Three years ago, our district finally outlined a process to set up an Institutional Review Board. They set up the “full-board” as a overall district entity; but, also set up campus boards for both faculty and student projects. As a more active scholar on my campus, I was asked to do the reviewer training through CITI and serve on our campus IRB (called the College Research Review Committee). Basically the college level IRB could approve exempt and expedited proposals; however, if the proposal needed a “full-board review” it had to go to the district level IRB.
Although no one has the extra time to do the full reviewer training, it was a worthwhile endeavor. I learned a lot of information that has helped me design studies in a more careful manner. During our first year, the CRRC met a lot! I really enjoyed talking about different projects and the potential risks involved; just like the training, these discussions were worth the time because they impacted my own researching thinking and designs later. The second year we did not meet nearly as much; and this third year, I don’t think we met face-to-face at all.
Our campus chair asked me to cover her position for a couple months when she was out. During that time period I got to attend one of the district meetings. Again, the discussion was a worthwhile experience. Since I also needed to submit my own IRB application, I was also able to test out our new electronic application and deliberation process. The geek in me was happy to give some feedback on what might make the application process run a little smoother for applicants with the primary suggestion being to provide applicants a document with all the questions before they log into the system!
Although I like being on the campus, and representing occasionally on the district, IRB committees. I’m realizing it is a little difficult as well since I’m one of the more active researchers on our campus. If I’m one of the few active IRB members, but I can’t be a reader for my own application, that causes a problem. I think the electronic system will help with that because we could get readers from other campuses; however, I’m sad that it would cut down on the robust dialog we had during face-to-face meetings.
(PS...this is a boring descriptive post because it is a part of my Faculty Evaluation Plan).
(PPS...sorry to all of you who saw the accidental early posting of this before it was done.)

I gave me brief presentation about what I learned at conferences this past summer. I talked about listening to Bill Cope present at the Computers & Writing Conference. I really liked his presentation about New Learning and immediately ordered the book. Today I had folks discuss the various differences between in education between the modern past, recent times, and new learning. Since I was asked to present because I’m the tech geek, I also worked in some technologies. I constructed the presentation in Prezi, had folks live blogging with me through both CoverItLive and Twitter, used an Online Stopwatch, and ended the presentation with a PollEverywhere live poll.

The Presentation


The Poll Everywhere End of Presentation Assessment
Quick assessment of what the audience today was going to do with the info we talked about. Seventy people registered for today, I’m not sure how many actually showed up and some had definitely left by the time I presented. Only 22 responded; however, it’s still fun feedback!

I’m still not quite sure how I did it, but I survived the 2007-8 academic year as Mesa Community College’s instructional technologist. First, this actually needing to be somewhere specific for 30 hours a week...nearly killed me. Yeah, I’m so spoiled being regular faculty. But more interesting to me is the “politics” I played this year. Not that I haven’t known politics existed, or that I haven’t played them before, but this year I got them front and center. And the problem is that once you start playing politics somewhere, even if you no longer are in that position, you really can’t go back to the naive existence. Ahh well...at least I bonded with some good peeps along the way.
One thing that was difficult was “giving up” (ie, not having the time) to do some “important” work like blogging and following various blogs to learn about new technologies. I was watching some of my close friends geek out and I was worried I would lose my geeky edge. But one of the IT guys gave me the ultimate compliment, he mentioned that he was impressed with the skin job on the Maricopa Tech twittercamp instance we had running at the Maricopa Community College District Teaching & Learning with Technology Conference this past Tuesday. I said I did it; he said he had figured it was one of the other tech guys who is good with graphic design. I felt all warm and fuzzy!

I complete the first of three workshops on Google Apps that I’m doing for faculty in the Maricopa Community College District. I’m focusing on the applications that exist in the educational instances of Google Apps, not the “everything” that we get in a regular google services account. I was surprised at how few faculty I had in the room; instead, I had a bunch of librarians, some people from training, institutional advancement, an administrator, to name a few. I did learn that Google didn’t like having too many accounts being opened from the same IP address; therefore, for the next two workshops we’re going to ask that participants get their gmail accounts prior to the workshop.
What has surprised me the most is who attends…not the list above, but the sprinkling in of faculty (one f2f, one virtually) who I look to for knowledge about technology. Practically, it is extremely useful to have a geeky person in the room to help with techno-glitches as a 20+ people fiddle around with a technology for the first time. What surprises me is that these folks whom I learn from, also learn from me. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, I was telling others that I always learn something new about the technologies as I prepare a workshop; thus, taking a workshop a year later on the same topic would mean learning new things. In other words, I know from my own experiences I continue to learn, so why shouldn’t people I consider my mentors continue to learn from me.
Or, am I just trapped into thinking that learning always happens in hierarchically, always the same directions from generally the same people. Of course I should know better, but I’m just as trapped in traditional ways as thinking as others can be.
Ultimately, this is just a Thanks to my peers in the district who continue to motivate me to keep on learning. You know who you are, most of you were there last week when we live blogged the Quality Matters training…priceless!