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An Essay on Technology in the Classroom:  
Are You Willing to Be Blissfully Out of Date?

Bob Jensen at Trinity University

The Essay Request

My Essay

In what ways should course content, materials, and teaching style be modified for online learning?

Differences between "popular teacher"
versus "master teacher"
versus "mastery learning"
versus "master educator"

Resources

Facing Up to Multivariate Data  

Replays from Daring Educators on the Leading Edge of Education Technologies  

Wonderfully Said  

1998 New Faculty Consortium Slides by W. Steve Albrecht

A Message from Tom Omer About Helping Colleagues

My March 17, 2000 Letter to The Wall Street Journal

Onsite versus Online Universities in the 21st Century

How To and How Not to Deliver Distance Education 
War stories from teachers in the first accredited online MBA program

Assessment Issues --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm

Update Messages

The Master List of Free Online College Courses --- http://universitiesandcolleges.org/

Free Online Textbooks, Videos, and Tutorials --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks
Free Tutorials in Various Disciplines --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#Tutorials
Edutainment and Learning Games --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Edutainment
Open Sharing Courses --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI
The Master List of Free Online College Courses --- http://universitiesandcolleges.org/

Bob Jensen's threads for online worldwide education and training alternatives ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Crossborder.htm

"U. of Manitoba Researchers Publish Open-Source Handbook on Educational Technology," by Steve Kolowich, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 19, 2009 --- http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3671&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

"Lessons for New Professors," by Elizabeth Parfitt, Inside Higher Ed, May 28, 2010 ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/advice/2010/05/28/parfitt

Higher Education Controversies ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm

 

 

Essay Request

Message from Professor Griffin on March 14, 2000

Bob
 I am the chair of the new faculty handbook committee (T&C section, AAA) and am following up on a suggestion made by Kathy Sinning, one of the committee members. She indicated you might be willing to provide an essay on using technology in the classroom. Is this something you might consider? If it would be helpful to you, I could provide you with copies of the material we have to date for the handout or simply a copy of the table of contents. I look forward to hearing from you. If you have questions, let me know. Lynn

Lynn Griffin Department of Accounting School of Business North Carolina A&T State University Greensboro, NC 27411 336-334-7581 ext. 6008

Bob Jensen's Essay for the American Accounting Association's New Faculty Handbook

Important Questions With Frustrating Answers 

 

Educational Technologies That Will Not Be Focused On in This Essay

It is assumed that virtually all accounting educators make use of presentation software (often PowerPoint), email, and spreadsheet software (usually Excel).  These are outside the focus of this essay except to recommend that presentation software, as well as lecturing in general,  be used sparingly in class.  If students have five courses in a day and all five instructors flash repeated PowerPoint screens in front of them, the students are brain dead by the end of the day.  Classtime should keep students active as much as possible with case discussions, student presentations, team tasks, etc.  Use of e-mail with students is recommended unless the demands on the instructor's time become onerous.

This essay will not focus upon courses that never meet synchronously (at regular class times) or only meet a few times a semester.  Courses that are virtually asynchronous require education technologies.  My discussion of asynchronous education can be found at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/255wp.htm.

 

Examples of Educational Technologies That Will  Be Focused On in This Essay

Although I will not address each of the topics below in any kind of detail, it may be useful to note that I am referring in this paper to the following types of technologies:

Examples of what accounting professors can and are doing with educational technologies can be found in the Accounting Coursepage Exchange (ACE) program sponsored by the American Accounting Association.  See http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/raw/aaa/teach.htm 

The American Accounting Association has some great Faculty Development helpers at http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/raw/aaa/facdev.htm.  For example, you can read about both submissions and winners of the prestigious Innovation in Accounting Education awards.

 

Will educational technologies improve the performance of students and make them better prepared to be life long learners?

I don't think that there is any doubt that accounting students must learn more than ever about information technologies and the web.  Business reporting is going to change dramatically with web reporting.  It is vital that all accounting faculty and students become familiar with the IASC research report on this topic at http://www.iasc.org.uk/frame/cen3_26.htm 

In the short run, we will see rapid changes in university curricula to adjust to powerful student demands for e-Commerce. This complicated aspect of commerce is a high priority in business education.  There are new e-Business and e-Commerce sections being formed at the AACSB --- see http://www.aacsb.edu/e-business/index.html. 

My bottom line prediction is that education of the future will focus on development and use of knowledge bases. My analogy here is a comparison of a Model T Ford with an F-17 airplane. At age 14, my father could tear apart every component of a Model T, jerry-rig some of the parts in a barn, and have the car up an running in no time. Educators of the past prided themselves on being integrative scholars who could recite the major knowledge of many disciplines and produce a graduate who knew an amazing amount about a lot of things such as history, economics, psychology, literature, music, mathematics, statistics, etc.

When confronted with an F-17, however, an expert mechanic hardly knows where to begin. It takes a huge team of very highly skilled specialists to tackle an F-17, and that team may not be able to fix all of the 50 computers aboard a single aircraft. The knowledge base of virtually every discipline is becoming so immense that the way in which scholars approached issues in the 20th Century will change radically in the 21st Century. Future scholars will not necessarily be narrowly-focused specialists, but they will be adept at using technologies to integrate stored knowledge bases and attempt to creatively add to both the specialized components of knowledge and the integration of knowledge. The goal of education does not change dramatically over time, but the process will change radically. Learned teams will replace learned individuals. Learning will take place in real time at any place rather than in discrete time periods in classrooms.

Finally on the wild side we have a book entitled the "Brave New World: the Evolution of Mind in the Twenty-first Century," by Ray Kurzweil --- http://www.kurzweiltech.com/WIRED/. He forecasts that before Year 2050, we will be able to inject nanobots in our blood stream that will contain knowledge bases that attached to parts of our brain. How wonderful it would be if we could inject "FAS 133 Tutorial" with a needle and then know all about this standard without having to read or sweat. I will leave it up to you as to how futuristic you want to take this investigation of knowledge in a needle. 

There is that nagging issue of what the accounting profession will become.  Issues of auditor independence are enormous.  But the profession must not follow the way of the railroads who never looked beyond transporting across iron rails.  The railroads viewed  themselves as "rail roads" rather than transportation companies.  They missed their opportunities to expand into airline and communication ventures.  The accounting profession is at a similar juncture.  If public accounting moves backwards from its new ventures, it stands the risk of being a system of regulated "rail roads" rather than a relevant and viable profession in the 21st Century.  My latest website on this issue is at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/cpaaway.htm.

Be that as it may, there is still the question of what technologies you use in your classes and how much you and your students rely upon such technologies.  It is possible to conclude with a sigh that adapting to newer technologies is just not for you and your courses.  Familiar reasons or excuses include the following:

In spite of the numerous excuses and reasons why instructors may resist using technologies other than PowerPoint and e-mail, my advice to you is think of what is best for your students.  Wouldn't it be awful if the only writing students did in college was in English composition courses?  It would be terrible if the only time they made an oral presentation was in a speech class.  The best universities have students writing and speaking in virtually all courses.  The same should be true of computing and networking technologies.  These skills and resources should be used in virtually all courses.

One of the most frequently asked questions asked in my education technology workshops is as follows:  
In what ways should course content, materials, and teaching style  be modified for online learning?"

My quick and dirty response is that faculty who develop content should learn how to use FrontPage or some other good HTML editor and then learn how to screen capture and video capture themselves rather than relying upon technicians.  You can learn FrontPage, Paint Shop Pro screen capturing, and Camtasia video capturing in just a few days with a little help from your friends.  With a little added effort, you can make your online course materials more interactive by saving Excel worksheets as interactive Webpages and by learning how to use JavaScript.  You can learn all of these things in less than a week with a little help from your friends.

  1. Use more screen captures, audio captures, and video captures of things that you normally demo in lecture presentations.   Look under "Resources" below.

  2. Audio capturing is especially important since you can let students hear what you like to say in lectures or case discussions.  For example, in an Excel spreadsheet you can add buttons to that students can click on to hear your explanation of what is going on in various cells of the spreadsheet.

  3. Flesh in PowerPoint, Excel, or other presentations with video and audio.  Camtasia works great for both capturing dynamic computer screen presentations in video accompanied by your audio explanations.  Your video files may take up more space that you are allowed on your Web server.  However, you can save them to CD-R or CD-RW disks that can be sold to students for around $1.00 per disk. You can learn more about Camtasia from http://www.techsmith.com/ .  You can make CDs by simply dragging files to a blank CD using Windows Explorer if you first install Easy CD (http://www.roxio.com/en/products/ecdc/ ).  For video illustrations, see  http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm 

  4. Try to make your online materials more interactive by saving Excel workbooks as interactive Webpages and use of JavaScipt.  See http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm .  For illustrations on publishing Excel workbooks as Webpages, see http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/dhtml/excel01.htm 

  5. Make a lot more use of online questions and answers that replace the question and answer type of style that you probably use in lectures.  Amy Dunbar uses this approach extensively.  See You can read about how she developed her first online course at www.sba.uconn.edu/users/adunbar/genesis_of_an_online_course.pdf 

One of the fastest growing segments of the communication industry is the area of Instant Messaging, where people can set up "buddy lists" on their computer and have real time text conversations with friends or colleagues. The problem until now has been how to capture the corporate benefits of Instant Messaging without spending the resources to ensure the security of the communication. Enter Microsoft. http://www.accountingweb.com/item/97256 

You can listen to Amy Dunbar discuss the use of instant messaging in her distance education tax courses at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/002cpe/02start.htm#2002 

You can read about video and audio capturing at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm

How can you capture and send streaming media?

Answer --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#StreamingMedia

April 30, 2004 message from Carolyn Kotlas [kotlas@email.unc.edu] 

"How do instructors learn to teach online? What are their perceptions as they enter this new learning environment for the first time?" To find out, Dianne Conrad, assistant professor of adult education at the University of New Brunswick, interviewed five instructors in a Canadian university who were teaching online courses for the first time. Her interviews showed that the instructors drew upon their fact-to-face teaching experience, but that they "revealed very little awareness of issues of collaborative learning, of learners' social presence, or of the role of community in online learning environments." The details of Conrad's qualitative study are available in "University Instructors' Reflections on Their First Online Teaching Experiences" (JOURNAL OF ASYNCHRONOUS LEARNING NETWORKS, vol. 8, issue 2, April 2004) at http://www.aln.org/publications/jaln/v8n2/v8n2_conrad.asp.

The Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks (JALN) [ISSN 1092-8235] is an electronic publication of The Sloan Consortium (Sloan-C). Current and back issues are available at http://www.aln.org/publications/jaln/.

For an account of online teaching from a veteran instructor, see "Less is More: Designing an Online Course" (DEOSNEWS, vol. 13, issue 4, April 2004; http://www.ed.psu.edu/acsde/deos/deosnews/deosnews.asp) by R. Thomas Berner, professor emeritus of journalism and American studies at the Pennsylvania State University

YourLearning.com --- http://www.yourlearning.com/churchillreport.html 

The report may be beneficial for individuals who are involved in online learning developments in healthcare education in the USA and other countries. The institutions visited during the fellowship may find it useful to read own and others case studies, to compare and reflect on the developments and implications on teaching and learning in healthcare. The report may be useful for other institutions in the USA, to add to the picture of diversity in online learning developments within USA. .

How one business educator (in Organization and Management) more than doubled her salary by staying home.  She does not worry about tenure, but the work is very tedious and time-consuming.

"For Online Adjuncts, a Seller's Market Part-time professors, in demand, fill many distance-education faculties,"  by Dan Carnevale, The Chronicle of Higher Education, April 30, 2004, pp. A31-A32.

Ruth Achterhof won't say how many courses she teaches, for fear that her employers will think the workload is too much for her to handle.

But the work is enough to earn her about $90,000 per year, she says.

"I'm afraid my schools will go, 'Holy smoke!  How does she do that?'"

Because she does all of her teaching on-line, Ms. Achterhof can handle many more courses, at many more colleges, than she could face to face.  She is an adjunct professor of business and management at four institutions, in three states, moving among her teaching duties with the click of a mouse while her black Labrador lies curled at her feet.  She hardly ever sees a campus, spending much of her time at home here in a 100-year-old cottage next to a small lake.

Being a virtual adjunct, she says, means never having to play office politics or worry about ticking off her supervisors.  And if any gig goes sour, it's easy for her to pick up another one.

"It's good to have backup schools because you don't ever know if a dean is going to change or if I'll make a faux pas," she says.  "So it's OK if I lose one."

But she is in no danger of losing any of her jobs right now.  In fact, Ms. Achterhof and other online adjuncts are in high demand, as colleges increasingly turn to part-time faculty members to help expand their distance-education programs.

The strategy saves money for colleges, most of which are dealing with tight budgets.  Also, full-time faculty members are often reluctant to make the leap from the familiar setting of the lecture hall to the un-known arena of the virtual classroom.

Some critics say, however, that the quality of distance-education programs might be threatened by the presence of so many part-timers.  And faculty unions argue that increases in part-time faculty jobs, even if on-line, further limit the prospects of both full-time faculty members and adjuncts who want permanent teaching positions.

LONG HOURS

Ms. Achterhof is perhaps an extreme example of what some are calling a new breed of adjunct professor.  She did not start her career in academe.  She used to own and run a cafe called Andre's, in Grand Haven, Mich.  Later she earned her master's in educational leadership and her doctorate in organization and management and taught traditional courses for a few years at Baker College.  She was offered $35,000 a year to teach there permanently, but in the late 1990s she found that online teaching was a better fit--and more lucrative, too.

Now she makes more money and can set her own schedule, teaching courses like "Leadership Development" and "Negotiation and Dispute Resolution" to students who log on at their convenience.

Most of her days are spent reading e-mail messages in her small, wood-paneled home office.  A vast majority are students' responses to study questions, or student essays or other assignments for her to grade.

She quickly scrolls through the messages and types a response to each one.  Occasionally she takes a break to do laundry, wash the dishes, or fix her husband some lunch.

The quantity of her correspondence is impressive.  Her "sent" folder shows that she shipped out 2,554 e-mail messages between February 2 and March 18--an average of about 56 messages a day.  Just about all of them are sprinkled with typographical smiley faces or other emotions.

"Super great job.  Good use of terms," she tells one student.

It helps that she can type 60 to 70 words per minute and read 1,200 words per minute.  Otherwise she doesn't know how she could complete all of her work.

On Mondays and Tuesdays she starts her virtual teaching at about 8:30 a.m. and doesn't finish until around 11 p.m.  "On Mondays and Tuesdays I am in my computer chair 14 hours a day," she says.  "I tend to get grouchy as the day goes by."

The time she spends at her desk declines throughout the week, down to about four hours on Fridays and Saturdays.  "Saturday is the day I try to get my mood back," she says.  Sunday is a day of rest.  Then it's Monday again.

How does she juggle the tasks?  Organization.

She has lists of tasks for each class, and she makes check marks as she completes each item.  A rolling rack of file folders sits next to her, one for each course she teaches.  She has her tests and discussion questions ready to go for the whole semester, so she can cut and paste each one into the appropriate course Web site when the time comes.

Continued in the article

 

Some professors teaching at major universities are opting to teach online instead of going to classrooms.  For example, read about and listen to Amy Dunbar (University of Connecticut) by scrolling down the document at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/002cpe/02start.htm#2002 

Bob Jensen's threads on ideas for teaching online are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Ideas 

Bob Jensen's threads on resources for instructors are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/newfaculty.htm#Resources 

Bob Jensen's threads on tools and tricks of the trade are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm 

Bob Jensen's main education technology page is at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm 

I just shared a platform with Amy Dunbar in a workshop presented at Mercer University on November 9, 2001.  I am amazed at what both Amy and her husband (John) are accomplishing with online teaching of income tax and tax research.  

Differences between "popular teacher"
versus "master teacher"
versus "mastery learning"
versus "master educator"

"Advice for Those New to College Teaching," by David Albrecht, An Accounting Professor Ponders the Classroom, January 24, 2011 ---
http://accountingprofessor.wordpress.com/2011/01/24/advice-for-those-new-to-college-teaching/

I’ve been in the classroom for a long time.  A long, long long, long, long [pause] long time.  A recent e-mail asks if I have advice for someone new to college teaching.  Here it is.

It is easy to over prepare for class because there’s so much content that should be covered.  When first starting out, I prepared pages of detailed notes for each meeting of the class.  Each night I would copy from my notes to the board, and I got through them all in every class.  No one ever thought I was a good teacher.  Lessons learned:

  1. Classes go better when you informally converse with the students and simply explain what you know.
  2. Take no notes to class.  If you are talking along and need detail, have the students volunteer it.
  3. PowerPoint is the modern equivalent of copying pages of notes to the board.  The only thing ever accomplished with PowerPoint is death (as in death of an audience via PowerPoint).

