Thursday, December 27, 2012

Professor became a ghostwriter?

I read something "extraordinary" this afternoon. Professors and university graduates cannot land a decent job and became ghostwriters for college students. Yeah, it is not ethical; yet ... the reality is that people need to pay the bills and put the food on the tables for their families!

Here are some of the articles I read:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/09/unemployed-professor-texas-tech_n_1412585.html

http://growingleaders.com/blog/confessions-of-a-ghost-writerfor-students/

http://www.joannejacobs.com/2010/11/confessions-of-a-ghost-writer/

The question is... what can you do if you recognized your student who hired a gohostwriter? Probably nothing you can do.

Friday, December 21, 2012

A graphic history book for everyone - Escape to golded mountain

Written by David H.T. Wong, this book offers a visualized and informative Chinese immigrant history in North America (Candad and United States). On the surface, it is a one family's (Wong) history; it depicts Chinese experience from late 1800s to the present day.

Highly recommended.

Once upon a time....

It is sad that chances of getting a job as a librarian are very slim in current economy situation. Many libraries have reduced funding and even laid off librarians since the start of the 2008/2009.
Once a "blooming career" is now hard to come by. ("sigh")

Thursday, December 13, 2012

Book: My friend dahmer


Jeff Dahmer (1960 - 1994) was a serial killer, caught in Milwaukee Wisconsin. This graphic book is written by Jeff's high school classmate, Derf Backderf who is a comic book artist.

Despite many signs that Jeff was a trouble teenager in Bath Ohio - mainly addicted to alcohol addiction, Jeff did not receive any help from his counselors and teachers. To make the situation worst was that Jeff's parents divorced when he was seventeen. His mother took his younger brother with her and left Jeff behind.

This book depicted Jeff as a "typical struggling teenager." It is ascertain that no one was born as a serial killer.


Tuesday, December 11, 2012

DVD Oranges and sunshine


I took a break from my study and watched the DVD, Oranges and sunshine a couple days ago. The movie was based on a true event - children migration, from UK to Australia in the 1950s to 1970s.
These children were sent with promises, but instead they received hard labor and lives in institutions. In fact, many cases are child abuse. The children were told that their parents were death and they were given a second chance in a faraway continent.

The story started from a woman who took a social worker, Mary Humphreys that she was sent to Australia at the age of four in 1950s. She just wanted to know, "who is she? Where is her family in UK?" After an initial search, Mary found that that's only one of many thousands of cases .... Gradually, the disgraced history came to the surface. In February 2010, the UK Prime Minster Brown publicly apologied to those who suffered from the child migration.
A heartbreaking movie. 

Monday, December 10, 2012

A memoir of an American family's life in China


Arrington, Aminta (2012). Home is a roof over a pig: An American family's journey in China. New York, NY: The Overlook Press.

This is a memoir of an American family of five life experience in China. I was attracted by the book title, and had a high expectation of the book. Unfortunately, it turns out a disappointment to me.

First, the content contains Chinese translation does not serve any particularly purpose and some of the phrases, from my knowledge, are incorrect.

Second, I did not find the stories humorously, as Kay Bratt claimed and stated in the back cover.

Third, many chapters, as the author claims in the "note of sources" that need to perform extensive research. For instance, on page 78, the author states that "Confucianism is a religion without a deity." That is incorrect. Confucianism is NOT a religion. In Chinese culture, Confucius is an educator, an influential figure in Chinese traditional culture. Readers who do not pay attention to the ending chapter might have been misled.    

Saturday, December 8, 2012

Education is becoming irrelevant

It seems to me that education is becoming irrelevant.

Three days ago, the academic dean came to the library and asked me for help. She is currently pursuing her doctoral in education leadership. She was about to finish one of her term papers and asked me to review the APA citation page for her. She sent me the Bibliography via email and brought the articles and sources to the library.

I just could not believe what I was given. None of the citations was cited correctly. The Dean even does not have the ability to recognize who is (are) the author(s) of the research article – the series titles are cited as the authors! What a shame! I was not given the entire research paper; yet I wonder how she did for the in-text citations!

The explanation of how she lands the position of Academic Dean at the university is very simple. She “knows and has very tight connections with university administrators. The implication is that you do not need a good education to be employed. What you need is the “connections,” especially in current economy climate.

Education is a service-based business, a corporation

In his book, The Shadow Scholar, Dave Tomar describes his negative learning experience at Rutgers. The most interesting thing for me is the so-called "RU Screw" (pp. 22-39).

In my view, Rutgers is just a typical example of the nowadays-higher education. In my view, many universities around the global are functioning in a very similar way. So to speak, it is not just the American failure higher education system failing. Universities are run as a business, a corporation, a moneymaker mill. What does the higher education administration really care? Frankly, it is not the student’s learning experience; instead, are the declining enrollment, the retention and dropping out rates, the imbalance of the fiscal budget, the reputation of the institution.

