to contact Troy:

Troy’s Email: swanson@morainevalley.edu
Troy on Twitter: http://twitter.com/t_swanson
Moraine Valley Library Link (includes blogs, podcasts, Facebook, etc): http://www.morainevalley.edu/library/

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If you have iTunes installed you can listen to and subscribe to our podcasts by clicking here.

Community College Students

By far the best part of my work at our National Science Foundation funded ICT Center is getting to meet lots of great people. I especially enjoy meeting students. It’s great to hear them talk about their backgrounds and experience - where they are from, where they are now and where they see themselves going after graduation. I’m always amazed at their focus, drive and ambition and often walk away feeling a little (admittedly) jealous.

Here’s a short video with some examples of the kinds of things community college students are doing from ATETV, a web-based video series and interactive network designed to connect students and professionals with careers in advanced technology. This 7 minute and 50 second episode includes an interview with a Fuel Cell Technology major embarking on a new career, discusses the importance of writing and communications for any technical career, and takes a look at the aviation field -- from a woman's perspective.

The ATETV weekly video series highlights success stories from community colleges and National Science Foundation Advanced Technological Education (ATE) programs nationwide.

Great stuff and great people!

Network Security Update Podcast with Sam Bowne

On Tuesday, Mike Q and I did our second network security podcast with Sam Bowne, Professor of Computer Networking and Information Technology from City College of San Francisco. We had a nice discussion with Sam sharing his thoughts on security and providing us with a snapshot of some of the latest and greatest developments in the field of network security.

Here’s some of the questions we asked Sam:

In our last conversation you mentioned that you got a BS and PhD without ever graduating high school. A number of listeners were amazed that you were able to do this and wanted more details – for example did you get a GED? Did you take the SATs?

Mike sent over an article on password cracking – did you see anything interesting in that article?

It’s been over a month since we last spoke. You had mentioned the PWN 2 OWN contest and were also planning to attend some training. Could you tell us the outcome of the contest and anything interesting you learned in your training?

Any interesting news in network security exploits or defenses in the last month?

Sam discusses a number of things in the podcast including:

• Lifehacker password-guessing
• Web of Trust Firefox (and Chrome)Extension
• NoScript Firefox Extension
• IPv4 Address Exhaustion
• Wikileaks

Sam's class content, email and lots of other great stuff can be found at http://samsclass.info/ Check him out - one of the best!

Here's how to listen:

To access show notes and audio of our 30 minute audio podcast with Sam titled Network Security Update with Sam Bowne click here.

Listen to it directly in your web browser by clicking here.

If you have iTunes installed you can subscribe to our podcasts by clicking here.

Online Courses - Preparing for H1N1 at the University of Southern Florida

Last week I read an interesting article in the St Petersburg Times about how the University of Southern Florida (USF) is taking precautions for H1N1. The article did not focus on the usual (and so important) hand-washing, vaccination, go home if you are feeling sick content we've all been seeing. It focused on the use of online content as a backup in the event USF gets shut down because of the virus. Here's a piece from that St Petersburg Times article:

University of South Florida students returning to class Monday found something new on every course syllabus: A paragraph outlining USF's plan to hold classes online, via e-mail or a video service like Skype, in the event of emergency. And one of this fall's worst-case scenarios concerns a possible severe outbreak of swine flu that could force the suspension of classes, perhaps for weeks. "In my mind, that's a high probability," said Tapas Das, USF's associate provost for policy analysis, planning and performance.

A couple of weeks ago, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a document titled CDC Guidance for Responses to Influenza for Institutions of Higher Education during the 2009-2010 Academic Year. In the document, the CDC says to decrease the spread of flu, CDC may recommend preemptive class suspension if the flu starts to cause severe disease in a significantly larger proportion of those affected than occurred during the spring/summer 2009 outbreak.

Is USF going too far with their preparation? I don"t think so after taking a look at what the CDC experts are saying. The university seems to be making a strong preemptive effort to prevent an entire semester from being canceled because of the flu.