Continued in article

Jensen Comment
I've known David for years and greatly respect his reputation as an enthusiastic and committed accounting teacher known for his sense of humor as well. I don't always agree with David, but I do intend to add the above link to my resources for new faculty noted below.

I would, however, have written a different set of points for my :"lessons learned:"

 Lessons learned:

  1. Classes go better when you informally converse with the students and explain where to find things that you either don't know, haven't yet sorted out in your own mind, and expect students to examine first hand to be able to debate all sides of controversial issues. Focus on context, especially history, surrounding major issues so that students understand how what they're learning fits into a bigger picture.
     
  2. Bring up an outline on the computer screen, tell students what is to be learned or reinforced in today's class, and  try to inspire students regarding why they should learn the content of class today. For example stress what part of it might reappear in the CPA examination or stress why it may give students a leg up when they're on a new accounting job (e.g., knowing technical things about queries in MS Access or pivot tables in Excel or hedge effectiveness testing in FAS 133). Provide your students, perhaps on Blackboard or Moodle servers, with course notes and videos that they should study before class. Give frequent quizzes to show them you mean business about studying before class. Find how you best get students active in class --- some teachers are great with cases while others are better with questions and answers. I think I would've been a better teacher if I could've resisting giving out answers in class. I just never mastered the best (never-give-out-answers) approach taken by Harvard's top business school teachers.
     
  3. PowerPoint is the modern equivalent of copying pages of notes to the board. Students should've studied these and other class materials before class and can study again after class. PowerPoint is a communication medium that can be wisely used and badly abused. PowerPoint is terrific for audiences who have not studied in advance such as an audience at a research conference or a CEP workshop. PowerPoint is also great for presenting charts and tables that are relatively easy to read and can be highlighted. Avoid complicated slides and avoid making your college classes a rapid-fire PowerPoint show.
     
  4. I think classes should vary. Sometimes there might be case discussions. Sometimes there might be PowerPoint lectures. Sometimes classes may be very informal and open ended. I taught in an electronic classroom. I often made students solve problems (often from prior-semester examinations) on their classroom computers or learn how to do things such as analyze financial statements in teams. Sometimes there may be some edutainment games.
     
  5. Never apologize for selecting some topics where you demand that students become something akin to technical experts. For example, don't just paint a broad picture of relational databases in the first AIS course. Make students learn the software such as MS Access required to create a relational database and make them write their own query scripts to access items in that database. If you're teaching hedge accounting, make students actually write the journal entries for rather complicated cash flow, fair value, and FX hedges. Don't apologize for teaching bookkeeping. It's what we do at all levels of accounting.
     
  6. Keep in mind that college would be very boring if all its teachers were alike. Some of the best ones aren't even viewed as genuine experts in their disciplines and teach rather superficial content while they truly inspire students for life and help some students with various learning troubles. Other teachers are genuine experts with little interest in or skills for hand holding. Students, sometimes in retrospect years after graduation, generally respect the the various types of teachers that they had in college. There should be many types of diversity in post-secondary education.

My best advice is for new faculty experiment what pedagogy best suits them and their new students. I admire master case professors at Harvard and Stanford, but I never could've pulled it like they pull it off. I admire how some professors like Petrea Sandlin and Don Van Eynde at Trinity University become truly loved by their students, but more often than not I was feared and cursed by most of my students because I generally made them learn that the Devil is in the details.

I was a research professor who just did not have the time to get to know my students to the degree that Petrea and Don got to know their students. I would've liked to be loved more, but I marched to a different drummer. In the end your students will appreciate it if you truly are a technical expert even if you did not make it easy for them.

I think what I accomplished best in 40 years of teaching is to inspire my students to want to become technically deep and suspicious of everything they study.

Question
What is mastery learning?

April 24, 2006 message from Lim Teoh [bsx302@COVENTRY.AC.UK]

I am a Malaysian but currently teaching in the UK. Please forgive me if I failed to express myself clearly in English.

I just joined the discussion list months ago and found a lot of useful information for both my research and teaching career development. My sincere thanks to AECM.

As I plan to start my PhD study by end of this year, I would like to ask for your help to get some references to my research topic. I am interested in mastery learning theory and programmed instruction; I'll research into the application of these theories to accounting education. I aim to explore how the accounting knowledge can be disseminated or transferred more effectively to a large group of students.

Are there any useful databases or websites that could help me to start with this PhD reseach? Is this research topic outdated or inappropriate for me to proceed further?

Looking forward to receiving your advice and guidance.

Kind regards,

Lim
Coventry University United Kingdom

April 24, 2006 reply from Bob Jensen

Hi Lim,

Here are some possible links that might help:

Differences between "popular teacher" versus "master teacher" versus "mastery learning" versus "master educator" --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#Teaching 

Also see “Mastery Learning” by http://www.humboldt.edu/~tha1/mastery.html 
This provides references to the classical literature on learning theory by Benjamin Bloom.

One of the most extensive accounting education experiments with mastery learning took place under an Accounting Education Change Commission Grant at Kansas State University. I don't think the experiment was an overwhelming success and, to my knowledge, has not been implemented in other accounting programs:

http://aaahq.org/facdev/aecc.htm

http://aaahq.org/AECC/changegrant/cover.htm 

To find a comprehensive list of references, feed in “Benjamin Bloom” and “Learning” terms into the following links:

Google Scholar --- http://scholar.google.com/advanced_scholar_search?hl=en&lr= 

Windows Live Academic --- http://academic.live.com/ 

Google Advanced Search --- http://www.google.com/advanced_search?hl=en 

You might also be interested in metacognitive learning --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/265wp.htm

You can also read about asynchronous learning at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/255wp.htm 

 

Resources

Bob Jensen's threads on Tools and Tricks of the Trade --- 
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm 

Bob Jensen's tutorials and videos --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm

Open Sharing Tool Library and Networking for Multiple Nations
"OpenScout supports the collaborative reuse and adaptation of Portuguese and Brazilian OER," by Alexander Mikroyannidis, The Financial Education Daily, November 16, 2011 ---
http://paper.li/businessschools?utm_source=subscription&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=paper_sub

The OpenScout Tool Library is a social network of individuals and collectives who are developing or using learning resources and want to share their stories and resources from different countries.

The OpenScout Tool Library is currently hosting the activities of the COLEARN community of research in collaborative learning and educational technologies in the Portuguese language. This group is run by Alexandra Okada (The Open University UK) and consists of learners, educators and researchers from academic institutions in Brazil, Portugal and Spain. Their interests focus on collaborative participation through social media, colearning (collaborative open learning) using Open Educational Resources (OER), Social Media and Web 2.0 research. There are 26 research groups from Brazilian and Portugal universities - 115 people currently registered in the Tool Library.

At the moment, this community is developing a book project called "Web 2.0: Open Educational Resources in Learning and Professional Development". From January to February 2012, three workshops will be run in the Tool Library for improving OER skills: image, presentation and audio/visual material. These collaborative activities and workshops aim at engaging people in developing their skills and discussing concepts as well as preparing themselves to be OER users who are able to produce, remix and share open resources and open ideas.

 

Related Links:

Bob Jensen's threads on tools and tricks of the trade ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

Bob Jensen's threads on open sharing ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

 

From Deloitte (over many years)  
Trueblood Cases at the AAA Annual Meetings in Denver
The following is an excerpt from the AAA Announcements message, August 2. 2011

"Mini" Trueblood Case Study Seminar
One of the concurrent sessions offered at this year's Annual Meeting will be a session entitled "Effective Learning through Cases:  Examples from the Trueblood Case Study Series." Three financial accounting cases from the current series of approximately fifty cases on the Deloitte Foundation's website will be used to demonstrate how these cases can be used effectively in the classroom. Participants will be encouraged to actively participate in discussions and will benefit from exposure to situations dealt with in public practice. All session participants will receive the cases & solutions as takeaways. This concurrent session will be led by James Fuehrmeyer, retired Deloitte & Touche LLP audit partner (and current faculty member at the University of Notre Dame), who will discuss three cases from our Trueblood Accounting & Auditing Case Study Series. The session will be held on Monday, August 8, from 10:15 - 11:45 am. Please refer to your Annual Meeting program when you arrive in Denver for further details.

The Trueblood Case Materials --- Click Here
http://www.deloitte.com/view/en_US/us/About/university-relations/Deloitte-Foundation/0ac1264f0b0fb110VgnVCM100000ba42f00aRCRD.htm

Jim Fuehrmeyer is now a full-time PQ auditing professor at Notre Dame.---
http://business.nd.edu/jamesfuehrmeyer/

Jensen Comment
One of the most important initiatives ever undertaken in academic accountancy history is the Deloitte (and Touche) initiative and funding to join accounting professors and practitioners in the writing of case studies. For many years the format has been to bring professors and practitioners together face-to-face in resorts for the purpose of working intensely (night and day) in writing cases and case solutions. These were then published in volumes available from the Deloitte Foundation and  in accounting history centers such as the Accounting Libraries at the University if Mississippi ---
http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/accountancy/libraries.html
See
http://umiss.lib.olemiss.edu/search/?searchtype=X&SORT=D&searcharg=Trueblood

I suspect that many university libraries and faculty offices have shelved these case studies over the years.

Professors can obtain copies of cases and case solutions from the Deloitte Foundation ---
http://www.deloitte.com/view/en_US/us/press/Press-Releases/0ac1264f0b0fb110VgnVCM100000ba42f00aRCRD.htm

Of course for teaching purposes many of these cases are now dated because they were based on standards that have been replaced and amended. One possible student project would be have students update selected cases and case solutions in light of changed standards.

August 3, 2011 reply from Jim Fuehrmeyer

Bob

While cases from prior years are certainly outdated in many respects, the "live" cases on the Foundation website are updated every summer. All the professor's solutions are tied to the Codification and include discussion of pending pronouncements. A lot of the cases are also set up to be worked with both US GAAP and IFRS. Normally five cases get replaced with new cases every year.

Jim

 

Bob Jensen's threads on case research, case writing, and case teaching are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Cases

How can you capture and send streaming media?
Answer --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#StreamingMedia

 Teaching Tools Websites --- http://ejw.i8.com/teachweb.htm 

Bob Jensen's threads on teaching tools ---  http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm 
(included Edutainment and Games)

The American Accounting Association has a page on tools and cases --- http://aaahq.org/facdev/teaching/teaching_tools.htm

Also see the AAA’s wider set of helpers on teaching at http://aaahq.org/facdev/teach.cfm

Educause Live --- http://www.educause.edu/content.asp?SECTION_ID=34&bhcp=1

Education Tutorials

Free Images from the U.S. Government --- http://rastervector.com/resources/free/free.html

Free Federal Resources in Various Disciplines --- http://www.free.ed.gov/

Bob Jensen's threads on general education tutorials are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#EducationResearch

"U. of Manitoba Researchers Publish Open-Source Handbook on Educational Technology," by Steve Kolowich, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 19, 2009 --- http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/index.php?id=3671&utm_source=wc&utm_medium=en

Technology is changing the way students learn. Is it changing the way colleges teach?

Not enough, says George Siemens, associate director of research and development at the University of Manitoba’s Learning Technologies Centre.

While colleges and universities have been “fairly aggressive” in adapting their curricula to the changing world, Mr. Siemens told The Chronicle, “What we haven’t done very well in the last few decades is altering our pedagogy.”

To help get colleges thinking about how they might adapt their teaching styles to the new ways students absorb and process information, Mr. Siemens and Peter Tittenberger, director of the center, have created a Web-based guide, called the Handbook of Emerging Technologies for Learning.

Taking their own advice, they have outfitted the handbook with a wiki function that will allow readers to contribute their own additions.

In the its introduction, the handbook declares the old pedagogical model—where the students draw their information primarily from textbooks, newspapers, and their professors—dead. “Our learning and information acquisition is a mash-up,” the authors write. “We take pieces, add pieces, dialogue, reframe, rethink, connect, and ultimately, we end up with some type of pattern that symbolizes what’s happening ‘out there’ and what it means to us.” Students are forced to develop new ways of making sense of this flood of information fragments.

But Mr. Siemens said that colleges had been slow to appreciate this fact. “I don’t see a lot of research coming out on what universities might look like in the future,” he said. “If how we interact with information and with each other fundamentally changes, it would suggest that the institution also needs to change.”

Handbook of Emerging Technologies for Learning ---
http://ltc.umanitoba.ca/wikis/etl/index.php/Handbook_of_Emerging_Technologies_for_Learning

Preface

This Handbook of Emerging Technologies for Learning (HETL) has been designed as a resource for educators planning to incorporate technologies in their teaching and learning activities.

Introduction

How is education to fulfill its societal role of clarifying confusion when tools of control over information creation and dissemination rest in the hands of learners[3], contributing to the growing complexity and confusion of information abundance?

Change Pressures and Trends

Global, political, social, technological, and educational change pressures are disrupting the traditional role (and possibly design) of universities. Higher education faces a "re-balancing" in response to growing points of tension along the following fault lines...

What we know about learning

Over the last century, educator’s understanding of the process and act of learning has advanced considerably.

Technology, Teaching, and Learning

Technology is concerned with "designing aids and tools to perfect the mind". As a means of extending the sometimes limited reach of humanity, technology has been prominent in communication and learning. Technology has also played a role in classrooms through the use of movies, recorded video lectures, and overhead projectors. Emerging technology use is growing in communication and in creating, sharing, and interacting around content.

Media and technology

A transition from epistemology (knowledge) to ontology (being) suggests media and technology need to be employed to serve in the development of learners capable of participating in complex environments.

Change cycles and future patterns

It is not uncommon for theorists and thinkers to declare some variation of the theme "change is the only constant". Surprisingly, in an era where change is prominent, change itself has not been developed as a field of study. Why do systems change? Why do entire societies move from one governing philosophy to another? How does change occur within universities?

New Learners? New Educators? New Skills?

New literacies (based on abundance of information and the significant changes brought about technology) are needed. Rather than conceiving literacy as a singular concept, a multi-literacy view is warranted.

Tools

Each tool possesses multiple affordances. Blogs, for example, can be used for personal reflection and interaction. Wikis are well suited for collaborative work and brainstorming. Social networks tools are effective for the formation of learning and social networks. Matching affordances of a particular tool with learning activities is an important design and teaching activity

Research

Evaluating the effectiveness of technology use in teaching and learning brings to mind Albert Einstein’s statement: "Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted". When we begin to consider the impact and effectiveness of technology in the teaching and learning process, obvious questions arise: "How do we measure effectiveness? Is it time spent in a classroom? Is it a function of test scores? Is it about learning? Or understanding?"

Conclusion

Through a process of active experimentation, the academy’s role in society will emerge as a prominent sensemaking and knowledge expansion institution, reflecting of the needs of learners and society while maintaining its role as a transformative agent in pursuit of humanity’s highest ideals.

 

Bob Jensen's threads on education technology are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

October 12, 2010 message from Paul Clikeman

Bob,

I would be very grateful if you would look at my new website http://auditeducation.info . The site contains articles, cases, classroom exercises, videos and academic research related to financial statement auditing. I’d appreciate suggestions for improving the site and publicizing it.

Paul M. Clikeman, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Accounting
Robins School of Business
University of Richmond
Richmond, VA 23173

 

October 12, 2010 reply from Bob Jensen

Hi Paul,

I welcome this exciting new site containing resources for auditing and the history of auditing. It selectively links to some of the best articles on an array of auditing topics, including auditing history.
http://auditeducation.info 

I linked your site in various Web documents including
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud001.htm#Professionalism
However, until I get my new computer set up at Trinity University, I may not be able to update these files on the Web server.

I will also announce your site on the AAA Commons.

Hopefully other accounting bloggers will also announce your site.