From my own work experience with colleges and universities, many students are accepted simply for the adding to the number of enrollment. I have seen nursing major student who does not even know the multiplication table yet passed the drug calculations class. I have known a few graduate students who do not know what APA and MLA stand for. It is not uncommon that students do not know the differentiation between databases and Internet search engine.

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

A shadow scholar income = Harvard non-tenure track lecturer?

It is said that the annual income of a shadow is similar to a non-tnure track lecture at Harvard. Oh boy, the world is changing. So is the value of higher education. Money CAN buy everything???

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443816804578004570701056956.html

Book title: Dave Tomar (2012). The Shadow Scholar: How I Made a Living Helping College Kids Cheat. Publisher: Bloomsbury USA.

The shadow scholar

Hire someone to write your dissertation?  It is possible.

I received this article from one of my library colleagues. It's sad. This is an article about college students (I am sure some of them are graduate students or even doctoral students) who hire someone to do their assignments or write their dissertations. The article is written by a "shadow scholars" in the east coast area and was published in The Chronicle of Higher Education.

The truth is that it is hard to catch those "lazy" graduate students. With the current economy climate, it might be the only way for some well-educated scholars to earn a living.

http://chronicle.com/article/The-Shadow-Scholar/125329/

Monday, December 3, 2012

Advanced Persistent Threat (APT)

We discussed cyber security in one of my course. We studied the MANSIANT APT document. It is astonishing to learn that the overall APT undetection rate is 76%! (p. 7). It seems to me that it is almost impossible to prevent an APT threat in current digital era.

The case studies in the MANDIANT report are comprised of many cases in both public and private sectors. It unveils the "breach" of cyber information unviersally depends on IT personnel due to the fact that they have administrative authorization, full ability to access users' passwords and accounts within the networks. Thus, managment should take an aggressive and defensive approach within the organization in adition to collaborating with cyber-security professionals.

If you are interested, here is the entire report:
http://www.princeton.edu/~yctwo/files/readings/M-Trends.pdf

From data mining to big data

In the past few years, data mining has become a popular area in the field of information management. Now big data has shared the charm of data mining.  If you are interested in big data, the Harvard Business Review has very interesting discussion. Here are the examples:

McAfee, Andrew & Brynjolfsson, Erik (December, 2012). Big data: The management revolution (cover story). Harvard Business Review, 90(10), 60-68.

Davenport, Thomas & Patil, D.J. (October, 2012). Data scientist: The sexiest job of the 21st century. Harvard Business Review, 90(10), 70-76.

I won't be surprised to see that iSchool offers course on big data very soon!

Friday, November 30, 2012

Critical Incident Technique - a qualitative approach

I took an advanced research method course last semester. One of the new approaches I learned was the critical incident techniques. I used this approach evaluate the service quality in the public library from user’s point of view using the critical incident technique (CIT). I recruited eight participants, 4 female and 4 male who are the frequent public library users. Participants were asked to report positive and negative incidents or situations in relation to the services provided by their local public libraries, geographically located in Oregon, South, Dakota, Washington DC, Kansas, Vermont, and Missouri.

Of the eight participants that took part, there were 19 positive and 16 negative incidents. The incidents are grouped, categorized, and then assessed with the use of the conceptual themes of SERVQUAL, a model that has been used by many libraries for evaluating their public services.

From my experience, this approach is easier than survey - you need to design a questionnaire and respondents in many ways are limited to answer the pre-designed questions.

Friday, March 23, 2012

Seven to 10 years to completed a doctoral in education!

Recently, I worked on the studies of non-traditional students who returned to graduate school. Precisely, the teaching professionals at one of the stat university in the Midwestern. Astonishinlgy, I discovered that over 50% of them completed the doctoral degree between 7 to 10 years! here are some of the statistics from the office of graduate Studies:

Areas of study and percentages -
Curriculum and teaching: 38.5% in 5 years; 59.6% in 7 years; 86.5% in 10 years.
Educational leadership & policy studies: 50% in 5 years; 83.3 in 7 years; 100% in 10 years.
Special education: 33.3%; 69.7 in 7 years; 90.9% in 10 years.
School psychology: 0% in 5 years; 20.0% in 7 years; 40% in 10 years.

Saturday, March 3, 2012

A Mother's love

I finished this book in one day - Chang, Ying-Ying, The Woman Who Could Not Forget: Iris Chang Before and Beyond the Rape of Nanking.

