Have you come across any great articles lately? If so, then please share those links in the comments below. All subjects count from money to volunteering to higher education to sports and more! And one more time for those of you who love reading online articles, I strongly recommend using Feedly as an RSS reader. You can follow JerseySmarts.com on Feedly or you can add us to your existing RSS aggregator. Enjoy!

Several years ago I wrote about how I was preparing to start a Post-Master’s Certificate program in Curriculum Studies. I remember writing that entry and at the time the only phrase I kept hearing go through my head was Chris Rock on the Howard Stern Show saying, “You’re going back to Shawshank!?” after Stern announced he was getting married again. I had that same thought going through my head when I started the Post-Master’s Certificate a few years ago and, in some respects, I have the same thought now as I prepare for this doctoral program.

There is a slight difference between now and then, though. When I started the Post-Master’s Certificate I had that, “Here we go again,” feeling because I was putting myself back in the classroom setting as a student. This time around I don’t have that feeling because I’m going back to the classroom setting as a student, rather I have that feeling because I’m going back to using student loans to finance my education. If you haven’t read my student loan story, then you can get a full rundown of my life with student loans by clicking here. If you scroll through those posts, you’ll find the one where I announce that I’ve fully repaid my student loans.

Though I need to take out student loans to finance my doctoral education, I am in a much different personal and financial place than I was when I finished my Master’s Degree in 2006. For example, after I graduated in 2006 I began working at a company in an entry level-type position making an entry level-type salary. Now, almost 10 years later, I still work at the same company and I’ve obviously progressed in my career. Granted, I don’t have the regular financial capacity to make $2,500 per month payments like I was making at the end of the aggressive, self-imposed repayment plan for my previous student loans. However, I do have the capacity to make payments on my new student loans while I’m still enrolled as a student.

And that’s probably the biggest difference between me being a student in 2015 versus me being a college student from 1999 to 2003 or a graduate student from 2004 to 2006. Today, I can afford to pay down my student loans during the actual semesters when I take them out in the first place. Will I be able to pay down the entirety of each loan during the semester when I’m taking the classes that the loan paid for? Probably not, but I’m in a much better position to try to do that now than I was 10+ years ago.

There are two other differences that I think are worth mentioning outside of the student loan issue. First, this is the first time that I’ll be taking fully online classes. In the past, I’ve successfully completed hybrid courses that are partially online and partially in the classroom. And for the last several years I’ve actually instructed many fully online classes. However, this will be the first time that I am a student in such a class. Second, this is the first time since I completed my Master’s Degree in 2006 where I’ll be taking more than one class per semester. After I graduated with the Master’s Degree, I completed two additional graduate programs by taking one class each semester (outside of textbooks, I didn’t pay to take these classes or to earn these degrees as I was provided with tuition remission at the local college where I work as an Adjunct Professor). The last time I was enrolled in more than one class as a student was during the spring semester of 2006.

All of these comments aside, I’m really looking forward to being engaged in the classroom as a student again. I’m particularly interested in engaging with my new classmates in an all-online setting. And, of course, I’m excited at the prospects of completing the doctoral program and finishing up a lifetime of classroom activity.

Anyway, the link series is back. Enjoy the links below and get your weekend started right!

Again, if you don’t already have one, then I recommend opening a free Feedly account. You can follow JerseySmarts.com on Feedly or you can add us to your existing RSS aggregator. Enjoy!

Canadian students in a lecture hall - not my students, but students nonetheless

Some of you might recall a little over a year ago when I wrote about how I was getting a little suspicious of the online learning environment and its influence on student achievement. In short, that blog entry talked about how I was unimpressed at the amount of classes that the online college I work for allowed their students to take at a single time. Further, I’ve been continually unimpressed by the inability for my online students to write in an academically acceptable manner or conform to basic academic formatting standards. Frankly, my students are not great writers nor do they give a damn about the required academic formats (APA, MLA, etc) when submitting their papers.

And still – as aggravating as those issues may be to an educator, believe it or not the focus of this article is something different! Today, my unnecessary complication is the with the attitudes of my online learners. To put it succinctly, these students don’t understand the first thing about the teacher/student relationship! Actually, there is a second annoyance that I’ve been encountering with my students which has to do with their inability to comprehend the nature of the online learning environment, but let me bitch about the teacher/student relationship first!

I’ve been continually amazed at how poorly prepared for the advanced learning environment some of my online learners are when my classes start. Now granted, I’m not talking about the entire class of students nor am I referring to even half of the class. However, at least 10% to 15% of each class that I teach is comprised of students who do not understand their role in the teacher/student relationship. Let me define that a little bit more…

I do not expect my students to be rote learners like we’re all stuck in the 1950’s or something. Instead, I expect my students to understand that they are not my customers – they are my students. This is a big topic of discussion in the higher education circles: whether the people who sit in the classrooms are customers/consumers or students. And, to my great disappointment, the trend is pushing more towards students being viewed as customers instead of seekers of knowledge or impassioned learners.