Good Work

Bob Jensen

Free Open Sharing Tutorials, Videos, and Course Materials

Bob Jensen's threads on open sharing lectures, videos, and course materials from prestigious universities ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/updateee.htm#OKI

Bob Jensen's threads on free tutorials and videos in various academic disciplines ---
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#EducationResearch

Other free online videos and textbooks in various disciplines (including accounting, economics, finance, and statistics) ---  http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ElectronicLiterature.htm#Textbooks

 

Advice on How to Study

December 30, 2008 email message from David Albrecht [albrecht@PROFALBRECHT.COM]

I'm starting to get my spring courses together. I usually put some "how to study" resources into my syllabus. Here are the resources that I'll link to this time around.

from accounting professor
http://profalbrecht.wordpress.com/2008/12/30/ace-your-accounting-classes-12-hints-to-maximize-your-potential/

Howtostudy.org
http://www.howtostudy.org/

How-to-study.com
http://www.how-to-study.com/

Keys to effective studyt
http://www.adprima.com/studyout.htm

from pharmacy professor
http://www.uic.edu/classes/phar/phar332/how to study.htm

David Albrecht

Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence: Tools for Teaching and Learning --- http://www.schreyerinstitute.psu.edu/Tools/

Bob Jensen's threads on education technology --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

Almost 20 years after the first edition came out, the editors of The Academic’s Handbook (Duke University Press) have released a new version — the third — with many chapters on faculty careers updated and some completely new topics added. Topics covered include teaching, research, tenure, academic freedom, mentoring, diversity, harassment and more. The editors of the collection (who also wrote some of the pieces) are two Duke University professors who also served as administrators there. They are A. Leigh Deneef, a professor of English and former associate dean of the Graduate School, and Craufurd D. Goodwin, a professor of economics who was previously vice provost and dean of the Graduate School.
 Inside Higher Ed, January 10, 2007 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/workplace/2007/01/10/handbook
 

Find out what changes in the last ten years of academe are the most significant ---
http://www.insidehighered.com/workplace/2007/01/10/handbook

"A Guide to Grading Exams," by Daniel J. Solove, Concurring Opinions, December 14, 2006 --- http://www.concurringopinions.com/archives/2006/12/a_guide_to_grad.html

Summaries of some useful technology resources (including edutainment and games) for educators are given at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm 

"Spreadsheets in Education–The First 25 Years," by  John E Baker Director, Natural Maths john@naturalmaths.com.au  and Stephen J Sugden School of Information Technology, Bond University ssugden@bond.edu.au , July 24, 2003 --- http://www.sie.bond.edu.au/articles/1.1/bakersugden.pdf

Spreadsheets made their first appearance for personal computers in 1979 in the form of VisiCalc [45], an application designed to help with accounting tasks. Since that time, the diversity of applications of the spreadsheet program is evidenced by its continual reappearance in scholarly journals. Nowhere is its application becoming more marked than in the field of education. From primary to tertiary levels, the spreadsheet is gradually increasing in its importance as a tool for teaching and learning. By way of an introduction to the new electronic journal Spreadsheets in Education, the editors have compiled this overview of the use of spreadsheets in education. The aim is to provide a comprehensive bibliography and springboard from which others may develop their own applications and reports on educational applications of spreadsheets. For despite its rising popularity, the spreadsheet has still a long way to go before becoming a universal tool for teaching and learning, and many opportunities for its application have yet to be explored. The basic paradigm of an array of rows-and-columns with automatic update and display of results has been extended with libraries of mathematical and statistical functions, versatile graphing and charting facilities, powerful add-ins such as Microsoft Excel’s Solver, attractive and highlyfunctional graphical user interfaces, and the ability to write custom code in languages such as Microsoft’s Visual Basic for Applications. It is difficult to believe that Bricklin, the original creator of VisiCalc could have imagined the modern form of the now ubiquitous spreadsheet program. But the basic idea of the electronic spreadsheet has stood the test of time; indeed it is nowadays an indispensable item of software, not only in business and in the home, but also in academe. This paper briefly examines the history of the spreadsheet, then goes on to give a survey of major books, papers and conference presentations over the past 25 years, all in the area of educational applications of spreadsheets.

Bob Jensen's threads on Tools and Tricks of the Trade in education technology can be found at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

Bob Jensen's video tutorials on spreadsheets are at
http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/acct5342/

Bob Jensen's threads on the history of education technologies are at
http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm

You can read about video and audio capturing at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm

How can you capture and send streaming media?
Answer --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#StreamingMedia

 

June 29, 2007 message from Carolyn Kotlas [kotlas@email.unc.edu]

PAPERS ON MOBILE LEARNING

Mobile learning is the theme of the current issue of the INTERNATIONAL REVIEW OF RESEARCH IN OPEN AND DISTANCE LEARNING. Papers include:

"Mobile Distance Learning with PDAs: Development and Testing of Pedagogical and System Solutions Supporting Mobile Distance Learners" by Torstein Rekkedal and Aleksander Dye, Norwegian School of Information Technology

"The Growth of m-Learning and the Growth of Mobile Computing: Parallel Developments" by Jason G. Caudill, Grand Canyon University

"Mobile Learning and Student Retention" by Bharat Inder Fozdar and Lalita S. Kumar, India Gandhi National Open University

"Instant Messaging for Creating Interactive and Collaborative m-Learning Environments" by James Kadirire, Anglia Ruskin University

"m-Learning: Positioning Educators for a Mobile, Connected Future" by Kristine Peters, Flinders University

The issue is available at http://www.irrodl.org/index.php/irrodl/issue/view/29 . Papers are available not only in HTML and PDF formats, but you can also download and listen to them in MP3 audio versions.

International Review of Research in Open and Distance Learning (IRRODL) [ISSN 1492-3831] is a free, refereed ejournal published by Athabasca University - Canada's Open University. For more information, contact Paula Smith, IRRODL Managing Editor; tel: 780-675-6810; fax: 780-675-672;
email: irrodl@athabascau.ca ;
Web: http://www.irrodl.org/ .

See also:

"Are You Ready for Mobile Learning?" By Joseph Rene Corbeil and Maria Elena Valdes-Corbeil, University of Texas at Brownsville EDUCAUSE QUARTERLY, vol. 30, no. 2, 2007 http://www.educause.edu/apps/eq/eqm07/eqm0726.asp 

"Frequent use of mobile devices does not mean that students or instructors are ready for mobile learning and teaching."

 

Knowledge Media Laboratory --- http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/programs/index.asp?key=38
The Carnegie Foundation

The Knowledge Media Laboratory works to create a future in which communities of teachers, faculty, programs, and institutions collectively advance teaching and learning by exchanging their educational knowledge, experiences, ideas, and reflections by taking advantage of various technologies and resources.

The KML is currently working with its partners, including Carnegie Foundation programs, to achieve the following goals:

• To develop digital (or electronic) tools and resources that help to make knowledge of effective teaching practices and educational transformation efforts visible, shareable, and reusable.

• To explore synergy among various technologies to better support the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.

• To build the capacity for faculty and teachers independently to take advantage of information and communications technologies that enable them to re-examine, rethink, and represent teaching and students learning, and to share the outcomes in an effective and efficient way.

• To sustain communities of practice engaged in collaboratively improving teaching and student learning by building common areas to exchange knowledge and by building repositories for the representation of effective practice.

Bob Jensen's threads on teaching resources are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

 

The FEI has a new 16-page fraud checklist that can be downloaded for $50. Access to an online database is $129 --- Click Here

"New research provides resources on fraud prevention and financial reporting," AccountingWeb, January 18, 2008 ---
http://www.accountingweb.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=104443

Financial Executives Research Foundation (FERF), the research affiliate of Financial Executives International (FEI), has announced the release of two important new pieces of research designed to aid public company management and corporate boards in the efficient evaluation of their assessment of reporting issues and internal controls. A new FERF Study, entitled "What's New in Financial Reporting: Financial Statement Notes from Annual Reports," examines disclosures from 2006 annual reports for the 100 largest publicly-traded companies which used particularly innovative techniques to clearly address difficult accounting issues. The study identifies and analyzes recent reporting trends and common practices in financial statements.

The report illustrates how companies addressed specific accounting issues recently promulgated by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), and by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and in doing so, uncovered a number of trends, which included:
  • Twenty-five out of 100 filers in the 2006 reporting season reported tangible asset impairments as a critical accounting policy.
     
  • Many companies report condensed consolidating cash flows statements as part of their segment disclosures, although not required by SFAS No. 131, Disclosures about Segments of an Enterprise and Related Information.

    •  

    To further facilitate use of this report as a reference tool, all of the financial statement footnotes gathered for the study are available to members on the Financial Executives International Web site.

    "FERF undertook this study to provide our members with an illustration of how companies have used innovative techniques to clearly address difficult accounting concerns," said Cheryl Graziano, vice president, research and operations for FERF. "Recent accounting issues publicized by the FASB and the SEC have had a direct impact on members of the financial community, and the report shows that many companies are taking action."

    "We hope that all financial executives can utilize the report as both a quick update to summarize recent trends in the most annual reporting season, as well as a reference to address common accounting issues. The convenience of the online database will provide executives with a readily handy tool when drafting their own annual reports," said Graziano.

    A second piece of research by FEI, entitled the "FERF Fraud Risk Checklist," provides boards of directors and management with a series of questions to help in assessing the potential risk factors associated with fraudulent financial reporting and the misappropriation of assets. These questions were developed from a number of key sources on financial fraud and offer executives a single framework in which to evaluate their company's reporting, while providing a sample structure for management to use in documenting its thought process and conclusions.

    "Making improvements to compliance with Sarbanes Oxley is a daily practice for financial executives, and the first step in efficient evaluation of internal controls is the proper assessment of potential exposures or risks associated with fraud," said Michael Cangemi, president and CEO, Financial Executives International. "Through conversations with members of the financial community, we learned that, while this type of risk assessment is a routine skill for auditors, many members of management are not always familiar with this concept. This checklist combines knowledge from the leading resources on fraud to help financial management take a proactive step in evaluating their company's practices and identifying areas for improvement."

    The annual report study, including the full report and access to the online database, and the fraud checklist, are available for purchase on the FEI Web site

    Bob Jensen's threads on fraud are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Fraud.htm

    Property and Damage Costs of Schools
    Something to consider in the design and implementation of AIS courses

    From THEJournal Newsletter on June 28, 2006

    Asset loss and damage costs the average district nearly a quarter of a million dollars a year. Larger districts lose even more, some topping $1.4 million in loss and damage annually. These are among the results of a recent study of district asset management, conducted in conjunction with Quality Education Data (QED). The study, which was co-sponsored by Follett Software Co., provides a picture of how districts manage their assets and the growing challenges they face. Its findings illustrate the importance of the emerging category of Educational Resource Management (ERM) solutions-products that centralize the management of district resources. The study surveyed 479 district business managers, administrators and technology chiefs in all 48 contiguous states. Respondents were asked about the problems they faced in managing assets, and about the systems they used to keep track of everything from laptops to band uniforms. They were also asked to estimate the cost of loss, damage, and redundant purchases of these assets. Other major findings of the study included:
    • Investments in educational technology (primarily computer and AV equipment) are among the assets most at risk, averaging more than $80,000 in loss annually per district.
    • Districts that used manual tracking for computers reported a 41% greater annual cost of loss/damage than those that used a commercial asset tracking program, and 32% greater loss than those that used a spreadsheet/database program.

    For the full story, visit http://www.fsc.follett.com/newsnevents/pressreleases/release.cfm?pressID=22

    Bob Jensen's threads on tricks and tools of the trade are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

     

    New Pen for Authors Who Prefer to Write With a Pen
    The device looks like a slightly plump ballpoint, and works like any ballpoint. But inside this gadget are a tiny camera and an optical sensor that record the pen's motions as he writes, and a microprocessor that digitizes the words, sketches and diagrams that the optics detect. When he docks the pen in its cradle connected to a USB port, the handwritten notes flow in a digitized stream into his computer and are processed by software, reappearing almost immediately on his monitor in his handwriting. "All the notes I've written are sucked into the computer, and there they are on the screen," he said. His pen, called io2, is sold by Logitech of Fremont, Calif., for about $200.
    Anne Eisenberg, "A Pen That's More Than Meets the Paper," The New York Times, July 2, 2006 --- http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/02/business/yourmoney/02novel.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

    Jensen Comment
    This might be useful for essay examinations when student handwriting is difficult to read and grade. The digital pen idea is not new, but the hardware is much improved.
    See http://www.logitech.com/index.cfm/products/details/US/EN,crid=1553,contentid=9097

    Bob Jensen's threads on Tools and Tricks of the Trade are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm

    From the University of Wisconsin
    Distance Education Clearinghouse ---  http://www.uwex.edu/disted/home.html

    The Distance Education Clearinghouse is a comprehensive and widely recognized Web site bringing together distance education information from Wisconsin, national, and international sources. New information and resources are being added to the Distance Education Clearinghouse on a continual basis.

    The Clearinghouse is managed and maintained by the University of Wisconsin-Extension, in cooperation with its partners and other University of Wisconsin institutions.

    Jensen Comment
    This site has glossaries and many links to other distance education sites.

    Bob Jensen's links to distance education sites are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

    Publish Exams Online --- http://www.examprofessor.com/main/index.cfm

    Bob Jensen's threads on exam technology are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm

    From The Scout Report on June 23, 2005

    Adium X 0.82 http://www.adiumx.com/ 

    For better or worse, more people enjoy copious amounts of online messaging while at work, at play, or just out at the beach. Adium X 0.82 is one such device that enables this particular form of social communication. It happens to function as a multiple protocol instant-messaging client, and it includes support for AIM, Yahoo, MSN, Trepia, and Napster. With the program, users can manage multiple conversations and also maintain a presence on multiple services simultaneously. This version of Adium is compatible with Mac OS X 10.2.7 or later.

    From the T.H.E. Newsletter on May 4, 2005

    CrystalGraphics Inc., a developer and publisher of add-on products for Microsoft Office, has released PowerPlugs: Video Backgrounds Player and PowerPlugs: Video Backgrounds Content . The Video Backgrounds Player is a unique software product that plugs directly into Microsoft PowerPoint allowing users to select and insert full-screen moving backgrounds into their presentations quickly and effortlessly. It is also compatible with all of PowerPoint's animation tools and text-editing capabilities. Video Backgrounds Content is the perfect complement to the Video Backgrounds Player software. It features nine volumes that each include 25 unique background video clips optimized for use with PowerPoint so they can play back smoothly in real time on most Pentium III or higher PCs. The footage is royalty free, so you can use it as many times as you like in your presentations with no added cost.

    Teaching.com --- http://www.teaching.com/ 

     

    Free, non-commercial educational Web services for educators and students. Over 1,300,000 hits per month, 89,000 unique visitors per month, over 200,000 current registered members from 112 different countries.

    The AICPA unveiled a Web site for CPAs interested in information technology ( www.aicpa.org/infotech ). It offers resources on system security and reliability; tools and checklists to help CPAs assess organizational practices pertaining to information privacy, e-commerce and similar subjects; and guidance on standards and regulations. In addition to the resources available to all visitors, the site contains special content accessible only by those CPAs who hold the Institute’s Certified Information Technology Professional (CITP) credential or belong to the IT Membership Section.
    News Digest, Journal of Accountancy, May 2005, Page 14 --- http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/may2005/news.htm#information

    International Society for Technology in Education --- http://www.iste.org/

    ISTE is a nonprofit professional organization with a worldwide membership of leaders and potential leaders in educational technology. We are dedicated to providing leadership and service to improve teaching and learning by advancing the effective use of technology in K–12 education and teacher education. We provide our members with information, networking opportunities, and guidance as they face the challenge of incorporating computers, the Internet, and other new technologies into their schools.

    Home of the National Educational Technology Standards (NETS), the Center for Applied Research in Education Technology (CARET), and the National Educational Computing Conference (NECC), ISTE meets its mission through knowledge generation, professional development, and advocacy. ISTE also represents and informs its membership regarding educational issues of national scope through ISTE–DC. We support a worldwide network of Affiliates and Special Interest Groups (SIGs), and we offer our members the latest information through our periodicals and journals.

    		  

    An organization of great diversity, ISTE leads through presenting innovative educational technology books and programs; conducting professional development workshops, forums, and symposia; and researching, evaluating, and disseminating findings regarding educational technology on an international level. ISTE’s Web site, www.iste.org, contains coverage of many topics relevant to the educational technology community.

    Bookstore. L&L. NECC, NETS. About ISTE, Educator Resources, Join!, Membership, Affiliates

    ISTE 100, SIGs, Professional Development, Publications, Research Projects, Standards Projects, Site Map

    Classroom and Building Design --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Design

    Accounting Student Resources --- http://www.accountingstudents.com/


    Accounting Software   (240)     
    Accounting Standards   (263)     
    Financial Accounting   (215)     
    		 Accounting Jobs   (453)     
    Accounting Studies   (248) 

    When is a hand a mouse? Carrie Rigney’s fourth-grade students know. When they walk up to a board in the front of the room and move their hands over Arizona on a map of the United States — Arizona lights up. And Rigney herself certainly knows. When she’s teaching her students rotational symmetry (something that used to take her several days but now only takes one day) and moves her hand over a polyhedron on the same board — the polyhedron spins around. When she wants students to see the question first and then the answer on the board, she shows them the question and then moves her hand slowly down to reveal the answer little by little.  Rigney’s using a Rear Projection SMART Board interactive whiteboard with an integrated projector, a mobile cabinet, a 66” screen, and a crank that adjusts its height between 69 inches and 83 inches. And she loves it. “I use it all day,” she says. “I use it for everything.” Creating her lessons on the accompanying software, Rigney downloads text and images from the Internet and saves them for later application on the board. She can show videos on the board and even “write” over the top of them. Because the board is projected from the rear, she can also stand anywhere in the classroom and not cast a shadow.
    T.H.E. Focus Newsletter, November 18, 2004

    Video and Audio Recording for Classrooms

    September 8, 2005 message from Glen Gray [glen.gray@CSUN.EDU]

    Does anybody have any experience with Microsoft’s OneNote? What caught my eye was the mention in an article that you can use OneNote to record audio (e.g., during a meeting) on your computer (like a tape recorder). I was looking at the program on the Microsoft site and see that OneNote is software for organizing stuff (note, files, graphics, etc.).