Iris Chang was bright and talent writer - a journalist and a historian. She was only 36 when she died. This book is written by her mother, recapturing the young writer's life from her young age to the day she departed from the world. As I read and flip the pages, I can feel the pain and the love of her mother's heart.

Highly recommended.

I am disappointed - Book titled, A heart for freedom

This book is written by the former Chinese student movement leader in 1989 Tiananmen Square, Chai Ling.  I cannot deny that she had an extraordinary role during the Chinese student movement twenty years ago. The fact is that it is hard to ignore the fact that she is doing well and have a full life in the US while her fellow classmates paid the price. Many students were either imprisoned for years or lost legs - I read the chapter she described a fellow student who lost his legs when the military tank ran over his body during the uprising. It seems to me that the leaders were able to flee and have a relatively normal life while the majority of students who participated in the movements paid for the consequence.
My thought go to the parents of the students who participated in the uprising and lost their lives. After twenty something years to raise the kids and put them in the university, hoping they will have a full life ahead. Unfortunately, lives were suddenly cut short. I am so sorry for their lost.

I am speechless.
I have an impression that she wrote this book with an aim to justify what she did twenty years ago. I also read the lawsuit between her company and Harvard, the remark she made (bloodshed) during the movement. That makes me sick in the stomach.

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

The philosophy of 仕方がない

I read a book review of Kimi Cunningham's Silver lake dust: One family’s story of America’s Japanese Internment a couple weeks ago and requested the book from the local library. I got the book last night. In spite of my busy schedule, I started reading it as soon as I returned from the library. I finished the book just one evening!

It is a book that you just cannot put it down. It is a memoir of the author's grandmother who lived in Heart Mountain Japanese Internment Camp during the WWII. As she promised her grandmother, the author did not unveil her grandmother's name, simply addressed her as Obaasan (grandma in Japanese). The conversation between the author, Kimi and her grandmother just keeps holding my interests.

It is a personal memoir, yet it is also a book that offers a better understanding of the Japanese shikata ga nai 仕方がない philosophy.

Monday, February 20, 2012

Grading on a curve?


The practice of grading student's progress on a curve is derived from the concept of statistical distributions of scores (bell curve). This common practice in education is a method of assigning grades designed to yield a desired distribution (K12 Academics, 2012). There are pros and cons among educators and students. Some educators consider the curve grading system a way to motivate “lagging students” (Richert, 2012), while some teachers use this method to divide students into three categories, above average, average, and below average. The frequency distribution of the number of students in these categories can be determined learning improvement and advancement. Based on a conversation with a teacher who is in favor of curve grading, the bell curve grading in fact assist him how to write recommendation letters. In general, hard-working students would not welcome bell curve grading and consider it as an unfair method or even a "punishment for overachievers." According to Miller (2009), the main problem with this style, is grading students who are between two grades.

Here are some of the examples that I think bell curve grading does not reflect students’ performance in the class.

Scenario 1: A legal studies instructor addressed his class that he uses the bell curve grading system. The top 40% of the class received an A, 50% would have a B, and the remaining 10% would get a C. At the end of the semester, Lisa had a final average of 94.5%. She had no doubt that she would get an A. However, when the grades were posted, Lisa was shocked to discover that she had received a B. She inquired about her grade, and learned that the cut off score was 97%. This revealed that 40% of her classmates scored 97% or above for their overall assignment, which places Lisa's, score of 94.5% in the 50% (B) group.

Scenario 2: In an Algebra class, 80% of the students scored 50% an exam. The highest score was 60%. With the bell curve grading system, the instructor would inevitably give the students an A even though they only scored 60%.   

Can Twitter predict political election results?


I have compared the 2010 Belgian general election, 2011 Singapore general election, and 2011 Irish general election results with Twitter messages. It appears that Twitter users and resulting tweets might in fact play a role in the political elections; although, I will argue that Twitter cannot predict political election results for the following reasons:
  • ·         The number of Twitter users is only a small fraction of the voting population, according to the sampling percentages; Belgium 0.11%, Germany 0.24%, and Singapore 4.45%, this prevents an adequate representative sampling.
  • ·         When using tweets to conduct scientific research, data miners need to identify the variables of the sample such as the various strata of users based on age, gender, income, political affiliation, technical knowledge, etc. The profiles of Twitter users should play a significant role in sampling research.
  • ·         The validity of tweets is questionable due to the fact users can use a pseudo name; therefore, it is possible that tweets come from the same person.
  • ·         Even though Twitter users post their viewpoint in favor of one political party, they do not necessarily have a negative sentiment against other parties. How can researchers distinguish or classify the negative and positive roles that tweets play on election results.
  • ·         If retweets were counted as separate data for the study, this data probably would skew the analysis.
  • ·         A political party might be the center of the discussion among Twitter users, thus the party largely received the number of positive and negative tweets. However, it is not necessary an indicator for the election result; such as the People's Action Party in Singapore.
  • ·         We have to bear in mind that popularity is not necessary equal to prediction. The prediction of future events needs comprehensive and in-depth scientific research, not just numbers or contents of the tweets received.
  • ·         This research dominantly used quantitative analysis and statistical inference methods. Utilizing combined qualitative methods for these studies might reveal different results.
  •  
In my view, the study of tweets and the current events is an interesting research area. From these included studies, we can see the relevance of tweets in the political arena. One cannot draw a conclusion that tweets enable prediction of future events, such as election results; that could require detailed studies.