This is a big problem.

Defining a student as a consumer puts the student in a position to believe (incorrectly) that they can control the flow of work in the class (homework and weekly assignments) or the requirements for passing the class (grading metrics and evaluation rubrics). Why does this happen? Well, it happens for the same reason that, as a consumer, you can bitch and moan to your local auto mechanic and get your bill lowered. Namely… the customer is always right!

Exacerbating this problem is that this customer/teacher relationship just doesn’t work well in online learning (or higher education in general). In fact, it is the job of the college to tell these “customers” when they are dead wrong. At some point I hope to write a longer piece on this blog about how creating the customer vs. student scenario has led to the painful destruction of what should be a great American academic system. For now, though, my focus is on how some of my students believe that they can dictate my grading schedule. It’s outrageous! I had a student e-mail me two weeks before the class ended to tell me that he expected his final grade to be completed within 12 hours of his final paper being submitted (which was due the following weekend) because he needed to report his grade to the company that funds his education. After laughing out loud, I e-mailed the student back and explained that there is a ten day period between when the final student work is submitted and the final grades are due and that he should expect to see his final grade at some point towards the end of that ten day period.

He began e-mailing me every single day about his final grade. The student started contacting me one day prior to the class ending through the middle of the ten day period, which was when I had completed my final grading and submitted his grade for posting. Luckily, the online university was on my side in this debacle because – believe it or not – the student had been contacting the university daily, too!

For the last course that I taught, I had five or six of these unnecessary student complications. Again, all of this stems from the idea that the student is a customer and not a person being evaluated for his or her academic capabilities.

To finish up, the other item that annoys me about the online learning environment is the lack of online learners to understand how this arrangement is supposed to work. The best example that I can give is the students themselves – these are good people who, for one reason or another, could not attend college during the traditional time in one’s life where they would attend college (right after high school or a few years after high school ended). Maybe they started a family, maybe they took over the family business, maybe they had a job in the trades and are only now going back to get a degree – whatever the case, these folks are typically hard-working, already employed people on crazy schedules.

And I totally respect that fact. In fact, I encourage more people who are not of the traditional college age to seek out methods to procure college degrees.

What shocks me, though, is that these online learners don’t take a minute to do the least bit of research on the people who teach their classes because if they did – surprise, surprise – they’d find out that their professors are in the same boat! We’re typically teaching at two or three universities and, in my case, I’ve got a variety of jobs and volunteer positions that take up all of my time. In other words, when I have a “customer” student complaining that they want their grade to be submitted first and ten days earlier than the rest of the class, it makes me want to punch the wall. There’s an arrogance – an ignorance of reality – in that request. There’s a certain, “I’m in charge and I’m paying you for my degree so fork over what I want, when I want it – NOW!” in that type of request.

It’s unacceptable and I hope that my fellow online teachers are approaching these problems the same way that I do – with the knowledge that we have an obligation to uphold the academic standards of our institutions and thus we need to be sure that the teacher/student relationship as well as the teaching environment are both preserved and respected.

It’s a whole different world being a Trustee for the foundation, really.

There are a few entries that are set to automatically load while I’m away so you’ll have something to read on this site over the next few days. And, for what it’s worth, I think that this is going to be my last trip to this conference so long as it continues to be held during Super Bowl weekend. As you’ll read in the entries that are set to automatically load over the next few days, I’ve been finishing up (or am getting ready to finish up) some major projects for the foundation that will allow me to regain some of my free time in the coming months and years.

Once those projects are completed, I’ll have less of an obligation to attend these awkwardly scheduled events (it’s Super Bowl weekend!) and thus I’ll be able to spend some more time working on items outside of the fraternity. Plus, I won’t be running late to my own Super Bowl parties any more!

Enjoy the next few entries as they’re uploaded and I’ll be back next week!

Good to Great is, in short, a study of why some companies become megastars in the business world and why other ones seem to fall by the wayside. I use the term “study” because this book really is nothing more than the discussion around a set of findings from an actual academic study into a variety of companies – both those that made the jump to being “great” and those who either stayed in the middle of the industry or failed.

In a moment, I’ll write about some issues that I have with the companies that were used in the study, but it would only be proper to state how impressed I was with the findings of the study. Collins defines his results as: Level 5 Leadership, First Who…Then What, Confront the Brutal Facts (Yet Never Lose Faith), The Hedgehog Concept, A Culture of Discipline, Technology Accelerators, and The Flywheel and the Doom Loop. In fact, if you read just the table of contents for Good to Great, you’ll notice that this is their exact listing. The two findings that I enjoyed reading the most were Level 5 Leadership and Confront the Brutal Facts (Yet Never Lose Faith).