    Any thoughts for comments on OneNote? Any comments on other programs that I could use to record audio? I particularly want to record during meetings. I know that there are stand alone recorders, but it is one more thing to take to the meeting.

    Glen L. Gray, PhD, CPA
    Dept. of Accounting & Information Systems
    College of Business & Economics
    California State University, Northridge
    Northridge, CA 91330-8372
    818.677.3948
    http://www.csun.edu/~vcact00f 

    September 9, 2005 reply from Bob Jensen

    Hi Glen,

    There is a highly favorable review (that does not go far into the audio features) at http://wordprocessing.about.com/od/choosingsoftware/a/onenoterev.htm 
    I suspect Richard Campbell will weigh in on this with better suggestions.

    I would think there is a problem with audio hardware much the same as I have a problem with my video camera at meetings. Unless I sit in the front row, it is difficult to pick up the speaker’s voice. If there is audience/class discussion throughout a room, it is very difficult to capture individual speakers.

    The FBI probably has better audio capturing hardware than we can put on our laptops, but I would not expect OneNote software to magically allow us to get quality recordings at many meetings.

    That does not mean that we should not download the free trial offer just to test out OneNote for all the many features claimed in the review above. It would seem that it will work optimally with a Tablet PC.

    Bob Jensen

    September 8, 2005 reply from Amy Dunbar

    I don’t have experience with OneNote, but capturing audio is always a struggle for me. Camtasia is wonderful for screen capture video with audio, but to just record audio has presented more problems for me. I used to use the Microsoft Sound Recorder (under Accessories in Windows) and convert the wav file to an .rm file using Real Producer. Now that I have left the Real world (;-)), I am recording in Screenblaster and rendering the file as an MP3 file. I find it annoying, however, to have a music program, like ITunes, open it. I just want it to immediately play when the student clicks the link. If anyone has a better solution for converting wav files to a better format, I would love to hear about it. A UConn ITS person recommended CDEX

    http://cdexos.sourceforge.net/ , which is open source freeware.

    Back to what you were asking, Glen. How would you capture everyone’s voices unless they had mics? I know audio conference tools can capture everyone, but in that case, each person is speaking into a mic at his/her computer.

    And speaking of audio conferencing, does anyone know how many people can be in a Skype audio conference? I have only experienced three at a time. I am teaching a small PhD class, and I have asked my students to download Skype ( www.skype.com ) so we can easily find each other because all of us work at home a lot (which is a good thing in these times of skyrocketing gas prices). When a California colleague’s cell phone connection was to weak to have a conversation, we switched to Skype, and it worked like a charm.

    Amy at UCon

    September 9, 2005 reply from Jim Richards [J.Richards@MURDOCH.EDU.AU]

    Hi Amy,

    My recollection with Skype is that the maximum is 5.

    Cheers,
    Jim Richards
    Murdoch Business School
    Murdoch University South Street
    MURDOCH WA
    Australia

    September 9, 2005 reply from Jim Richards [J.Richards@MURDOCH.EDU.AU]

    Hi Glen
    You may find that to record using your laptop might need a good quality omni-directional microphone to pick up a sufficiently loud signal.

    Some open source software that can be used to record and export mp3 files is Audacity ( http://audacity.sourceforge.net ).

    We use it at my local Church to record all of our ministry. You need to also download and install LAME to be able to export to mp3.

    Cheers.

    Jim Richards
    Murdoch Business School
    Murdoch University South Street
    MURDOCH WA 6150 Phone: 61-8-9360-2706 Fax: 61-8-9310-5004

    September 8, 2005 reply from Bob Jensen

    Hi Amy,

    I can’t help with you’re SKYPE question.

    But I want to add that the new version of Camtasia allows for camcorder input so that the image is no longer just confined to computer screen images. Even though digital video takes up massive amounts of space, Camtasia videos do not have to be space hogging full screens and the videos can be compressed in the final production.

    The big problem with video capturing at meetings is that the video is often less interesting than the audio unless the speaker is using visual aids. Capturing video of a talking head is a total waste of space digitally speaking. I still use an analog camera and space is no problem since video tapes are cheap ways to store lots of video.

    My problem of course is that my hundreds of video tapes will soon be as obsolete as my withering 8-track audio tapes. Soon we won’t be able to buy new machines that will play video tapes, so take good care of the old players in your house or office. And consider putting them to DVD in the near future.

    Bob Jensen

    Converting Home Videos to DVDs

    Q: Are there services that will take home video and burn it to a DVD that can be played anywhere? I know I can do this on my PC, but it takes too much time and I keep running into problems when I try it.

    A: There are such services. One that I have tested and found to be good is called YesVideo (yesvideo.com). You bring your videos into a store that works with YesVideo -- including CVS, Walgreen, Best Buy and Target -- and they send the tapes to YesVideo, which converts them to a very nice DVD. You also can get the same service online, at Sony's ImageStation site ( www.imagestation.com ). Sony calls its service Video2DVD, but it really is just the YesVideo service. My full review of the service is at: ptech.wsj.com/archive/solution-20040128.html. Because YesVideo works through retailers, prices vary, but are usually around $25-$35 for a two-hour video. Each DVD is divided into chapters based on a YesVideo process that tries to detect scene changes in your videos. At the end, there are three 60-second music videos made from scenes on your videos. The company also will put your prints, slides and even old film onto DVD, but this costs more and is handled by fewer retailers. Details are at the YesVideo Web site.
    Walter Mossberg, "Converting Home Videos to DVDs," The Wall Street Journal, August 25, 2005; Page B3 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB112492084317722331,00.html?mod=todays_us_marketplace

    At last there will be a way to efficiently store digital video
    But this is no ordinary recording process. The disc has more than 60 times the storage capacity of a standard DVD, while the drive writes about 10 times faster than a conventional DVD burner. That means the disc can store up to 128 hours of video content--almost twice enough for the full nine seasons of Seinfeld--and records it all in less than three hours.
    Holographic Memory
    By Gregory T. Huang , "Holographic Memory," MIT's Technology Review, September 2005 --- http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/09/issue/feature_memory.asp?trk=nl

    Review of video streaming software --- http://www.homeofficereports.com/streaming video.htm
     Scroll down to the table of software options and ratin

    Convert AVI to WMV, BMP, JPG, etc. - OSS Video Decompiler 4.0 --- http://www.tomdownload.com/multimedia_design/video/oss_video_decompiler.htm

    Powerful Video Decompiler that supports decompiling video files to extract the individual image frames. Supports AVI to WMV, AVI to GIF, AVI to (PNG, JPEG, JPG, EMF, WMV, BMP, and more). Video Decompiling (Supported formats AVI to GIF, AVI to PNG (Portable Network Graphics), AVI to JPEG, AVI to TIFF, AVI to EMF, AVI to WMV). Convert multiple video files at once (Batch Conversion). Many modern features were added to the latest versions. Now you can save and load video conversion and effects settings using XML.

    Sociology professor designs SAGrader software for grading student essays
    Student essays always seem to be riddled with the same sorts of flaws. So sociology professor Ed Brent decided to hand the work off to a computer. Students in Brent's Introduction to Sociology course at the University of Missouri-Columbia now submit drafts through the SAGrader software he designed. It counts the number of points he wanted his students to include and analyzes how well concepts are explained. And within seconds, students have a score. It used to be the students who looked for shortcuts, shopping for papers online or pilfering parts of an assignment with a simple Google search. Now, teachers and professors are realizing that they, too, can tap technology for a facet of academia long reserved for a teacher alone with a red pen. Software now scores everything from routine assignments in high school English classes to an essay on the GMAT, the standardized test for business school admission. (The essay section just added to the Scholastic Aptitude Test for the college-bound is graded by humans). Though Brent and his two teaching assistants still handle final papers and grades students are encouraged to use SAGrader for a better shot at an "A."
    "Computers Now Grading Students' Writing," ABC News, May 8, 2005 ---
    http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory?id=737451
    Jensen Comment:  Aside from some of the obvious advantages such as grammar checking, students should have a more difficult time protesting that the grading is subjective and unfair in terms of the teacher's alleged favored versus less-favored students.  Actually computers have been used for some time in grading essays, including the GMAT graduate admission test --- http://www.yaledailynews.com/article.asp?AID=723

    References to computer grading of essays --- http://coeweb.fiu.edu/webassessment/references.htm

    You can read about PEG at http://snipurl.com/PEGgrade

    Bob Jensen's threads on assessment are at http://www.yaledailynews.com/article.asp?AID=723

    What works in education?

    September 2, 2004 message from Carolyn Kotlas [kotlas@email.unc.edu] 

    "CONSUMER REPORTS" FOR RESEARCH IN EDUCATION

    The What Works Clearinghouse was established in 2002 by the U.S. Department of Education's Institute of Education Sciences with $18.5 million in funding to "provide educators, policymakers, researchers, and the public with a central and trusted source of scientific evidence of what works in education." The Clearinghouse reviews, according to relevance and validity, the "effectiveness of replicable educational interventions (programs, products, practices, and policies) that intend to improve student outcomes." This summer, the Clearinghouse released two of its planned reports: peer-assisted learning interventions and middle school math curricula. For more information about the What Works Clearinghouse and descriptions of all topics to be evaluated, go to http://www.w-w-c.org/ 

    See also:

    "'What Works' Research Site Unveiled" by Debra Viadero EDUCATION WEEK, vol. 23, no. 42, pp. 1, 33, July 14, 2004 http://www.edweek.org/ew/ew_printstory.cfm?slug=42Whatworks.h23 

    "'What Works' Site Opens Dialogue on Research" Letter to Editor from Talbot Bielefeldt, Center for Applied Research in Educational Technology, International Society for Technology in Education EDUCATION WEEK, vol. 23, no. 44, p. 44, August 11, 2004 http://www.edweek.org/ew/ew_printstory.cfm?slug=44Letter.h23 

     

    Bob Jensen's threads on assessment are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm 

    The Complete Guide to Googlemania

    They named it after the biggest number they could imagine. But it wasn't big enough. On the eve of a very public stock offering, here's everything you ever wanted to know about Google. A Wired Magazine special report --- http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.03/google.html 

    Guardian's great tips on using Google --- http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,1117818,00.html 

    Bob Jensen's search helpers (including help in finding books, journals, pictures, media, colleges, and scholars) --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/searchh.htm 

    September 2, 2004 message from Carolyn Kotlas [kotlas@email.unc.edu] 

    INFORMATION LITERACY RESOURCE

    "It has become increasingly clear that students cannot learn everything they need to know in their field of study in a few years of college. Information literacy equips them with the critical skills necessary to become independent lifelong learners." The ALA Association of College & Research Libraries' "Information Literacy" website provides resources for faculty and librarians to use in teaching and promoting information literacy. The site includes core readings, syllabi, tutorials, and workshop ideas. The website is available at http://www.ala.org/ala/acrl/acrlissues/acrlinfolit/informationliteracy.htm 

    ACRL, a division of the American Library Association, is a professional association of academic librarians and other interested individuals. It is dedicated to enhancing the ability of academic library and information professionals to serve the information needs of the higher education community and to improve learning, teaching, and research. For more information, contact Association of College and Research Libraries, American Library Association, 50 East Huron St., Chicago, IL 60611-2795 USA; tel: 800-545-2433; fax: 312-280-2520; email: acrl@ala.org ; Web: http://www.ala.org/acrl/. 

     

    How to make your own videos for students --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm 

    From Syllabus News on August 3, 2004

    Product News Flash: Here Comes the Multimedia Blue Book

    Testing and assessment software provider Questionmark has joined with Macromedia, creator of all things “Flash,” to release a software tool that enables authors of quizzes, tests, exams and surveys to incorporate Flash movies within questions.

    The companies said that the Questionmark Perception Flash Connector works together with Macromedia’s Flash to provide “a high level of context within which a question can be answered.” For example, detecting a hazardous situation such as a chemical spill or an ignition source within the setting of a Flash movie can measure someone's sensitivity to hazards better than a multiple choice question. Now authors can use sound and videos and place measurable interactions within that context. Perception Flash Connector, which supports Flash 5, Flash MX and Flash MX 2004, makes it possible to evaluate and score an interaction and pass the information on to Perception for collation and reporting.

    "Home Movies Go Straight to DVD," by Walter Mossberg, The Wall Street Journal, July 21, 2004 --- http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB109035905524368956,00.html?mod=gadgets%5Flead%5Fstory%5Fcol 

    Camcorder Skips Videotape And Records on Tiny Discs; Just 30 Minutes of Grandpa July 21, 2004; Page D4 Ah, summer. The perfect time for splashing in the ocean, embarking on cross-country road trips, and sticking one unlucky family member with the video camera and instructions to capture every memory along the way. If you happen to be that person and you're using a digital camcorder, you might also be strapped with the responsibility of editing and transferring the movie onto a disc when you get home.

    To avoid this extra step, you may want to use one of the newer camcorders that record footage directly onto DVDs, instead of the tapes that are commonly used. With these models, you can just pop out the disc, slap it into any DVD player, or computer with a DVD drive, and watch your videos instantly.

    This week, my assistant Katie Boehret and I returned from our own vacations to evaluate one of the leading direct-to-DVD models: Sony's DCR-DVD201 Handycam Camcorder. Sony also makes a 101 model, but we didn't test it. The 201, which sells for about $800 online and lists for $1,000, and the 101, which sells for around $700 online and lists for $900, are pricey enough to scare some customers away, but we gave the 201 a whirl to see how good it really was.

    Katie took the 201 model along on vacation and used it primarily to record her grandfather telling stories of his experiences in World War II, something her family wanted preserved on DVD. The little DCR-DVD201, which measures about two inches by 3.5 inches by five inches, and weighs just a little more than a pound with the disc and battery, slipped easily into Katie's suitcase. Even the camera's battery-charging power brick is lightweight and small.

    Sony's DCR-DVD201 Handycam Camcorder

    The 201 looks sleek all over. Various connecting sockets, buttons, switches and other features are hidden in inconspicuous places or behind covers. The camera's 2.5-inch color LCD viewing screen folds out to reveal multiple buttons housed against the camera, but closing the LCD neatly covers the buttons and gives the device an uncomplicated look. On its side, a circular door pops open to hold your three-inch DVD-R or DVD-RW.

    These discs are a definite downside to this video camera. Though they play in a standard DVD player, they are physically much smaller than a regular DVD and hold much less video. In fact, each mini-DVD holds only 20 minutes of footage at high recording quality, 30 minutes at standard quality, and 60 minutes at low quality. Katie shot her footage in standard quality and ran through two discs in no time.

    The real kicker is that each DVD-R disc -- which can be recorded upon only once -- costs about $6.50. And the re-recordable DVD-RW discs cost $10 apiece. Some retailers sell these discs for less, but they're still costly. Sony probably figures that people who can buy $1,000 video cameras won't think twice about a $10 disc that holds just 30 minutes, but they seemed pricey to us. Sony has future plans for releasing "dual-layer" media, which can hold twice the data of regular single-layer discs, but isn't talking about pricing or availability dates.

    Continued in the article

    April 30, 2004 message from Carolyn Kotlas [kotlas@email.unc.edu] 

    "How do instructors learn to teach online? What are their perceptions as they enter this new learning environment for the first time?" To find out, Dianne Conrad, assistant professor of adult education at the University of New Brunswick, interviewed five instructors in a Canadian university who were teaching online courses for the first time. Her interviews showed that the instructors drew upon their fact-to-face teaching experience, but that they "revealed very little awareness of issues of collaborative learning, of learners' social presence, or of the role of community in online learning environments." The details of Conrad's qualitative study are available in "University Instructors' Reflections on Their First Online Teaching Experiences" (JOURNAL OF ASYNCHRONOUS LEARNING NETWORKS, vol. 8, issue 2, April 2004) at http://www.aln.org/publications/jaln/v8n2/v8n2_conrad.asp.

