Author Archives: Philip

Life in Academia, Open Access Psychology Journals and Indices

“Publish or perish” is a popular maxim in academia. Recently, in a well publicized case (where I posted a similar comment), the fight for open access truly was a life or death battle.

In less dramatic circumstances I too have grappled with the implications of access to information. While writing my second qualifying exam and sketching my dissertation proposal I experienced the stifling impact of the traditional journal system and the importance of open access. Two journals that begin their titles with the word “Cyberpsychology” serve as a case in point for the debate over open access journals.

Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking, formerly known as Cyberpsychology and Behavior is not open access. Fortunately, people at the Graduate Center (CUNY), and likely at other institutions, can access this journals publications from 2000 to one year ago through library databases. I cited one article from this journal (Ko & Kuo, 2009) in a paper for my second qualifying exam. However, I cannot view articles published in the past year. This is somewhat frustrating because I would like to review the most recent articles as I conduct my literature review for my fast approaching dissertation proposal.

In comparison I cited three articles from Cyberpsychology, an open access journal, and one of these articles was published in the last year (Bane, Cornish, Erspamer, & Kampman, 2012). The current system for dissemination of scientific journals could clearly be improved. Much scientific research is federally funded, shouldn’t the public be able to read the reports they helped support?

My experience may be indicative of a larger trend. If academics cite open access journals more – these journals may gain greater influence and perhaps this will pressure more journals to transition to the open-access model.

On a related note I found these two indexes of open access journals:

DOAJ

Bentham Science

Baker, J. R. & Moore, S. (2008a). Distress, coping, and blogging: Comparing new             Myspace users by their intention to blog. Cyberpsychology 11(1), 81-85.

Baker, J. R. & Moore, S. (2008b). Distress, coping, and blogging: Comparing new  Myspace users by their intention to blog. Cyberpsychology 11(6), 747-749.

Bane, C. M., Cornish, M., Erspamer, N., & Kampman, L. (2012). Self-disclosure through weblogs and perceptions of online and ‘real-life’ friendships among female  bloggers.Cyberpsychology, Behavior, & Social Networking, 13, 131-9.

Ko, H. C., & Kuo, F. Y. (2009). Can blogging enhance subjective well-being through self   disclosure? Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 12: 75-9.

 

A WebNotes Critique of Phil’s Digital Elevator Pitch

Hey.

Here’s the link to the pitch and critique.

And here’s a brief rehash:

I recently joined the New Media Lab (NML) at the CUNY Graduate Center. The lab coordinators asked me to create an icon and write a blurb about my project that will be posted on the NML website.

I wanted to use WebNotes to critique the real NML page, however, it will not be posted for another couple of weeks and as you know this assignment for ITP Core II is due by tomorrow. So I have pasted the blurb and icon on my blog. Then I used WebNotes to comment on this icon and blurb. I found it a bit overwhelming when I looked at the WebNotes; to ameliorate this I suggest minimizing all of the stickies and then going through and maximizing and minimizing as you please.

p

Ideas on Assignments

Since I wasn’t sure if the assigned reading for this week was the entirety of the June 2009 issue of Academic Commons or just one or two articles, I got lost in time and perused them all.  For years I thought peruse meant to leisurely browse, but then I learned it means to read deeply or scrutinize. I still think of the word peruse in a playful way.

These articles seemed to reinforce many of the ideas we talked about last semester, and continue to discuss in the current ITP term. One of the main framing points for these papers is that in the current era students need to practice analysis of material not content regurgitation (Wesch, 2009).

Each article is quite rich so I’ll just pull a few of the parts that struck me and maybe people can add their perspectives on what they found most intriguing, whether from my post or otherwise.

In one piece Davidson says “The whole system of credentialing, grading, evaluating, writing recommendations, all of that, is antithetical to true participatory learning formats and learning communities. Higher education has never figured out if its primary goal is learning or if its primary goal is training citizens for elite positions of class power and leadership. The whole system of ranking (among institutions and among students) is based on “distinctions,” as Bourdieu would say. Participatory learning, especially when it is anonymous, contests the bases and even the sanctity of many of those distinctions”.

I’m puzzled; Higher ed is both, is neither, is both but shouldn’t be either? Agree, disagree?

The Yancey article on E-portfolios was intriguing and is perhaps especially relevant to Humanities or creative writing and digital art programs. I wonder how relevant an e-portfolio is for social science or hard science students? I guess this comes down to the question of what is valued. In my field, psych, the value seems to be placed on tight impersonal writing. I wonder what a student would gain by developing an E-portfolio of their research reports. Okay they would gain knowledge about digital tools, but how does this help them if their goal is to be a biologist? Wouldn’t their time be best spent crafting their writing and reading about their content area?

If pressed, I might say that one activity for a psych student could be to do a ds106 type creation of their research project. Perhaps film the data collection, a few interview clips, and then share this. As an instructor I would be a little concerned about the department giving me a hard time for having undergrads film their participants and not following all of the necessary ethical procedures for recruitment. I guess that would push me to be better versed on these procedures, so it could be a good thing.

Finally, I find assessment is one of the most challenging parts of teaching a course. I use a research paper rubric and a presentation rubric. Even with a rubric I find it really challenging to grade student presentations. Perhaps it comes from an inner contradiction about who I am as an instructor; I want my students to work hard and earn their grades. But how do I measure ‘hard work’. I don’t want to be a dream crusher nor do I want to be a pushover, and striking the balance is a great challenge. I like what Rhodes is doing in creating a broad interdisciplinary rubric. One shortcoming of the Rhodes rubric is there is no section for basic writing mechanics.

Any interesting ideas for integrating digital assignments into the courses you teach or participate in? Any assessment ideas? Other thoughts?