As a reader who is engaged in reality (and thus I apply real-world experiences to what I read), I liked reading about Level 5 Leadership for both selfish and professional reasons. Professionally, it is amazing how many people that I have worked for who are not the type of leaders that my companies have needed to exceed. I’ve worked for people who didn’t know a thing about leadership, yet managed to become the President or Executive Director of the company. It’s sickening, really. What makes someone a Level 5 Leader? As Collins suggested, it’s the unique combination of professional will and personal humility. In other words, you have to always have the best interests of the organization in mind, yet be able to be self-effacing about your success; always put the company’s success before your own.

How many people can honestly say that they’ve worked for people who acted that way about their company’s success? Few, I’m sure. Better yet, how many people have worked for bosses that considered the company’s success as a direct result of their own contributions? Much more, I’m sure.

The other finding of this study that I liked was the Confront the Brutal Facts (Yet Never Lose Faith) chapter. From my experience, this is something that far too few companies are comfortable with doing – and who can blame them. Who really wants to sit down as a company and look into the proverbial mirror? That’s a tough task and one that many companies cannot accomplish because their leadership is either too concerned about their professional reputation or they refuse to see any flaws that their leadership could have created.

I also like how Collins adds a summary to the end of each chapter showing the findings and the unintended findings. A very nice touch.

Now then… I have a problem with this companies in this book being heralded as “great.” Why, you ask? Two answers – Circuit City and Fannie Mae. Both of these companies are defined as “great” in the study, which shows one of the obvious flaws of the study – namely, that the confines of the research did not take into account whether or not the results that were being generated were built on a legit financial system. In other words, did Circuit City beat the pants off of the rest of the electronics stores because it truly had a better overall corporate structure? I think recent history would suggest the answers is a resounding no.

The same can be said of Fannie Mae. Here’s an organization that some suggest was implicit in the housing bust that literally wrecked the American and global economies. How can these companies be considered great in the long run if they were such miserable failures?

On the other hand, Wells Fargo is touted as a “great” company (and rightfully so), but it is contrasted with the Bank of America as a company that never made the leap to “great.” Well, having worked with the Bank of America (not as an employee, but as a business partner), I can tell you that they are a great organization. Sure, they may not have fit Collins’ definition during the period of the study, but rest assured that Bank of America is a great financial institution. For those of you who are naysayers due to its current bailout from the federal government, I get it. However, the Bank of America is one of the few financial firms that wants to repay the TARP funds ASAP.

All in all, I though Collins book was very well written and that the findings of the study were accessible. I would also argue that the findings are applicable to the business world despite my last few paragraphs. However, I would argue that the public can have a legit complaint about Fannie Mae and Circuit City being heralded as “great.” If you can get your hands on a copy of Good to Great, I recommend reading it.

First things first – I didn’t read Covey’s related book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People so I cannot really offer much in the way of comparing one book to the other. I have the 7 Habits audio book, but I haven’t had the chance to sit down and listen to it yet.

The first book aside, though, I definitely recommend The 8th Habit for the young professional who may have little prior leadership experience and is trying to find a way to break through to the next level in his or her career. For those who are already overflowing with leadership experience, this book might be a nice refresher course and serve to remind you of some aspects of success that you might have overlooked. In either event, using the link above you can purchase this book for only a few bucks so if you’re interested, it’s definitely worth the purchase.

Covey breaks this book into a variety of sections and makes excellent use of charts and graphs throughout. He also intersperses the text with quotes from famous leaders, which I found very enjoyable (I’ll be lifting some of those quotes for the random quote generator located on the right hand side of this page). Chapters include topics like finding your voice, empowering those around you (which is essentially the “core” of the 8th Habit), and aligning basic strategies. One theme that is consistently brought up in the book is the idea that we – as a society – are leaving the industrial age and entering an information age.

Or, as Covey calls it, the Age of Wisdom. This is an interesting and yet obvious insight to those in the working world. The Age of Wisdom presents a fundamental change to employers and employees as the contributions of the masses will no longer be blood, sweat, and tears, but instead information. In other words, where the economy once thrived off of the backs of industrial age workers, the new economy is being built off of the minds of wisdom age workers. Interesting insight once you start to study the job market and notice how many highly physical jobs are being taken over by automated processes.

And the introduction of automated processes isn’t a bad thing at all! In fact, it’s great because it will force many people to begin studying and researching new ways to contribute to their employer. Sure, it won’t happen on a mass scale, but I agree with Covey that one day we’ll look around and find ourselves immersed in an information age society. Could be faster than you think…

For those of you who are into these types of books, I suggest picking up (an inexpensive copy of) this book and giving it a read. You’ll find it to be a fast read with nice messages that you can take away throughout. Enjoy!