    The Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks (JALN) [ISSN 1092-8235] is an electronic publication of The Sloan Consortium (Sloan-C). Current and back issues are available at http://www.aln.org/publications/jaln/.

    For an account of online teaching from a veteran instructor, see "Less is More: Designing an Online Course" (DEOSNEWS, vol. 13, issue 4, April 2004; http://www.ed.psu.edu/acsde/deos/deosnews/deosnews.asp) by R. Thomas Berner, professor emeritus of journalism and American studies at the Pennsylvania State University.

    YourLearning.com --- http://www.yourlearning.com/churchillreport.html 

    The report may be beneficial for individuals who are involved in online learning developments in healthcare education in the USA and other countries. The institutions visited during the fellowship may find it useful to read own and others case studies, to compare and reflect on the developments and implications on teaching and learning in healthcare. The report may be useful for other institutions in the USA, to add to the picture of diversity in online learning developments within USA. .

    Bob Jensen's threads on ideas for teaching online are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Ideas 

    Bob Jensen's threads on tools and tricks of the trade are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm 

    Bob Jensen's main education technology page is at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm 

    Educators designing their own web pages may find the National Cancer Institute's "Research-Based Web Design & Usability Guidelines" a useful starting place. The publication includes suggestions for page layout and styles, content organization, navigation, and accessibility. The guide is available online at http://www.usability.gov/guidelines/Usability_guidelines.pdf .

    "Seton Hall has developed free software that helps instructors turn their lectures into multimedia presentations for course Web sites. The software, called SyncStream ( http://tltc.shu.edu/initiatives/streaming/syncstream.htm  ), makes it easy to mix video of a lecture with a PowerPoint presentation or other slide show. To use the program instructors must first record their lectures in the streaming-video format developed by RealNetworks."
    Tracey Sutherland [tracey@AAAHQ.ORG] 

    Alternatives to Expensive Video Conferencing

    October 21, 2003 message from Amy Dunbar [Amy.Dunbar@BUSINESS.UCONN.EDU] 

    As I understand it, Centra Symposium is the cadillac. Placeware is more reasonably priced, but can do what you want. Also, Fordham was talking about Tegrity in one of his postings, but I have never worked with that product. As for VOIP, I don't think software is there yet.

    I use telephone conferencing in conjunction with Placeware. I am cc'ing Dave Will, the guy who worked with me. He can send you information on Placeware. I think he set up Penn State's MBA program with Placeware.

    Amy Dunbar 
    UConn

    Macromedia - Flash Technotes: Web Sites Devoted to Macromedia Flash and Flash Developers 
    http://www.macromedia.com/support/flash/ts/documents/flash_websites.htm     

    Bob Jensen's threads on technology for handicapped persons are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Handicapped 

    Video Courses

    Probably the most successful use of video is the Adept program at Stanford University where engineering students can get an entire Masters of Engineering degree almost entirely from video courses http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/html/cnc9838/cnc9838.html

    Basic accounting students At BYU have great success learning accounting from special videos --- http://snipurl.com/videoBYU 

    Contact Information: 
    Cameron Earl 801-836-5649 cameronearl@byu.edu
    Norm Nemrow 801-422-3029 nemrow@byu.edu 

    Also see David Cottrell's approach at BYU --- http://www.business.uconn.edu/users/adunbar/AAA-CPE/AAA2003Cottrell.pdf 

    Update message on November 3, 2005

    Bob has posted our new website in an earlier post, but the new URL to our new website describing our accounting tools is www.accountingcds.com

    We have a demo of VSP (the technology that speeds up the video and audio) technology here: http://www.accountingcds.com/learn/links/vspdemo.htm 

    Cameron Earl

    BYU

    Bob Jensen's threads and videos, including a video on how to develop your own course materials using the cheap and easy Camtasia Studio software can be found at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm 

    Creative Ideas for Teaching --- http://www.creativeteachingsite.com/ 

    TEACHING STYLE
    CREATIVE TEACHING
    TEACHING IDEAS
    Add variety to a class period and have fun Dogs in the classroom or "who let the dogs out?" The ten rules of... misc. lists -- educational and humorous
    Considerations on developing teacher style EDUCATIONAL SIMULATIONS PAGE Generally creative quote of the day
    The "ready, fire, aim" method of teaching  Teacher's Windows Wallpaper Urban legends-- Bill Gates on Education???
    Zen and the art of teaching "eBaywatch.edu" -- eBay (tm) for educators FREE handouts for classroom teachers
    Teaching and the "digital communities" Creative use of video games Humorous grammar rules
    Teacher "show and tell" items Star Trek and Star Wars and Teachers More humorous grammar rules
    Teaching during the information tsunami Creative ways to encourage reluctant readers Heard about "Internet Time?"
    Teaching in Arizona, 1912 The "Big Loader" education page FREE "handout banners" for teachers
    Coming soon! Empowering teachers; the teacher as artist Text adventure games and reading  Great materials for Creative Teachers
        A simulated "submarine" inspires learning

    Where are some great resources (hard copy and electronic) for teaching ethics?

    "An Inventory of Support Materials for Teaching Ethics in the Post-Enron Era,” by C. William Thomas, Issues in Accounting Education, February 2004, pp. 27-52 --- http://aaahq.org/ic/browse.htm

    ABSTRACT: This paper presents a "Post-Enron" annotated bibliography of resources for accounting professors who wish to either design a stand-alone course in accounting ethics or who wish to integrate a significant component of ethics into traditional courses across the curriculum.  Many of the resources listed are recent, but some are classics that have withstood the test of time and still contain valuable information.  The resources listed include texts and reference works, commercial books, academic and professional articles, and electronic resources such as film and Internet websites.  Resources are listed by subject matter, to the extent possible, to permit topical access.  Some observations about course design, curriculum content, and instructional methodology are made as well.

    How About a Game of Bingo for Ethics Fun and Learning?

    Using Games to Enhance Student Understanding of Professional and Ethical Responsibilities,” by M. Elizabeth Haywood, Dorothy A. McMullen, and Donald E. Wygal, Issues in Accounting Education, February 2004, pp. 85-100 --- http://aaahq.org/ic/browse.htm

     ABSTRACT: Given recent corporate scandals, the credibility of the accounting profession has been called into question. In order to restore public trust, accounting educators need to devise ways to convey the importance of ethics in our profession to our students. An alternative approach to using a traditional lecture to teach ethics is to use games. The purpose of this paper is to introduce a game strategy to teach ethics and professionalism to students. Using games makes learning more fun and also helps to maintain student interest and involvement in the learning process. Student feedback has been positive and encouraging on the use of this format to teach ethics and professional responsibilities.

    Understanding Bandwidth and Streaming Media Production 

    Understanding bandwidth is really quite simple, and it is necessary to have a fundamental grasp of what bandwidth is if you are creating streaming media files such as WMV, ASF or CAMV etc. --- http://www.techsmith.com/products/camtasia/fow/bandwidth.asp 

    The purpose of this document is to provide an easy to understand, general explanation of what bandwidth means, and how it relates to video production of screen recordings and content delivery. It is not a technical dissertation, and will therefore, for reasons of simplicity of explanation, use approximation and rounding in most calculations.

    How to Capture Streaming Audio and Video

    It is not possible to download streaming audio/video files like we download such things as MPEG and MP3 files.  I asked my friends on the AECM to indicate how I could obtain a copy of the scandalous Enron Home Movie that can be viewed as streaming video from the Houston Chronicle --- See http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/fraud013103.htm 

    Todd Boyle told me to get a Mac computer.  He says the Mac can capture streaming video.  For PC users, I received the following answer from Jim Borden who successfully captured the Enron Home Movie using Camtasia.  My Camtasia tutorials are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm (including my tutorial on how to run Camtasia).

    Bob,
     
    Hopefully you've had a chance to download the video, and it is working for you.
     
    In terms of how I was able to record the video, I found the following help file from http://www.geek.com/discus/messages/321/1256.html that gave some advice, as follows:
     
    "Hey everyone, don't get all mad at Real Player for being so shitty as it is. Do what I did--GET EVEN!!! First off, I found this nice and nifty little plugin for Winamp that enables it to play Real files. If anyone is interested in it, go to http://wwwpop.hypermart.net/plugin/download.html to download it. Then, make Winamp the default player for all Real media types. And no, you can't totally uninstall Real Player from your system. The plug-in uses the basic core elements of Real Player to play Real Media files.
    I am not done yet! I have found some ways to convert Real media to better standard formats. For Real Video, I have found a neat little program that directly converts Real Video files to .avi. It is called TINRA(This Is Not Real Anymore). It can be found on this site-- http://guiguy.wminds.com/downloads/tinragui/down.html. The only problem with that is that the output .avi file has the audio and the video portions out of sync. That can many times be fixed, though, using VirtualDub. Another way to convert Real video to .avi is to use Camtasia. Camtasia can be found at http://www.techsmith.com. The only thing I don't like about that program is that the only way you can record the audio portion of the Real video file is to use a microphone. That can be bypassed, though, by just simply running a jack wire between the speaker jack and the microphone jack. The sound still isn't the best but it is better than sticking the microphone up to the speaker. A better way to bypass the microphone altogether is to use the Sound Blaster Live video card if you have one or can fork over $150 for one. The Sound Blaster Live video card places an input into the Recording section of the Windows Volume Control called "What You Hear" that maps the audio internally in the sound card to the microphone. This allows direct recording of audio generated by applications simply by enabling audio recording in Snagit or Camtasia. Check your sound card. Some sound cards may also have a mixer control that allows you to map the audio to the microphone input.
    Now with the Real Audio. The two ways I have found that make it possible to convert Real Audio to .mp3 or .wav are Streambox Ripper(versions 2.009 or older) or Jet-Audio Extension. Both of them work real well, in my opinion.
    With all of those tools to avert the crappiness of Real Player, my Real Player is tucked away nice and snug into my Program Files folder, only to be used once in a blue moon to adjust some settings. Please email me any other ways that someone can successfully put Real Player in its place. Have fun! "
     
    I have a Santa Cruz sound card, and was able to change one of its settings, and just like that, I was able to capture the audio using Camtasa. I had also tried HyperCam from http://www.hyperionics.com/, and was having the same problem; I could capture the video but not the audio. Once I got the sound working in Camtasia, I have not gone back and tried HyperCam to see if I could record the sound and video from the streaming Enron movie.

    Online Journal of Distance Learning Administration ---  http://www.westga.edu/~distance/jmain11.html 

    Summer 2004 - Volume 7, Number 2

    Spring 2004 - Volume 7, Number 1

    Winter 2003 - Volume 6, Number 4

    Fall 2003 - Volume 6, Issue 3

    Summer 2003 - Volume 6, Issue 2

    Spring 2003 - Volume 6, Issue 1

    Winter 2002 - Volume 5, Issue 4

    Fall 2002 - Volume 5, Issue 3

    Summer 2002 - Volume 5, Issue 2 Spring 2002 - Volume 5, Issue 1 Winter 2001 - Volume 4, Issue 4 Fall 2001 - Volume 4, Issue 3 Summer 2001 - Volume 4, Issue 2 Spring 2001 - Volume 4, Issue 1 Winter 2000 - Volume 3, Issue 4 Fall 2000 - Volume 3, Issue 3

     

    November 28, 2005 message from Silvia Childs [childs@algebra1help.com]

    Dear Robert,

    Thank you so much for deciding to include a link to our site on your personal web page.

    This is the linking info:

    Suggested Title: Algebra Tutor Suggested Description: Search out instant solutions to nerve-breaking math problems with a downloadable resource designed to help people learn algebra in an easier step-by-step way. URL: http://www.algebra1help.com 

    Search out instant solutions to nerve-breaking math problems with a downloadable resource designed to help people learn algebra in an easier step-by-step way.

    Sincerely,

    Silvia Childs

    Information Technology Sites, From Smart Stops on the Web, Journal of Accountancy, May 2004, Page 23 --- http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/may2004/news_web.htm 

    THE INTERNET
    SMART STOPS ON THE WEB
     
    TECHNOLOGY SITES

    For IT Educators and Leaders
    www.techlearning.com
    Here, CPAs who specialize in IT professional development can find helpful resources such as tips on needs assessment for offices or classrooms and articles including “Data Can Drive Development.” Users also can read software reviews and find links to general search engines as well as to an encyclopedia with more than 20,000 IT terms.

    Free Online Resources
    www.eweek.com
    CPA IT professionals can register for free at this Web stop and enroll in gratis e-seminars on topics such as best practices for enterprise data integration, information security and wireless LAN deployment. Users seeking to advise clients on application storage management systems will want to give them the quick quiz “Do You Need to Automate?” before proceeding.

    Read to Keep Up
    www.technologyreview.com
    In addition to providing free either two hard copies of the magazine or a digital issue, Technology Review offers visitors to its Web site a free subscription to the newsletter Technology Review Update. Other gratis offerings include the sections Predictive Markets, where users can predict future outcomes of IT issues to win prizes, and Research News, which has links to information on industry innovations.

    Less Search Time, More Results
    www.keepmedia.com
    CPAs looking for IT articles from the past 12 years can register here for a free seven-day trial. Users can search more than 150 publications, store favorite articles directly online at this site, keep track of what they’ve looked at—saved or not—and let KeepMedia find other articles based on their previous choices. A general search on the word technology returned more than 14,000 results.

    Telecommuting Technology
    www.langhoff.com
    CPAs working from home or remote locations can find case studies and statistics on this trend through the frequently-asked-questions section at June Langhoff’s Telecommuting Resource Center. Also, visitors can look through the business travelers’ survival guide to find tips and links to airlines, ATM locations and business services for mobile users. Companies interested in starting a work-at-home program can research the costs and get links to model telecommuting agreements and policies.

    “The Silly Con Valley Report”
    www.mikeslist.com
    Don’t be fooled by this Web site’s light tone: Useful nuggets of information, including the latest reports on software designs, how to thwart spam and a 300-Gb hard drive, can be found beneath all the humor. Also, users can read up on the latest in broadband and handheld technology and Windows XP through the newsfeed links as well as join up for a free weekly e-newsletter.

     

    January 30, 2004 message from Carolyn Kotlas [kotlas@email.unc.edu]  

    GUIDE TO CONDUCTING SURVEYS ONLINE

    A 2001 RAND Corporation report, CONDUCTING RESEARCH SURVEYS VIA EMAIL AND THE WEB [ISBN: 0-8330-3110-4], discusses the pros and cons of using email and the Web to conduct research surveys. The authors (Matthias Schonlau, Ronald D. Fricker, Jr., and Marc N. Elliott) provide an overview of the various aspects of the research survey process, guidelines for choosing the type of Internet survey to use, and suggestions for designing and implementing Internet surveys. The report is available for purchase in paperback or online in PDF format, at no charge, at http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1480/

    The RAND Corporation is a nonprofit research organization "providing objective analysis and effective solutions that address the challenges facing the public and private sectors around the world." For more information, link to http://www.rand.org/

    February 29, 2008 message from XXXXX

    Dear Dr. Jensen,

    I have accessed your web site and found it to be very helpful. I am working on a dissertation and need to find an instrument (survey) that has validity and reliability and that will measure student satisfaction with the use of iPODs in a course. With all of your knowledge and expertise, I thought I would take a chance and ask if you possibly could point me in a direction to find such a survey. I appreciate your time assistance.

    February 29, 2008 reply from Bob Jensen

    Hi XXXXX,

    First you might read about what some other schools and people are saying about student hope and satisfaction in this area --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Laptops
    Second you might want to contact professors at places like Duke University that have quite a lot of experience with students use of Ipods. I think there was more hype than subsequent happiness with the results.

    The next thing that I recommend is that you carefully read the module at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statistical_survey
    Also see http://www.answers.com/topic/statistical-survey

    I do not know of a similar survey where you can borrow the survey questions. I suspect that you will have to design your own, and this is a most difficult undertaking. Consider first the goals of using iPods in a course. Then design your questions with those goals in mind. Then test your questions first with survey experts (such as you might find in the Sociology or Marketing Departments) and then conduct a pilot study with students before administering the survey.

