Professional Development...what is it? In most, if not all, professional fields there is this "conversation" that takes place among practitioners about what they do. The "conversation" isn't literal--between two people. When I use the word conversation, I mean it in a different way. I mean it in a much bigger way. It is the way that people who do particular kinds of work--build commercial buildings, practice law, treat medical patients, provide human resource services, teach undergraduates, take care of children or the elderly--talk with one another about the work they do. How do they talk? Well sometimes they talk face-to-face. They do this in the literal workplace or, if they have worked elsewhere, they may keep in touch with former colleagues. They also talk face-to-face at various forums hosted by professional associations. So, in the field of commercial architecture or human resources, there are various professional organizations to which people who work in these field can join or become members. These professional organizations usually host "conferences"--sometimes they are international, sometimes they are national (U.S.) sometimes they are regional (i.e., New England), sometimes they are local (i.e. RI). At these conferences or gatherings, people with shared professional interests come together to talk with one another, face-to-face, about what they do. They ask each other questions, try to solve problems, try to learn about new techniques or new policies or new information. They network. It's a huge social gathering centered around a particular kind of work. Usually, if they are fun, they go out at night and have drinks and sometimes even party with one another (not the college professors though...they go back to their hotel rooms and read books by themselves :)
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I attended a local/regional conference last month at the University of New Hampshire. I presented or shared my research there with other teachers on the teaching of writing. In another post, maybe I should go a bit more into detail on my research interests...but not here, today. I will be presenting my work at another professional conference in the spring, this one is the national conference for teachers of writing. It is, I am proud to say, the biggest and most important conference in the field of composition (my field) and it is attended by, literally, thousands of writing teachers. This will be, again, I'm proud to say (sorry if this is getting a bit arrogant!) the fourth year in a row I have had a proposal I submitted accepted by the conference (You have to write up a short proposal if you want to present your work at the conference. I learned recently that only about 1/3 of the proposals submitted get accepted:
The unoffical numbers for the 2008 conference: 1,645 proposals received, percentage accepted is about 31%.)
So, you have the face-to-face ways that people keep up with one another in particular professional fields, and then you have the discursive or written or non-face-to-face ways that they do it. For example, many professional organizations publish newsletters, magazines, trade publications, etc. People write things and submit them and the organizations publish them and then if you are a dues-paying member of the association, you get the publication sent to you on a weekly, monthly, quarterly, yearly basis (whatever it is).
Another newer way that people in professions keep up with one another, non-face-to-face, is through email list-serves. I'm sure some, if not all, of you have subscribed to list-serves. I don't think I need to describe what a list-serve is, do I? (if so, let me know). Anyway, I subscribe to a list-serve for teachers or writing and receive frequent information about all kinds of things related to the teaching of writing and working in higher education. I came across this recently, and I thought I would share it with you. I'm sure that this data is not surprising for you all...but I thought it was interesting to see it collected in one place. The question I have is, given this data, what are the implications for all of us who teach undergraduates. What should we be doing, given this information? What more can we be doing? How should this data change the way we think about our teaching? (I hope you can see the ways in which I have tried to take such data into account with our course...?):
From the key findings ofThe ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and
Information Technology, 2006 comes the following paragraph:
Undergraduates are communicators. Nearly all (99.9 percent) create, read, and send e-mail, and more than 80 percent send instant messages, most of them doing it daily. They use their arsenals of electronics to write documents for coursework (98.8 percent), search the Web and institutional library (94.0 percent), and creat presentations (90.8 percent). Three-quarters of these undergraduates use course management
systems, most of them using it several times per week or more. Recreationally, 70.6 percent of responding students download music of video files and use social networks such as Facebook.com. Most of them (73.4 percent) play computer/video games. A smaller number of students appear to be engaged in new media. More than a quarter of respondents (27.7 percent) report using software to create or edit video and audio files, and 28.6 percent of them create Web pages.
"Undergraduates are communicators."
For full Key Findings, go to
http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/ERS0607/EKF0607.pdf
The report is "a longitudinal extension of the 2004 and 2005 ECAR studies of students and information technology, this 2006 study is based on quantitative data from nearly 29,000 freshman and senior students at 96 higher education institutions." Full report is here: http://www.educause.edu/content.asp?PAGE_ID=12479&bhcp=1
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