Tuesday 12 June 2012

CACUSS 2012 Keynote: Jennifer Corriero


Jennifer Corriero is one of those people who has accomplished so much in her young life that it is simultaneously encouraging and discouraging! She challenged student services leaders to answer these six questions:
 
Does your University

… provide open, dynamic, inclusive spaces for redefining the possible? Developing The Dreamer.

…offer platforms for students to amplify voices of concern about local and global issues? Encouraging The Megaphone.

.. facilitate connections between nodes and hubs within  your networks of influence? Enabling The Spark Plug.

…provoke students to see their role as trendshapers and communicators? Liberating The Storyteller.

… match students with mentors in an exchange that enables shared growth? Releasing The Sherpa.

…value the importance of taking concrete action with measurable results? Freeing The Task Master/Social Entrepreneur.

Monday 11 June 2012

CACUSS 2012 Keynote: Michael Wesch

At CACUSS2012. The first keynote speaker was Michael Wesch, whose talk was on
The End of Wonder in the Age of Whatever.

It was a very interesting and insightful look at the challenge of students and student services in an age of always on, always connected culture. He noted that there are three parts to answering life's questions:
  • Quest
  • Embrace our vulnerability
  • Invite connections
Most insightfully, however, he noted that technology provides ways for students to answer these questions like never before; but it also provides ways of not answering these questions like never before. 


While this is not the talk he gave here, if you check out this TEDx talk, you will get a sense of how powerfully he communicates. Then give yourself a treat an search YouTube to see his other talks and videos.


Tuesday 17 April 2012

Rules about final exam schedules

"My exam schedule is awful."

I hear this statement every term. Sometimes it comes with an accusatory glare, as if, somehow, I had engineered the schedule to pick on that particular student. Sometimes it comes with a resigned sigh -- this is usually from students in 3rd or 4th year (or sometimes an enlightened 2nd year student) who have realized that there are corollaries to Murphy's Law that apply to final exam schedules.

Those corollaries go something like this:
  • Your first exam will always be scheduled sooner than you are ready for it.
  • Your last exam will always be scheduled later than you would like to leave campus.
  • The course in which you are having the most difficulty will usually occur first in your schedule, or on the same day as another exam.
  • The course with which you have the least trouble will be optimally placed, providing plenty of study time.
  • If you are a morning person, your exams will be predominantly afternoon or evening.
  • Conversely, if you are a night owl, your exams will mostly be in the mornings.
  • Some event that is socially or personally of great interest or of a "once in a lifetime" character (a concert, play, convention, party, vacation, sporting event) will occur in or around your exam schedule.
There are others that I am sure you could add.

My staff and I are not quite so psychic or talented to be able to get my scheduling software to intentionally produce  such a schedule. If we were, then we could also avoid it! The best we can do is apply King's policy of no conflicting exams and no more than 2 exams in a 24 hour period to our students.

The rest of these characteristics will have to be attributed to some more cosmic source -- perhaps God's wry sense of humour, or (for you reformed types) perhaps this is one of the evidences of the corruption introduced by the Fall. Or perhaps this is a training exercise for the rest of life when our knowledge, skills, experience and maturity are put to the test not only at terrifically inconvenient moments but without any announced schedule at all.

What is the point of this blog?

I am a terrible blogger. I go forever without posting anything. Sometimes I sit staring at the blank little composition box wondering why I ever started this in the first place. Hesitation leads to procrastination. Procrastination leads to an empty blog.

I already have one blog (whychooseachristianuniversity.blogspot.com) on which to be a terrible blogger, so why start another?

Well, I needed a place to put down some random thoughts about being a Registrar. This is something I have been doing since 1994 and, from time to time, things that are either funny or profound (at least to me) occur to me. So this is a place to put those thoughts.

It probably won't amount to much. I am, after all, a terrible blogger.