Monday, January 9, 2012

Misleading free download ebook

This afternoon I helped a student to locate an e-book through Internet. I noticed that event though the links say free download, the book  is absolutely NOT FREE. Readers will have to register and sign in and pay a certain amount of fees to access the e-book. If it is the general practice, why so many links say "free download"? - Misleading and ... make readers frustrated. You thought the download is free, yet as soon as you click on the link, you will be asked to registered and pay for the download. ("sigh")

Uncataloged library materials

I took up extra responsibilities this semster - working at two campuses' libraries. I only started for a week; yet I found very interesting things at the new location library. There are so many uncataloged library materials are interfiled with the circulation materials. Really?

"Out of sight, out of mind" - it did the job for a while.

Spring 2012 semester

The Spring semester will begin next week; yet students are coming back to the library this week - looking up their courses and syllabus. Unfortunately libraians are not allowed to access Blackboard; thus we, the librarians, most of the time are unable to answer any questions that related to the Blackboard. In addition, the students Spring printing accoutns are not available until next week. Most students found themselves are unable to print the course syllabus. Mmm.. the library should do a better job of communciating with IT department.

Classes are not yet begun; the frustration is already in place. ("sigh")

Friday, January 6, 2012

Working with Non-traditional Students

I have been working with non-traditional students for a few years while I work at a state unviersity at the same time. I do respect for their enthusiasm and optimism being back to school and pursuing a degree for themselves. These focus students need a lot of help yet in general they are better students than tradtional students.

According tot he National Center for Education Statistics of the U.S. Department of Education (2011), typically non-traditional students are associated with their background such as gender, race, age (over 25), residence (on-campus vs. off-campus), and enrollment in a degree occupational program.

Adventure of Huckleberry Finn

I read this book when I was a little girl. Yesterday I chatted with one of my colleagues. I am glad that the local school districts still list this book on the "must-read" list.  - Something shouldn't be changed anyway.

Free Statisitics Tutorials on the Web

Statistics, statistics... One of the students suggested that itune you is a very useful link for locating statisics related topics.

Fortunately our university's Writeing Center provides free statistics tutoring three times a week. So I can refere students to the Writing Center!

I also notice that our library houses very old statisitcs textbooks. They are "outdated" yet something shouldn't be changed. I still believe that students will get some help from those books.

Statistical class and Students' Anxiety

The class has not yet started; yet many students who enrolled in the statistical methods class are getting very nervous. They are looking for supplemental materials - other than the textbook. Some of them even asked me what kinds of calculator should be used for statisitcs course. Oh boy! I can tell fromt heir faces. Everyone is very nervous. I am the librarian not the course councelor. I hope I can give them extra support and relieve some of their stress.

Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Chinese Children's Picture Books during Mao's era

I am always interested in children literature. Recently I have focused on the children's picture books that were written and printed during Mao's rule in China. After months searching and reading, I found two libraries that house over 120 Chinese children's picture book that published between 1949 to 1976:

(1) Library of Congress has 133 items which were calssified as "cage materials". It means that you cannot request via ILL;

(2) Princeton University libraries houses mover than 186 Chinese children's books that printed when Mao was in power.

I am assuming that libraries in major research university in CHina and Hong Kong might have a larger collection. That would be a good research project during my next term break.

New year, new work environment

Over the holidays break, things happened. First the academic dean was "let go" (fired?), then the campus director was publicly fired right before the holiday party. How aweful! Of course, no director, no party. After working for so many years at public sector, I realized that working at a private college is a different ball game. You never know what's going to happen next in term of the firing and promoting. ("sigh"). It does not matter whether you work for a company or a private college.

Oh, boy! 2012 just started for a few days. I do not have a good feeling for the upcoming year - except for my doctoral studies.

New Year Day earthquake in Japan and Ohio state

2012 just stepped in then natural disaster kicked in immediately. I heard from the news that earthquake happened in Japan and Ohio state.

Semester started together. I walked by clasrooms and noticed that there were only a few students there. Apparently some students are still in holidays clock and mood. They simply forgot to come in for their classes!