    The Survey Monkey can be helpful in designing surveys --- http://www.surveymonkey.com/

    Mike Kearl has some great helpers for survey research --- http://www.trinity.edu/mkearl/methods.html#ms

    You can find some useful resources at http://www.auditnet.org/sampling.htm

    After reading the above basics, you might next consider online surveys. For this I strongly recommend the following publication:

    A 2001 RAND Corporation report, CONDUCTING RESEARCH SURVEYS VIA EMAIL AND THE WEB [ISBN: 0-8330-3110-4], discusses the pros and cons of using email and the Web to conduct research surveys. The authors (Matthias Schonlau, Ronald D. Fricker, Jr., and Marc N. Elliott) provide an overview of the various aspects of the research survey process, guidelines for choosing the type of Internet survey to use, and suggestions for designing and implementing Internet surveys. The report is available for purchase in paperback or online in PDF format, at no charge, at http://www.rand.org/publications/MR/MR1480/
    (the above document description loads very slowly)

    Internet-based surveys, although still in their infancy, are becoming increasingly popular because they are believed to be faster, better, cheaper, and easier to conduct than surveys using more-traditional telephone or mail methods. Based on evidence in the literature and real-life case studies, this book examines the validity of those claims. The authors discuss the advantages and disadvantages of using e-mail and the Web to conduct research surveys, and also offer practical suggestions for designing and implementing Internet surveys most effectively. Among other findings, the authors determined that Internet surveys may be preferable to mail or telephone surveys when a list of e-mail addresses for the target population is available, thus eliminating the need for mail or phone invitations to potential respondents. Internet surveys also are well-suited for larger survey efforts and for some target populations that are difficult to reach by traditional survey methods. Web surveys are conducted more quickly than mail or phone surveys when respondents are contacted initially by e-mail, as is often the case when a representative panel of respondents has been assembled in advance. And, although surveys incur virtually no coding or data-entry costs because the data are captured electronically, the labor costs for design and programming can be high.

    Note Chapter 4 in particular --- http://www.rand.org/pubs/monograph_reports/MR1480/MR1480.ch4.pdf

    Bob Jensen's threads on free online mathematics and statistics tutorials are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/Bookbob2.htm#050421Mathematics

    Great feedback messages on SurveyMonkey.com as a tool for conducting surveys --- http://www.surveymonkey.com/

    Are there any negatives?

    Bob Jensen

    -----Original Message-----
    From:     Davis, Charlene
    Sent: Monday, April 26, 2004 12:44 PM
    Subject: RE: SurveyMonkey.com

    My senate subcommittee also used SurveyMonkey.com for a recent faculty survey and I can tell you that not only does the survey look sharp, the initial set up is fairly easy and the results are available in a variety of downloadable file formats.

    Dr. J. Charlene Davis
    Associate Professor of Marketing
    Department of Business Administration
    302 Chapman Center
    Trinity University
    One Trinity Place
    San Antonio, Texas 78212

    -----Original Message-----
    From: Specht, Linda B.
    Sent: Monday, April 26, 2004 11:40 AM
    Subject: SurveyMonkey.com

    You are probably already aware of this survey tool site, but I was not.  It is really reasonable and the resulting survey is very professional in appearance.  If you have not already answered the survey sent out by our DSS office, do so for an example of the site’s survey.  The pricing is also great.  See below.  I wish I had known about this site earlier this semester when my online survey of accounting programs went out.

    Linda

    Professional Subscription

    A professional subscription is only $19.95/month, and includes up to 1000 responses per month.  If you exceed 1000 survey responses in any given month, there is an additional charge of $0.05 per survey response.  There are no long-term contracts, and you can cancel at any time.  As a professional subscriber, you have access to all of the advanced features of SurveyMonkey.  You can create an unlimited number of surveys, with an unlimited number of pages and questions.  In addition, all of your surveys are completely unbranded.

    Basic Subscription

    A basic subscription is totally free and includes all of the basic features of SurveyMonkey.  It's a great option for individuals, students, and anyone who doesn't need the advanced features of SurveyMonkey.  Unlike other services, there are no annoying banner ads on your surveys.  In addition, all of your survey responses remain absolutely private.  Please note that basic subscribers are limited to a total of 10 questions and 100 responses per survey.

    April 26, 2004 reply from Kevin Kimball [KimballK@BYUH.EDU] 

    Two weeks ago I had created a survey in MC Word that I was to use in assessing my student's perceptions of the BYU-Provo (Norm Nemrow) CD approach to teaching introductory financial accounting. Realizing what a pain it had been in the past to format a Word document to work with our Scantron testing facility (i.e. lining up the words with the bubbles) I decided to try out SurveyMonkey.

    Within a couple hours, I was able to register for a one month license for >$20, create my survey, refine it, and make it available to my students on-line. Within 1/2 hour of making it available, I was already able to see the results from several students who had already taken it. This was much, much better than formatting my Word survey in a Scantron format, making copies of the survey, taking class time to administer the survey, running the survey over to the testing center, running back to get the results, etc. etc.

    Not only can I review the results and download them for further analysis but I can also make them available to any other interested party through a web link.

    So far I have found no negatives, I even saved a few trees and $.

    Sincerely,

    Kevin Kimball 
    Assoc. Professor of Accounting 
    Brigham Young University - Hawaii 
    kimballk@byuh.edu 

     

    April 27, 2004 reply from Dan Stone [dstone@UKY.EDU] 

    I've used surveymonkey over the past year for research, departmental, and class surveys. Before surveymonkey I was designing and implementing surveys in Inquisite (which I do not recommend).

    I like surveymonkey and will continue to use it. It is much more efficient than designing and implementing on-line surveys without this tool. Some important advantages: no browser compatibility problems + easy access to data in multiple formats.

    Negatives:

    1. copying and moving multiple survey sources into a single survey is a big pain. I've asked for this functionality from the surveymonkey developer. It is not there yet. Maybe in the next version? 

    2. setting the parameters can be difficult. I've mis-set parameters and lost data because of this. But hey, this is my fault for inadequately testing my own survey!!!!

    Best,

    Dan Stone

    I encountered two BizEd sites.  Only one of these seems to be from the AACSB.

     

    A service for students and educators on business and economics related subjects. The site contains:

    Current Topics
    A magazine style section with features, daily economics and business news, sample exam questions and a searchable archive of key economics and business issues and events.

    Learning Materials
    Subject by subject resources including notes, worksheets glossaries and more.

    Data
    Data sets and data skills materials.

    Company Info
    Frequently asked questions about various companies, company data and links to company case studies.

    Virtual Worlds
    Large-scale learning resources developed exclusively by Biz/ed including a Virtual Factory and Virtual Economy.

    Internet Resources
    A searchable and browsable catalogue of over 4300 quality checked Internet resources.

    Educators
    A section specially designed to help support teachers and lecturers in schools, colleges and higher education.

    Bob Jensen's threads on resources for educators are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm 

    Download.com is a great helper site (especially for MP3 audio conversions) --- http://download.com.com/2001-20-0.html?legacy=cnet 

    Most Popular  |  New releases  |  Our picks  |  Features & reviews
    MP3 & Audio
    MP3 Search, CD Burners, Players, New releases...

    Internet
    Tools, WebFerret, Chat, Browsers, New releases...

    Games
    Action, Strategy, Casino, Arcade, New releases...

    Business
    E-mail, Taxes, Finance, New releases...

    Mobile
    Palm OS, Pocket PC, Cell phone, New releases...    		 Multimedia & Design
    Video, Image Editing, Animation, New releases...

    Web Developer
    HTML Editors, Site Management, New releases...

    Software Developer
    Tools & Editors, Java, ActiveX, New releases...

    Utilities & Drivers
    Drivers, Antivirus, File Compression, New releases...

    Home & Desktop
    Screensavers, Wallpaper, Themes, New releases...

    Downloads for  Windows  |  Mac  |  Linux  |  Palm  &  Handhelds

     

    Webmonkey's How to Library

    HOW-TO LIBRARY

    Authoring
    Design
    Multimedia
    E-Business
    Programming
    Backend
    Jobs

    Bob Jensen's helpers are linked at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm 

    "Educator-Specific Templates," by Judith B.Rajala, President and Founder of EduHound.com, T.H.E. Journal, September 2003, Page 32 --- http://www.thejournal.com/magazine/vault/A4497.cfm 

    TechKnowLogia --- http://www.techknowlogia.org/ 

    TechKnowLogia is an international online journal that provides policy makers, strategists, practitioners and technologists at the local, national and global levels with a strategic forum to:

    Explore the vital role of different information technologies (print, audio, visual and digital) in the development of human and knowledge capital;
    Share policies, strategies, experiences and tools in harnessing technologies for knowledge dissemination, effective learning, and efficient education services;
    Review the latest systems and products of technologies of today, and peek into the world of tomorrow; and
    Exchange information about resources, knowledge networks and centers of expertise.

    Bob Jensen's threads on education technologies are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

    Bob Jensen's threads on examination technologies and assessment are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/assess.htm#Examinations 

    From Syllabus News on March 25, 2003

    New Products: SCORM Simulation Tool for eLearning Market

    A simulation software company released what it called the first SCORM- compliant simulation software designed for the eLearning market. eHelp Corp. markets RoboHelp, a Flash-based simulation application that enables trainers to create simulations with quizzing and scoring capabilities. The simulations can be integrated with a learning management system, viewed on a Web site or intranet, burned on a CD, e- mailed to an end user or integrated into a Help system. RoboDemo can record the use of any application or on-screen activity, and creates a movie in Flash format with visible and audible mouse clicks. Simulations can be easily enhanced by adding rollover and transparent text captions and images, audio, interactive text fields and click boxes, eLearning-specific features like quizzing, scoring and branching, hyperlinks, and special effects.

    Teaching Tips From Some Veteran Accounting Educators

    We continue to have great experiences with the approach designed by two of our faculty members and described at http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/jan97/factory.htm 

    Ed Scribner 
    New Mexico State University 
    E. Scribner [escribne@NMSU.EDU] 

    The other day, an MBA student (one of the brighter ones), who took a Managerial Accounting course from me last Summer, dropped by my office and we got talking about the course.

    He told me that an episode which the class really appreciated was when I made some paper boats in class. There was an illustration of a boat producer in the class text to illustrate manufacturing and job order costing and I thought I could provide a visual illustration by folding papers into boats as I used to in early grade school.

    The plane white sheets represented direct material and I provided the direct labour. Some papers were partially folded (work in process) and others completely folded in boats (finished goods). I had a small bottle of glue, scotch tape and some paper clips as illustrations of possible overhead costs. I "sold" some of the finished products to the students and removed the boats "sold" as cost of goods sold, from my inventory of finished goods. The whole exercise took 5 mins or less. According to the student, he and the other students got a good understanding of the various manufacturing costs from that exercise.

    I was debating whether I should try little "projects" like the above in class. This was an MBA class and I was afraid that some of the students may perceive such exercises as too "simplistic" or "antics" of the professor they have to bear.

    We had a discussion on the list-serve a year or so ago about "low-tech" teaching aids in accounting and was wondering whether anyone has any recent experience (good, bad or neutral) using some of these teaching aids.

    George Lan 
    University of Windsor

    I use golf balls to illustrate the LIFO, FIFO, and average cost methods. I bring a sleeve (3 balls) of balls with the number 1, one with 2, and one with 3 on them. Then I show how they are interchangeable but if there acquisition cost was different, you have to make some assumptions about which ones were sold and which ones are still in the ending inventory. This works much better than examples on the while board, etc. and I wish I could think of more of them.

    Denny Beresford
    University of Georgia

    I have used different color blocks and tinkertoys. Again it helps the students to visualize the components of a product, and I can create different works cells etc. While not wanting to admit it the students love being able to use (play with) with blocks. They remember the relationships later. I have also used putting the blocks together to help develop standards, and what a time standard can mean.

    Exercises like these take a couple of minutes to make a lasting impression.

    Len
    Stokes, Len     [stokes@SIENA.EDU] 

    Ed Scribner provided a link to this tremendous set of accounting teacher helpers --- http://www.swcollege.com/vircomm/gita/gita_main.html#contents 

    Distance Education Magazines and Journals  http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/crossborder.htm#Resources 

    Think of what this might do for grading records.

    From MIT's Emerging Technologies on April 26, 2004

    Microsoft’s Magic Pen
    If Jian Wang had his way, everything would be digital. “I hate printers—they turn digital things into analog,” he jokes, wading through a sea of cubicles at Microsoft Research Asia in Beijing. Stopping at a desk, Wang picks up a rectangular, silvery pen about the size of a magic marker and scribbles some corrections on a paper document. But this is no ordinary pen. A few seconds later, his comments appear on a nearby computer screen—superimposed on the electronic version of the document in the exact spot where he wrote on the hard copy. Wang’s pen captures handwriting and lets users make changes to digital files—on paper. This “universal pen,” as Wang calls it, could transform the way people interact with computers. Wang’s digital pen also reflects an ongoing transformation in the process of invention at some large corporate labs—a hybridization of the lone inventor and traditional corporate R&D.
    http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/huang0504.asp?trk=nl

    Garfinkel: The Paper Killer
    Optical character recognition software is finally good enough that it can reliably scan paper documents—and let you get rid of them. And the cost of OCR is far lower than that of the alternative: hiring a typist. Columnist Simson Garfinkel is sold on the technology.
    http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/garfinkel0504.asp?trk=nl

    The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Center for Instructional Technology recently revised and updated our guide on multimedia resources. "Multimedia Technology: Recommended Resources" includes recommended books, a list of magazines that cover multimedia topics, and links to multimedia-related associations and conferences. 

    The resource guide is available at http://www.unc.edu/cit/guides/irg-12.html 

    Video and Other Helper Tutorials --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideosSummary.htm 
    (New videos will be added steadily for the next several months.  I love Camtasia.)

    My main tutorial page has shifted to http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm 

    Create your own music on the Web (free) --- http://www.myriad-online.com/enindex.htm 

    NetRipper 2.0 (Photographs, Graphics, Education) http://www.net-ripper.com/index.php 

    Net-Ripper Features Net-Ripper Features
    Net-Ripper turns your favorite Web gallery into a slide show WHILE IT DOWNLOADS! Images are RESIZED TO YOUR SCREEN, and there's NO CLICKING on popups and links! View previously captured images OFF-LINE.
    How does Net-Ripper work? How does Net-Ripper work?
    1. Rips The Best Images from Web Sites.
    Net-Ripper is an enhanced web browser which instantly turns images from web pages into slide shows. Multiple pages are searched at once for images and movies, annoying popup message and banner adverts are skipped, meaning more efficient use of connection time. Net-Ripper also remembers where it's up too, and will carry on grabbing where it left off when a site is visited again.
    2. Creates a Slide show as it Rips.
    The slideshow is created as soon as the first image is downloaded, and plays while Net-Ripper continues to download and add images to the slide show. Images are re-scaled to fit the screen as they are played, there is no need to scroll to see all of a large image, or to reduce screen resolution to make small images a reasonable size.
    3. An Offline Browser. 
    Net-Ripper automatically archive images downloaded for later offline access, displaying all the sites grabbed using thumbnail images. Users can browse through the sites and individual images, deleting those that are no longer required. Any of the archived images can also be displayed as a slide show.

     

    Flowchart Software

    February 19, 2003 message from Richard Campbell [campbell@RIO.EDU] 

    Smartdraw - http://www.smartdraw.com/   - is an excellent choice for auditing and AIS classes. The trial is 30 days - long enough for students to use and learn the basics of flowcharting. I have a Flash animated tutorial on document flowcharting at:

    www.VirtualPublishing.NET/flash.htm 

    Richard J. Campbell

    November 30, 2005 update from Richard Campbell [campbell@RIO.EDU]

    Here is a Smartdraw tutorial:

    http://www.virtualpublishing.net/flash.htm 

    Richard J. Campbell
    mailto:campbell@rio.edu

    December 2, 2005 message from Jagdish S. Gangolly [gangolly@INFOTOC.COM]

    I do not use Visio in my classes, but sometimes I get requests from students if they can use it for projects and homework. I have usually tried to dissuade them from using it. However, I do not discourage them from using the various shapes for drawing within MS Word.

    The reason for my above action is the poverty (more appropriately the absence) of semantics of symbols and lack of integration with the methodologies for the analysis & design of systems. The former makes analytics of the design impossible (at least for systems other than the trivial)and the latter makes its value dubious (the effort expended in documentation doesn't add much in the design or implementation).

    I do use Rational Rose, and now doing planning to introduce the open source software Bonita. In the past, I have used ERWin, Oracle Designer, Excelerator, Together Plus, GD Pro, ... There are also exotic tools such as Exspect, Income,...

    Regards to all,

    Jagdish

    February 20, 2003 message from David R. Fordham [fordhadr@JMU.EDU] 

    I have had excellent luck with plain old Word. I'm mildly surprised there are flowcharting packages still out there, although I applaud the stamina and courage of MS competition.

    Some might not be aware that Word comes with a full palette of flowcharting tools, including a few that are too technical even for us AIS geeks.

    To get to the flowcharting capability in Word, move your mouse into a blank area in the menu bar at the top of your window. Right click to get a list of toolbars. Click on "Drawing". That will put a drawing toolbar in your window. On the drawing toolbar, click on the "Autoshapes" drop-down arrow, and select "Flowchart".