My favorite piece of the St Petersburg Time article is the last few lines:

At first, Das said, it was hard to imagine teaching some courses in nontraditional ways. But he said USF professors have been working on backup plans to continue teaching even courses like music, theater and dance.

"This is, perhaps," he said, "an opportunity for us to be more creative."

Very nicely said Associate Provost Das. Could this be an opportunity for all of us involved in higher education to be more creative?

NBC's New Comedy - Community (College)

There's a new half-hour comedy about higher education...and lower expectations coming from Emmy Award-winning directors Joe and Anthony Russo to NBC this fall titled Community. The comedy is centered around the fictitious Greendale Community College. Here's an interesting quote from the NBC website describing the show:

It's been said that community college is a "halfway school" for losers, a self esteem workshop for newly divorced housewives, and a place where old people go to keep their minds active as they circle the drain of eternity. Well, at Greendale Community College...that's all true. Community focuses on a band of misfits, at the center of which is a fast-talkin' lawyer whose degree has been revoked (Joel McHale, The Soup). They form a study group and, in "Breakfast Club" fashion, end up learning a lot more about themselves than they do about their course work.

NBC is going all out with this show - they're even going to put together a Greendale Community College website that will introduce the show characters including: the student body, Dean Pelton, the faculty, etc. Here's a 4 minute promo you may find interesting.

What's the real story? Here's some current stats from the American Association of Community Colleges website (I've quoted these in the past).

Number and Type of Community Colleges: Total: 1,195 Public: 987 Independent: 177 Tribal: 31	Enrollment: Total: 11.5 million Enrolled full time: 41% Enrolled part time: 59%
Selected Demographics: Average age: 29 Women: 60% Men: 40% Minorities: 35% First generation to attend college: 39% Single parents: 17%	Percentages of Undergraduates: All U.S. undergraduates: 46% First-time freshmen: 41% Native American: 55% Asian/Pacific Islander: 46% Black: 46% Hispanic: 55%
Employment Status: Full-time students employed full time: 27% Full-time students employed part time: 50% Part-time students employed full time: 50% Part-time students employed part time: 33%

Sound familiar? Maybe your neighbor, your friend, your grandchild, maybe even you. Community colleges are wonderful, inexpensive places to get the first two years of a four year degree or learn a specific skilled technology.

I just don't get where this show is coming from. Is it tongue in cheek humor? We'll see and we'll see how long it lasts..... The series premieres Thursday, September 17th 9:30/8:30c.

Goodbye Landlines?

Amherst College is just a couple miles down the road from where I live - it's a small and well known college in Western Massachusetts with an enrollment of approximately 1,680 undergraduate students. Peter Schilling, IT Director at the College, has published what he calls his IT index in a blog at Academic Commons.

Schilling's post lists 30 indicators of technological change on the Amherst campus. You'll have to take a look at his piece to see the full list - here's my 10 favorites from his list:

1. Year that an incoming Amherst College class first created a Facebook group so that they could socialize and otherwise get to know each other prior to arriving on campus: 2006.
2. By the end of August 2008 the total number of members and posts at the Amherst College Class of 2012 Facebook group: 432 members and 3,225 posts.
3. Students in the class of 2012 who registered computers, IPhones, game consoles, etc. on the campus network by the end of the day on August 24th, the day they moved into their dorm rooms: 370 students registered 443 devices.
4. Number of students in the class of 2012 who brought desktop computers to campus: 14 (out of 438).
5. Number that brought iPhones/iTouches: 93.
6. Likelihood that a student with an iPhone/iTouch is in the class of 2012: approximately 1 in 2.
7. Total number of students on campus this year that have landline phone service: 5.
8. Average number of emails received per day: 180,000.
9. Percentage of email that arrives on campus that is spam: 94%.
10. Total number of alumni who have logged in to the College web site: 7,354.