I don’t know. Maybe it’s because this is something new for a President, but his loose attitude at Leno last night was a little bit much for me. Just as it was refreshing to have a President break that austere facade that we have grown accustomed to seeing from the Oval Office, I was a little uneasy that the leader of the free world was yucking it up on a talk show. And as for his comment about the Special Olympics, it was absolutely insulting and another in a line of gaffes from the Obama/Biden combination.

It seems to me that the President hasn’t really evolved from that campaign mode into the leadership role that he needs to assume. He needs to stop worrying about whether or not people like him and get back to swinging the hammer at against the “Washington-as-usual” crowd. Then you have the inherent bias against the Republicans where if a Republican President had visited Leno he would have been universally panned and if he had made the Special Olympics comment he would have been told to resign from office.

It just made me uneasy to have the President on late night television when there is so much crap going on in the country that need strong leadership right now. You can read an even better description (with links from around the blogosphere) about what President Obama’s appearance on The Tonight Show means at Fausta’s Blog.

Without naming the fraternity (because since this is now a national story I’m sure those kids are dealing with enough crap), a Greek chapter based out of the University of Utah did a pretty unintelligent thing last fall. As The Salt Lake Tribune states:

Chapter leadership wanted [the pledges] to do something fun together to build lasting bonds of brotherhood. Instead, according to neighbors, they marched naked across Butler Avenue and up an alley to the Chi Omega sorority, where they serenaded the sisters with loud hoots and taunts.

Neighbors were not amused. Todd Jenson was inside his Butler Avenue home when the sound of hollering drew him out.

“I saw a group of fully nude young men who had surrounded a young woman sorority member who had the unfortunate luck of being outside when they marched,” Jenson says.

Come on, guys. How much alcohol did it take for someone to think that this was a good idea? First of all, does that type of shit really fly out there in the far west? I couldn’t imagine a group of guys sauntering around any college neighborhood in New Jersey in nothing but their bare asses for “fun,” much less to build lasting bonds of brotherhood. Frankly, it sounds like a five minute scene in one of those direct-to-DVD movies more than anything else.

The rest of the article goes on and on with some interesting discussion on how Greek Life is progressing at the University of Utah. You can click the link to read it, but I only wanted to point out this act because it’s so stupid. There are any number of things that a group of pledges or the larger chapter can do to “build brotherhood” (which is really nothing more than bonding with your buddies). Go camping, go fishing, build something, go to the bar, go to an NFL game, go the racetrack (favorite of mine) – basically you can do any of the traditional “guy” things and get a better outcome than hooting and hollering around the neighborhood with your ass hanging out.

As an alumni advisor to my fraternity, whenever I hear about something like this I always wonder what the deal is in terms of the advisors for these groups. Is there a chapter-based advisor who has been out of school for a little bit and thus can provide some perspective? What about a regional volunteer and traveling consultants for the national office? Those are the questions that pop into my mind.

I should point out though, that while this story is annoying I’ve had much worse stories pop into my inbox. Something about this one just rubbed me the wrong way. This fraternity – and the fraternity movement as a whole – has to do better than this…

Really, President Obama needs to liven things up a bit. We’re looking for change from him, not the same old boring “what the hell is he talking about?” crap! I will say, though, that it was nice to watch the President of the United States and not have to worry about him saying something that made absolutely no sense. On the other hand, while the rest of country goes crazy over Obama’s speaking style, I really, really hate it. I know that the biased liberal media will never publish a negative thing about his speaking style, but this man relies on “ehhh” and “ihhh” WAY too much when he talks. Go back and listen to the entire speech (if you can stomach it) and try to count how many times he interjects “ehhh” and “ihhh” in a single sentence. It’s alarming.

Again, the alternative could be, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice…you can’t fool me twice.” Good grief.

But even as I take my own potshot at President George W. Bush, I have to say that it was a little gross that Obama cited the federal leadership of the last eight years as the reason for the current economic downturn. Look, I agree with the rest of the gang that the folks running the world down in Washington were a little goofed up, but that includes the Democrats, too. Further, the biggest perpetrators of our current problems were the greedy people on Wall Street and the ignorant people on Main Street. The root of this downturn is the devastated housing market. The root of the devastated housing market are people who were buying $500,000 homes when they could only afford $150,000 homes. The side-root of that same problem were the bankers who gave mortgages to people who couldn’t afford their homes!

Ugh…it’s not all about Bush! I had hoped that Obama would bring this country past the Bush derangement syndrome, but after his campaign-style speech last night, I guess that real change hasn’t come…yet.