    To create a flowchart, click a shape on the Flowchart Autoshapes toolbox, then go to your document and in the drawing area, drag your mouse across the area where you want the symbol to be.

    You can right-click on the drawing area to resize it. Once you place a symbol on your flowchart, right-click the symbol and select "format autoshape". You can color them, change the line weight and color, and even add fill effects such as shadowing and textures, etc.

    The XP version of Word has 28 flowchart symbols, whereas my old green plastic IBM template has only 21!

    By using other shapes on the Autoshapes menu you can add professional-looking arrows, call-out boxes, pillows and clouds for comments, stars, banners, special lines, etc. You can group shapes, move them to the front or back to let them overlap, and do all sorts of other magic.

    All of this comes standard with Word. I used to have my students use the free sample from Visio, but now, I just show them how to get started in Word, and they do the rest. Flowcharting used to take up two or three days of my systems class, including samples, etc. a dozen years ago. Now it takes up about fifteen minutes, including a walk-through. And the quality of the student submissions and assignments has gone way up, too.

    I give my students a reference page of what the symbols mean and how to use them. See:

    http://cob2.jmu.edu/fordham/flowchart.pdf 

    There are all kinds of "Easter Eggs" like this hidden in modern MS Office packages that can save time and money.

    (Yes, I know that SmartDraw and Visio are much more powerful than Word drawing. But for my purposes, Word can handle most of what my students need to do...)

    David R. Fordham 
    PBGH Faculty Fellow 
    James Madison University

    February 20, 2003 reply from Roberta (Bobbi) Jones [roajones@CALPOLY.EDU] 

    All, Word is OK but it doesn't have "connectors". I use Excel or PowerPoint, both of which have "connectors" that move and change as you shift around the outher symbols. Everything that is available in Word is available in the other two programs as well. 

    Cheers, 

    Bj

    February 20, 2003 reply from Barbara Scofield [scofield_b@UTPB.EDU] 

    My favorite flowcharting software is rfflow ( www.rff.com ) and the advantage of creating the charts on an underlying grid, having labels formatted at the same time as shapes, and moving items with all of the arrows remaining attached is a great timesaver. Plus it has an option that generates html /gif pages for immediate linkage to my website.

    There is a free trial.

    Barbara W. Scofield, PhD, CPA 
    Coordinator of Graduate Business Studies 
    The University of Texas of the Permian Basin 
    4901 E. University Odessa, TX 79762

    November 30, 2005 message from Glen Gray [glen.gray@CSUN.EDU]

    This answer goes beyond Visio 2003, but for AECM members who are in to technology, I suggest subscribing to Microsoft’s MSDN Academic Alliance (see http://msdn.microsoft.com/academic/ ). For one $800 a year subscription, faculty and students can essentially get any Microsoft software (except for Office’s Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) for FREE. Unlimited copies! If you and your students use ONLY Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, then you will not be interested. But if you and/or your students are interested in Access or Visio then you should take a look at this Microsoft subscription. But, Access and Visio are only the tip of the iceberg. With this subscription, we can get SQL Server, all the Window server software, Visual Studio, and on and on. Some of the software you can get for free and have retail prices in the thousands. As you can imagine, our IS faculty and students love this subscription.

    Glen L. Gray, PhD, CPA
    Dept. of Accounting & Information Systems
    College of Business & Economics
    California State University, Northridge
    Northridge, CA 91330-8372
    http://www.csun.edu/~vcact00f 

     

    Teaching AIS and MIS with Microsoft Visio?

    November 30, 2005 message from David Fordham, James Madison University [fordhadr@JMU.EDU]

    I used to use Visio extensively in my teaching, both as a presentation aid and as a tool for teaching students the rudiments of flowcharting and data flow diagramming in my systems courses. I even had the students download and use the freeware version for their own charting assignments.

    However, for the last several years (especially now that flowcharting is making a noticeable comeback in the accounting firms), I've been using the "draw" toolbar in all the Microsoft Office applications: Excel, Word, PowerPoint, etc.

    This toolbar comes with Office, and applies to all Office components. The default installation of office loads it. To get to it, you right click on a blank area in any existing toolbar, and check the "draw" box.

    The draw toolbar has flowchart shapes, the DFD shapes, connectors, arrows, curves, text provisions, and allows formatting of the objects (colors, patterns, textures, borders, shadows, transparency, etc.) enabling it to meet all my needs.

    Diagrams made by using the draw toolbar are portable (via the clipboard) to almost any other application, too, just like Visio drawings used to be.

    As a result, I haven't used Visio in several years now.

    There used to be numerous sites on the web that offered additional template shapes -- things like HO railroad layout shapes, chemical process shapes, etc. -- for downloading and plugging into Visio. I've never needed to use those additional shapes. But since the draw tool has the capability of using clip-art designs as shapes, I would assume that it could incorporate those additional shapes, too, further negating the need for Visio as a separate product. Just my speculation, however.

    David Fordham
    James Madison University Semester in Antwerp program

    JAlbum 2.0 Web Photo Album Generator (free)  http://www.datadosen.se/jalbu 

    Improve your touch typing skills 

    TypingTips --- http://www.typingtips.com/Special/Home1.asp 

    You may contact Roy Oron [info@typingtips.com] 

    First consider whether you really need to take up server space for thousands of video frames. If you have captured speakers at a conference, video of a talking head is a complete waste of space. You can capture one picture of the speaker and accompany it with his or her audio presentation (along with Powerpoint or other computer files that the speaker may share with you). I illustrate this approach at the following links:

    http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/001aaa/atlanta01.htm 

    http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/001cpe/01start.htm 

    http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/000cpe/00start.htm 

    Sometimes all that is needed is the audio. See http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/000overview/mp3/133summ.htm 

    I prefer to record all audio files in MP3. I do this with Roxio Easy CD Creator --- http://www.roxio.com/ 

    For video capturing of my voice along with things that I illustrate in a computer screen, I like Camtasia --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideosSummary.htm 

    Generally, I make a separate file for each video or audio module. I used to use ToolBook for making clips of avi files, but since ToolBook abandoned OpenScript I have not had much luck at clip making.

    I have a super-duper Pinnacle video capture board in my new computer, and you can make clips with Adobe Premiere software that accompanies the Pinnacle System (you can use Premiere with other capture cards as well). However, I do not like my Pinnacle system because it will only capture full screen compressed video (no more avi capturing of smaller windows and lower frame rates). I hate having to capture and store full screen, full motion video that must be played back on special software. Hence, I don't really use my Pinnacle system very often. Whenever possible, I use still pictures with audio.

    Hope this helps a little.

    Bob Jensen

    -----Original Message----- 
    From: James  
    Sent: Wednesday, August 07, 2002 12:58 PM 
    To: rjensen@trinity.edu  
    Subject: video questions and lunch invitation

    Hi Bob,

    I'm not sure you remember me, but we've met and talked a couple of times. I'm writing today to ask you a couple of questions. (I have recently spent 7-8 hours on your web site and don't see the answers there.)

    Here's the context of my questions. I want to begin (take one step) toward develop some online learning materials. For that step, I'm thinking of breaking a video of a talk by some expert or panel of experts into smaller parts, labeling the parts as to the topic discussed, and making them available to the students through the web.

    Questions: 
    1) When you record the typical sessions at the annual meeting do you use a digital video camera? If so, which model?

    2) What software do you use to strip/copy smaller clips out of a longer video? (My understanding of Camtasia is that it's not designed for this purpose.) In your presentations a few years ago, you've said you show a still picture of the speaker and stream only the audio; is that what you still recommend, or has technology advanced enough to make the video idea practicable?

    Are you interested in joining me for lunch during one of the AAA Annual Meeting days? I'll buy. In any case, I am registered for your Accounting for Intangibles and Internet Reporting seminar and will see you then.

    Jim

    Some Technology Resources Available to Educators

    "Accountability: Meeting The Challenge With Technology," Technology & Learning, January 2002, Page 32 --- http://www.techlearning.com/db_area/archives/TL/2002/01/accountb.html 

    I Love Camtasia

    Camtasia Recording and Producing --- http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/video/Tutorials/ 

    I prepared a Camtasia video on how I record Camtasia avi files and how I "produce" a copy of the file as a rm RealMedia file that will play on most computers without having to download the Camtasia Player.  You can read about Camtasia and download a free Camtasia player from http://www.techsmith.com/ 
    (If you can play the rm RealMedia version, you do not need the player to view the videos.)

    Note that if you want to record audio as well as video in Camtasia, it is best to have the microphone on a stand or clipped to your shirt.  You will probably need both hands free for use of the keyboard.

    Also note that you should set up a hot key to toggle between "Record" and "Pause" (I assigned the F9 key for this purpose).  It is common while you are recording to have to do something (such as taking time to bring up another file or refresh you memory on how to perform a task) that you do not want in the video.  To pause the recording process, I simply click on F9.  When I am ready to commence once again, I click on F9 to renew the recording process.  I also assign the F10 key to end the recording process.  You can assign these "HotKeys" in the Camtasia Recorder menu choices (Options, Preferences, Hotkeys).

    Camtasia has panning and zooming options even though the video is not being captured in a "camera."  Panning effects are created by moving  the "camera" (usually from side to side) while keeping the subject in the viewfinder.  Zooming entails making the image more or less magnified.

    Flesh in PowerPoint, Excel, or other presentations with video and audio.  Camtasia works great for both capturing dynamic computer screen presentations in video accompanied by your audio explanations.  Your video files may take up more space that you are allowed on your Web server.  However, you can save them to CD-R or CD-RW disks that can be sold to students for around $1.00 per disk. You can learn more about Camtasia from http://www.techsmith.com/ .  You can make CDs by simply dragging files to a blank CD using Windows Explorer if you first install Easy CD (http://www.roxio.com/en/products/ecdc/ ).

    For my Camtasia tutorial video, see http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideosSummary.htm 

    September 6, 2002 message from Roxio [Roxio_support@adm.cheetahmail.com] 
    Roxio's homepage is at http://www.roxio.com/ 

    Roxio's VideoWave® 5 Power Edition is the complete video editing and DVD authoring solution for demanding users. Now, for a limited time, you can purchase Videowave 5 Power Edition for only $59.95. That's $40 off the suggested retail price!

    Easy Capture: Easily transfer digital or analog** video from your camera to your PC. Powerful Editing: Use professional tools with drag & drop ease. Expert Effects: Create high-end image effects and transitions. DVD Authoring: Burn DVDs to share with friends.

    Take advantage of the $10 instant discount and $30 mail-in rebate!

    Screen Capturing

    Initial Message from Ross Stevenson [ross.stevenson@AUT.AC.NZ] 

    Hi aecmers I would appreciate info on the software you (experts) use to screen dump from an accounting program (such as Mind Your Own Business - MYOB) to a Word document. I'm told there is stuff out there that is much better than 'PrntScrn' Thanks in advance for any responses

    Ross Stevenson 
    Auckland University of Technology NZ

    Reply from James Borden [james.borden@VILLANOVA.EDU] 

    I have always thought that Paint Shop Pro ( http://www.jasc.com/ ) did an excellent job with screen captures (among other things). To me it is one of the all-time great shareware programs!

    Jim Borden 
    Villanova University

    Reply from Bob Jensen [rjensen@trinity.edu] 

    I also use Paint Shop Pro for a picture grab of the screen.  

    For conversion of pictures of text into computer text that can be pasted into MS Word, I use OmniPage Pro --- http://www.caere.com/products/omnipage/pro/ 

    Many scanners now come with text conversion software.

    Bob Jensen
    Trinity University

    Reply from Del DeVries [ddevrie1@UTK.EDU] 

    When is a screen dump not really just a screen print? When you are trying to capture a page which is either larger than a single viewable screen or scrolls (such as web pages).

    I have used Capture EZ Pro, http://www.screencapture.com/ezepro.htm  (shareware), primarily for web page captures (multiple output file format capabilities) where I needed a snapshot of the entire web page - not just a single screen full. The same could apply to accounting systems.

    One additional slick feature is sequential file numbering for capturing multiple web pages (or any screen capture) without taking time to specificially name each file. You specify the leading characters of the file name - the program adds sequential numbering to each successive capture.

    Del DeVries

    Reply from Bob Jensen [rjensen@trinity.edu]

    Del's message is extremely helpful when you want to capture complete images that are larger than the screen.

    However, a better way to capture entire Webpages is to simply use Internet Exlplorer's "File Save as" option for downloading entire Webpages.  Of course, you will get separate files for each picture since the only way a Webpage can show a picture is to link to that picture's file (i.e., pictures are not "pasted" into HTML files like they are pasted into MS Word files.

    If all you want is a picture from a Webpage, it is generally possible to simply right click and save the single picture file.  If you want all the pictures and other items appearing on the page, then you go to File, Save as and choose the entire Webpage option.   It is possible that the Webpage is in Java such that this is not possible, but most web pages are in HTML where this is possible.

    PDF files are more problematic.  Generally the authors let you select text and pictures for copying, but it is possible for the authors to turn off selection permission.  In that case you must resort to EZ Pro, Paint Shop Pro, or one of the other software options for screen capturing.

    Since I stopped using Netscape years ago, I don't know if you can do the same type of Webpage and picture file download using Netscape.

    Bob Jensen

    Reply from Ronald R. Tidd [Ron@RRTIDD.COM] 

    To expand on Bob's comment about using the "File Save As..." option in Internet Explorer to save entire web pages:

    Under Save as File Type, select Web Archive Single file (*.mht) and you will not get separate files for each picture.

    Also take a look at Hyperionics, http://www.hyperionics.com/index.html 

    Ron Tidd

    Reply from Jim McKinney [jim@MCKINNEYCPA.COM]

    For web site capture I usually use Adobe Acrobat. You can download whole sections of a website automatically with the pages date-stamped and source-links printed at the top of the page.

    Jim McKinney
    Howard University

    Reply from Andrew Lymer [a.lymer@BHAM.AC.UK] 

    You could also check out Fullshot from Inbit.com ( http://www.inbit.com ) - I switched to this from SnagIt a while back and prefer it for most things involving quick screen grabs (although agree for post snag manipulation, PSP is better)

    Andy Lymer 
    University of Birmingham, UK

    Reply from Roger Debreceny [rogerd@NETBOX.COM] 

    I like SnagIt from TechSmith ( http://www.techsmith.com/ ), a company that also produces CamTasia and DubIt each of which are also useful producs.

    Roger

    Video Capturing

    Flesh in PowerPoint, Excel, or other presentations with audio normally delivered in lectures.  Camtasia works great for both capturing the presentations and adding audio.  Your video files may take up more space that you are allowed on your Web server.  However, you can save them to CD-R or CD-RW disks that can be sold to students for around $1.00 per disk. You can learn more about Camtasia from http://www.techsmith.com/ .  You can make CDs by simply dragging files to a blank CD using Windows Explorer if you first install Easy CD (http://www.roxio.com/en/products/ecdc/ ).  For video illustrations, see  http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HelpersVideos.htm 

    WHEN CONFLICT GETS PERSONAL
    It is going to happen. Sooner or later, you'll find yourself at loggerheads with a co-worker, or you'll be dragged into somebody else's quarrel. You'll hear gossip or, worse yet, become the target of gossip. Or you may find yourself subjected to language, a dirty joke, or offensive comments that disturb you. No matter what form it takes, a situation like this is a real test of your mettle as a mature adult. How should you respond when a co-worker makes blatantly sexist or racist remarks, calls you (or someone you know who is trustworthy) a ''liar" or a ''cheat," or treats co-workers and subordinates with snobbish and arrogant.
    Peggy and Peter Post, "Questions of etiquette, and answers," Boston Globe, May 8, 2005 --- http://www.boston.com/business/articles/2005/05/08/questions_of_etiquette_and_answers/

    Audio Capturing

    Audio recording depends upon your hardware and your version of Windows at hand (I assume you are running Windows on a PC). Microsoft has an audio recorder on most versions of Windows, but for versions other than Windows ME, the dumb sound recorder is limited to 60 seconds of recording. There are ways of tricking it to record longer files (e.g., by recording over a longer WAV file), but these are all a genuine pain in the tail. I suspect the 60-second limit was a proud effort by Microsoft in the past to show that Bill Gates is not always trying to kill off competitors. In the case of audio recording the leading competitors are SoundBlaster (from Creative Labs) and Turtle Beach.

    To find your sound recorder, click on My Computer, Control Panel, Multimedia. You should find the Windows Sound Recorder. Of course you will first have to find that little jack in the back of your computer where you must plug in a microphone. If you have a sound card such as SoundBlaster, by all means use this great hardware having its own plugs and software. If you don't have a sound card added to your computer, I suggest that you contact your tech support folks and ask them what they recommend. SoundBlaster is probably the best option. See http://www.creativelabs.com/ 

    In the meantime you can try the hardware and software that came with your computer (other than the microphone that is not usually packaged with the computer).