Every single one of these makes me say - WOW. The one that gets the biggest WOW is #7. Only 5 out of 1,680 students have a land line......... I doubt these students will ever have or need a landline. Be sure to see Schilling's post and entire list here.

What Is An Agent Of Change?

When you manage people, you are in it together.
And because you are the leader, you own all the outcomes, good and bad.
- Jack Welch

With the coming presidential election we've been hearing the word change used a lot. It's nothing new - it just seems to be ratcheted up because we're dealing with some extra hot issues this round. So..... what is this change stuff all about? Jack and Suzy Welch have an interesting perspective. In the October 20, 2008 Business Week WelchWay column, they are asked the following question by Anil Kale from Pune, India:

What kind of person is a change agent?

Jack and Suzy's answer is an interesting one. They start by saying that true change agents must have a single critical trait - power. They say most questions they get about change come from people deep within their organizations who have a burning desire to improve things and are frustrated with the organizational inertia in their way. They have good ideas, passion, dedication and hunger to be change agents but worry they cannot be.

Jack and Suzy go on saying by and large, change is still made by people with some sort of authority. It's driven by managers who have a platform to advocate for a new direction and the ability to hire, promote, and reward those who embace it. Change agents must be leaders to be effective - unfortunately - not all leaders are change agents.

Here's three other traits (besides power) that Jack and Suzy say are essential:

1. True change agents see a future no one else does, and that vision won't let them rest. They don't lead change because it "makes sense" or because change is "necessary." They lead change because they believe their organization must get ahead of an approaching "discontinuity" in order to survive and win. Typically, they've risen through the ranks because they've seen around corners before, and they're recognized for what they are, serial visionaries.

2. Change agents have the courage to bet their careers. True change agents are willing to take bold action - and accept the consequences. They know that leading change can be messy, with few clear-cut answers about how events will play out.

3. Change agents have something about them that galvanizes teams and turns people on. Perhaps the biggest misconception about change agents is that they're Lone Ranger types. In fact, the most effective change agents have a fervent core of supporters, cultivated through intensity and caring.

What's the business award? According to Jack and Suzy - for some change agents, it's the organization's survival. But for many others, it's not nearly as dire. It's growth, and all the good things that come with it: more and better jobs, new products, global expansion, not to mention their byproducts - excitement and fun.

True change agents have power, vision, bravery and support - Jack and Suzy say these people are rare - from my perspective I would agree.

*****
Take a look at Jack and Suzy's Business Week piece here. You can also listen to a podcast titled True Change Agents, found on their website The Welch Way.

How The RIAA Catches Campus Music Pirates

The Chronicle of Higher Education, one of the most respected academic publications, published an interesting piece yesterday titled How It Does It: The RIAA Explains How It Catches Alleged Music Pirates. In the piece, Catherine Rampell interviews an unnamed Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) representative who describes how the association tracks and catches alleged campus music pirates. Here's a step by step summary of the process as listed in the Chronicle piece:

Step 1: The RIAA maintains a list of songs whose distribution rights are owned by the RIAA's member organizations. It has given that list to Media Sentry, a company it hired to search for online pirates.

Step 2: Media Sentry runs copies of the LimeWire program and performs searches for those copyrighted song titles, one by one, to see if any are being offered by people whose computers are connected to the LimeWire network.

- If you have ever run Limewire and done searches on popular music titles, you know a simple search typically gives hundreds of "hits".

Step 3: The Limewire search listing allows the searcher to manually right-click on any song entry and choose "browse host" to see all of the songs that a given file sharer is offering to others for download.

Step 4: The listing also allows the searcher to see the IP address of the listed file sharers.

So, by doing a simple Limewire search, Media Sentry gets a list of all songs being shared by a user at a specific IP address. Here's how the rest of the process works:

Step 5: Media Sentry uses online databases like www.arin.net or www.samspade.org to find out which IP addresses are registered to each Internet-service provider.

Step 6: Using this information, Media Sentry determines which traders are located at colleges or universities.

Step 7: Media Sentry compares digital fingerprints, called hashes, of know copyright song files and those being shared.

- This can be done by Media Sentry without actually downloading the suspected song, it can be done using only a TCP/IP "handshake".

- It is possible to change the hash and in cases where this is suspected, Media Sentry will actually download the song and use Audible Magic software to compare sound waves of the offered audio file against those of the song it may be infringing upon.

Step 7: Media Sentry forwards this information to the RIAA.

The process is so simple it's even something I could do! The advantage companies like Media Sentry provide is automation and speed - fast servers and custom applications can scan large numbers of Limewire traders automatically. How does the RIAA typically continue?

Step 8: A full-time RIAA employee reviews each case to make sure the claim is legitimate and that the alleged pirate is in the United States. If this is the case, the RIAA delivers a Digital Millennium Copyright Act takedown notice, asking the college to remove infringing content from its network.

According to the Chronicle's RIAA source, Media Sentry does not perform these kinds of automated investigations on traders associated with commercial ISP's (like Verizon or Comcast) - all notices received by commercial Internet-service providers are processed manually by the RIAA.

Be sure to read the entire Chronicle piece linked here.

A Helicopter Parent at 30,000 Feet

According to the Federation Aeronautique Internationale, the world record for helicopter altitude is 12,442 meters (approximately 40,820 feet) set by Jean Boulet in Aérodrome d'Istres, France on June 21, 2002. Boulet used a SA 315 Lama helicopter to set the record. The SA 315 is a specialized helicopter designed to fly at high altitudes - most helicopters max out below 20,000 feet.

What do helicopters have to do with parents? Helicopter parents are a little different and don't seem to be affected much by altitude. They're defined by many as parents who constantly hover over their children, stepping in whenever there is a problem at school or sports, music, etc. Speaking from experience - the ability to be constantly connected with our children (computers, cell phones, text messaging, email, etc) has made it extremely tempting for us parents to "hover" and our children to (perhaps) overly rely and depend on us parents.

What does 30,000 feet have to do with all this? A couple of weeks ago on a flight I sat next to an interesting guy right around my age. He had a Tablet PC, a scientific calculator and what looked like photocopied pages from a textbook. Being the nosey person I am I would steal a peek at his screen every once in a while as he flipped through the photocopied pages, wrote and erased equations on the Tablet PC and punched away on the calculator. I figured he was kind of old to be taking a course and thought he might be a teacher or professor. Then I realized he was erasing way too much to be faculty and seemed to be pretty frustrated with operating the calculator. His penmanship was beautiful - another tip he was likely not faculty or a student! :)

What did I do? Being curious - I saw my opening and made my move when I recognized the Snell's Law equation on the Tablet PC. Breaking the ice, I asked him if he was taking a course and was amazed at his response. He told me he was an "extremely successful" architect and he was helping his son out by doing his college physics homework. The kid was an undergraduate at a well know university, majoring in pre-med. He told me physics was a "useless" course that his son was required to take for his major. He also told me the kid needed to get a good grade in the class to get into medical school. Much of the work was homework/take-home type assignments and, again (he kept saying it), he was "just helping his kid out".

What exactly was he doing? He was hand writing the solutions on the Tablet PC using the electronic ink feature in Word. Saving the hand written assignments as Word documents, he would email them to his son who would then rewrite (he claimed) the assignments and pass them in to his professor.

He did not ask what kind of work I do and I did not offer. I did tell him I thought that what he was doing was cheating, not fair to the other students in the class, etc. He could not have cared less about my opinion.

How was he doing? I could see that all three of the problems he had completed were wrong - his answers made no sense. From what I could tell (those calculator symbols are small when you are trying to sneak a peek) he had the calculator in radian mode when it should have been in degree mode. I could see his blood pressure rising as he struggled with the calculator.

I did not say a word but would have loved to see the look on his face when Dad got his grade for that assignment back.