    Most Windows audio recorders record WAV files. These take up useless space, and it is a good idea these days to convert the WAV file that you recorded into an MP3 file.

    My amateur tips on MP3 compression of WAV files can be found below.

    For MP3 information, I recommend going to http://www.howstuffworks.com/mp3.htm  (You have to hit the Next button quite often). I am afraid that I am rather inefficient about this. I record audio as WAV files using my Turtle Beach software. Then I edit (clip, change volume, enhance) the wav files before compressing (converting) into MP3 files. The software I use for compression is called Blade. The link to Blade download options can be found at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book99q4.htm#MP3 

    Easy CD Creator 5 Platinum --- http://www.roxio.com/en/products/cdrpc.jhtml 

    Easy CD Creator 5 Platinum for Windows 95/98/NT/2000/Me goes way beyond the software that came with your CD recorder. Now you can burn and share anything on CD - your music just the way you like it, your photos, your videos - even backup your critical data - faster and easier than ever.

    A utility called Spin Doctor in the above package allows you to record audio directly into MP3 formats on a hard drive.  There are other utilities for editing and burning the files to a CD-R or a CD-RW disk

    There are other alternatives.  For professional work that you are planning, I recommend that you look at more sophisticated software and hardware. For example, you might exercise the free trial offer at http://www.cdr.com/html/play_record.htm   Another very good option is WinRip.  WinRip from InterVideo is an MP3 player and encoder that includes the ability to embed and present in an MP3 file additional information such as lyrics, links and promotions. http://www.newmedia.com/default.asp?articleID=2613 

    Options for recording and composing music are summarized at http://www.cmptv.com/computerchronicles/shows/99-00/1720music/1720-summary.html 

    AudioBase's free MP3 streaming applet, AB3, lets developers put audio into a Web site without needing to use plug-ins. http://www.newmedia.com/default.asp?articleID=2910 

    RealAudio downloads are another matter.

    Hi YYYYY,

    I paid $30 for RealDownload. See http://www.real.com/download/?src=sidenav,international 

    I'm not an expert, but I cannot find where downloads of this type are "files" in the usual sense of a separate file for each download. Instead I get an index to downloaded files that are mysteriously stored in places that I cannot access in any way other than using the player index.

    You might consider doing a RealDownload word search on Google.

    Hope this helps.

    Bob

    Bob,

    I frequently link students to NPR's audio archives on my course web sites. I have found it unwieldy to use these archives in class unless I have an electronic classroom. I have tried making audio cassettes from the archives, but the quality is very poor. Is there any way to download Real Audio files onto my own computer for future playback/manipulations? I haven't figured out how to do this on my own. Thanks for any advice you have on this count.

    YYYYY

    How to copy all or parts of most any CD
    CD-DA Extractor ---  http://www.poikosoft.com/cdda/index.html 

    Easy CD-DA Extractor includes three programs:

    Features include:

    Subject Index to Literature on Electronic Sources of Information http://library.usask.ca/~dworacze/SUBJIN_A.HTM 

     Electronic Sources of Information: A Bibliography http://library.usask.ca/~dworacze/BIBLIO.HTM 

    A Great Summary of Web Instruction Resources 
    Sharon Gray, Instructional Technologist ---     http://inst.augie.edu/%7Egray/ 
    Augustana College, 2001 Summit Ave., Sioux Falls, SD  57197
    gray@inst.augie.edu, 605-274-4907 

    For GREAT comprehensive listing of of Sharon's Web Instruction Resources, go to http://inst.augie.edu/~gray/WBI.html

    Related Sites of Possible Interest

    See the history of course authoring technologies at  http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm 

    Advice to New Faculty and Bob Jensen's Resource Summary can be found at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/newfaculty.htm 

    Bob Jensen's Helpers for Educators at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/default1.htm 

    Bob Jensen's Educator Helpeer Bookmarks at  http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob.htm 

    "Education System Aims to Improve Services for Special Needs Students," T.H.E. Journal, November 21, 2001, p. 38 --- http://www.thejournal.com/magazine/vault/A3712.cfm 

    Help4Life recently launched PortEP, a new collaborative education system that seeks to improve the way schools provide services to students with special needs. PortEP enables educators to help students with behavioral health and learning needs achieve improved results by reducing administrative and logistical barriers so educators can identify, assess and provide interventions more efficiently and with lower costs. The system offers three performance modules for general education intervention,online team evaluations and special education tracking. The general education component delivers a databased problem-solving process that helps teachers identify and quickly help children before major problems develop.

    PortEP also enables educators to coordinate student evaluations online, including input from parents, teachers, psychologists and physicians. The evaluation module makes collecting, organizing and acting on information more efficient, leaving more time for educators to work directly with students and families. The tracking module makes monitoring progress and making corrections less time-consuming, and allows administrators to manage resources more effectively. Help4Life, Nashville, TN, (866) 476-7863,  www.help4life.com .

    Wow Helper Site
    Vidya Ananthanarayanan called my attention to this site from Illinois Online Network --- http://illinois.online.uillinois.edu/IONresources/instructionaldesign/index.html 

    ION Articles
    An Online Course in a Nutshell
    Learning Styles and the Online Environment
    Instructional Strategies for Different Learning Styles
    Elements of Instruction
    Alternatives to the Online Lecture
    Developing Course Objectives
    Discussion Questions
    Example Courses

    Related Resources

    Using Instructional Design Principles to Amplify Learning on the World Wide Web
    By Donn C. Ritchies and Bob Hoffman

    Instructional Elements of an Online Course
    NC State University

    Models of Distance Education
    A paper from the University of Maryland that gives strategies for incorporating Labs into online science courses.

    Instructional Design Online Workshop
    By Robin Eanes, St. Edwards University

    Instructional Design for the New Media
    From Learn Onterio

    Resources for Instructors Creating Online Courses
    Compiled by ION

    What Works and What Doesn't
    Faculty and Student Experiences

    Education Resource Organizations Directory (EROD) from the U.S. Department of Education at http://www.ed.gov/Programs/EROD/ 

    Apple Learning Exchange (included Quicktime video) http://ali.apple.com/ali/ 
    Classified by subject areas and aimed at K-12 teachers.

    TeacherNet (from the U.K.) --- http://www.dfes.gov.uk/teachers/ 

    EDUCAUSE Effective Practices and Solutions --- http://www.educause.edu/ep/ 

    EDUCAUSE has developed this Effective Practices and Solutions (EPS) service to

    This service is entirely member-driven; its success depends on your willingness to share your successes with your colleagues to help them save time and resources. The more practices contributed to the service, the more valuable it will become. Please note that practices in the EPS database have been identified as effective and replicable by their contributors; their value has not been judged by EDUCAUSE. 

    From Syllabus e-News on October 30, 2001

    Wisconsin Picks Instant Messaging Platform

    The University of Wisconsin has licensed the Jabber Communications Platform to provide instant messaging (IM) applications for its 80,000-plus students, faculty and staff. Jabber, an IM applications developer, will provide the real-time communications platform, which can also be extended to provide messaging between students and users of other messaging services like Yahoo or MSN. The IM services will be delivered via the Jabber Instant Messenger client for Windows, developed to ensure the performance of widesrpead deployment of IM. Roger Hanson, a technologist with the University of Wisconsin, said the platform would provide "everything we think our students and faculty will need for spontaneous IM communications."

    For more information, visit: http://www.wisc.edu 

    To read about Amy Dunbar's first experience using AOL's Instant Messaging while teaching an online tax course, go to http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book01q3.htm#dunbar 

    From Syllabus e-News on October 30, 2001

    Michigan Provides Dow Jones Service to B-School

    Dow Jones Newswires said it would provide its flagship equities information service, Dow Jones News Service, to the trading room at the University of Michigan Business School. The school's Trading Room is designed to give students a realistic view of operations on an actual trading floor. Students are required to manage a real investment fund, combining skills acquired in traditional courses with the latest financial technology to develop strategies for portfolio management. Dow Jones news service offers quick, in-depth reports on everything that affects the stock markets. Richard Sloan, a Michigan professor of accounting and finance, said "students now have the opportunity to analyze how security prices react to the release of new information using the same information source as the Wall Street professionals responsible for setting prices."

    For more information, visit: http://www.bus.umich.edu 

    Campus Pipeline Unveils Content Management for Higher Ed

    Campus Pipeline, Inc. introduced what it called the first enterprise content management solution designed for higher education. The Campus Pipeline Luminis Content Management Suite 2.0 is the product of a collaboration between the company, Drexel University, Pepperdine University, and Documentum, a provider of enterprise content management. The software is intended to automate and administer the management of tens of thousands of Web pages, documents, and other digital resources, from multiple contributors, both inside the campus and in the public domain. Drexel chief information officer John A. Bielec said the collaboration allowed the school to "customize the first content management suite for higher education and help many universities address similar needs."

    Bob Jensen's threads on course authoring systems can be found at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm 

    "Web Resources," by Sylvia Charp, T.H.E. Journal, August 2001. Page 10 --- http://www.thejournal.com/magazine/vault/A3553.cfm 

    At present, a great deal of information is free on the Web. But how long it remains free is in question. For example, a bill is now pending before the U.S. House of Representatives that could force the U.S. Department of Energy to end Pub Sciences, its Web database that allows scientists to search abstracts and citations from more than 1,000 scientific journals. Universities are now charging for the use of their resources. The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania is selling a program it developed to provide the school's faculty and senior students with Web-based access to financial data from such providers as Dow Jones and Co., Standard and Poor's and Thomson Financial Services. They claim 55 clients, including 21 of the top 25 ranked business schools.

    Web Graphics and Animation Overview 
    Looking to create your first Web graphic? Jason reveals all, from manipulating existing images to building from scratch, choosing a format to Web optimization, rollovers to animations --- http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/01/28/index1a.html 

    ISWORLD at http://www.isworld.org/isworld/isworldtext.html 

    [What's New] [Top Resources] [Research] [Teaching] [Professional Activities][Country Pages] [ISWorld List Digest] [About ISWorld]

    We will provide information management scholars and practitioners with a single entry point to resources related to information systems technology and promote the development of an international information infrastructure that will dramatically improve the world's ability to use information systems for creating, disseminating, and applying knowledge. Our vision has been sharpened by several metaphors which are accessible. Below are our objectives and a overview of our target community.

    Great AIS links are also provided by Alan Sangster at http://www.qub.ac.uk/mgt/alans/alans.htm 

    I have generated some video aids for my students using Camtasia.  Camtasia is fantastic for showing and explaining something technical such as the application of software or the explanation of homework problems and illustrations in accounting.  Camtasia will capture successions of screen changes and cursor movements on your computer screen.  Camtasia will also capture your voice explanations as you go along.  It will also make audio sounds when you click on the mouse or type on the keyboard.  You may highlight cursor movements for the video.  You can also dub audio, pictures, and video clips into a video that you captured at an earlier point in time.

    Since the Camtasia reader and the compression codec files for playing Camtasia avi files were not installed on any of the Trinity University lab computers, I was worried that my students could not see and hear the video helpers that I created.  Then I discovered that the Camtasia Producer that accompanies the Camtasia recorder will convert the captured avi files into RealMedia (rm) files.  The benefits of converting the avi files to rm files include the following:

    I have placed a Camtasia avi file and a RealMedia file at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/camtasiaSample/ 
    Unless you have installed the Camtasia reader, you probably will prefer to download the RealMedia version of this sample video capture of Exercise 03-07 of the Perry and Schneider book on Accounting Information Systems.

    Be patient when downloading the above files.  The avi version is 29 Mb and the RealMedia version is 14.7 Mb.

    Camtasia from TechSmith is described at http://www.techsmith.com/ 

    Also see the following article praising the pedagogy of Camtasia:

          "A Hassle-free and Inexpensive Way to 'Videotape' Class Lectures," by Rene Leo E. Ordonez,   
          EDUCAUSE Review, September/October 2001, pp. 14-15 --- http://www.educause.edu/pub/er/erm.html 

    Color Contrast & Dimension in News Design --- http://poynter.org/special/colorproject/index.html 

    Explains color theory and shows how to use it in design through examples and exercises.

    An important finance  and economics resource site from Harvard University

    Project Finance Portal http://www.hbs.edu/projfinportal/ 

    Techlearn 2001 at http://www.techlearn2001.com/ features the following learning system demonstrations.

    Technical Learning Demos Linked at http://www.techlearn2001.com/ 
    Product demos
    Building E-Business (Harvard Business School Publishing)
    Element K (Element K)
    KnowledgeNet EXPRESS (KnowledgeNet)
    KnowledgeNet INTERACTIVE (KnowledgeNet)
    KnowledgeNet LIVE (KnowledgeNet)
    learningVista (TM) - a new learning management solution (GlobalLearningSystems)
    Lectora Publisher (Trivantis Corporation)
    Microsoft LRN Courses (CyberstateU.com) (CyberStateU.com)
    MoneyMaker - The Simulator for Sales Professionals (Intermezzon)
    Oracle iLearning - Learning Community Management System (Oracle Corporation)
    Prime eLearning System™ (PrimeLearning.com™ )
    SkillSoft NetUniversity, SkillPort and Web Based Courseware (SkillSoft )
    VIS Custom e-Learning Services (VIS Corporation)

    The Techlearn 2001 website also features a long listing of E-learning products and services at 
    http://www.techlearn.net/elab/layout.cfm?header=mainheader&page=product_selector 

    Assessment Tools
    Associations
    Audio Video Equipment
    Auditing Tools
    Books and Printed Materials
    Collaboration Systems
    Consulting Services
    Courseware
    Development Services
    Enterprise Learning Systems
    Instructional Design Services
    Learning Management Systems
    Learning Service Providers
    Performance Support Systems
    Simulations
    Streaming Technology
    Technology Delivered Learning
    Testing
    Videoconferencing
    Virtual Classroom Systems

    I really enjoy the Digital Duo on PBS.  This is a weekly show largely focused upon technology products you may need and those products you most likely do not need.  The show tends to be critical in a humorous way.  Walt Mossberg (WSJ Technology Editor) always has a module on this show.  The homepage is at http://www.digitalduo.com/index.html 

    Yesterday the Duo (a re-run over the holidays) focused heavily upon digital cameras and websites for developing/storing digital photographs.  The number one point is to avoid Kodak due to high cost relative to competitor alternatives for online developing and storing of photographs.  This show is Number 404 at http://www.digitalduo.com/404_dig.html 

    Note especially the Duo's recommended reference to Imaging Resources at http://www.imaging-resource.com/ 

    Digital Cameras: Reviews
    Digital Cameras: Image Comparisons
    Digital Cameras: Hints, Tips & FAQs
    Scanner Reviews
    News
    Questions? Answers? Visit our Q&A Forum!

    Bob Jensen likes Homestead at http://www.homestead.com/~site/PhotoCenter/index_out.ffhtml 

    One use that many educators are making of digital cameras is in pasting student photographs on seating charts the first week of classes.

    Reply from an OLD Pro accounting educator.

    I've been doing this for about three years now using my Sony Mavica. It is very helpful to me since I have trouble remembering names. Each semester, on the first day of class, I tell them to make sure they have a "good hair day" for the next class because I will be taking their picture.

    However, the primary use of the pictures is to project them on the classroom screen in random order to call on them to answer questions about the lecture, homework, etc. I first started using pictures of students to do this seven and a half years ago using a VHS camera and then capturing one frame for each student on my office PC. My colleague, George Wright and I thought we would be crucified for this approach. In fact, some students hate it but others love it. The bottom line is that it keeps them awake and participating in class because their picture can appear on the screen at any second. When it's up there, it is their turn to answer the question. There is never any doubt about who is being called on. The random aspect adds a lot to the tension. They can never relax.

    Obviously it is much easier to pull this off today with the digital cameras. As far as the software goes, George originally wrote a program to randomly project the old captured .bmp files on the screen. Today we use CompuPic from Photodex to randomly project the .JPG pics. It can be purchased for $39.95 and downloaded at http://www.photodex.com/. A free trial version can also be downloaded. It took me 2-4 hours to digitize the semester's pics in the old days. Today, it takes about five minutes to transfer the semester's pics to the campus network so they can be available to me in any classroom on campus.

    Another technique I use to add a little interest is to use some old, digitized pics of me mixed in with theirs. When my pic comes up, they are off the hook and I have to answer the question. I use two or three different pics of myself during the semester. They seem to get a kick out of the one with my date at the Va. Tech Ring Dance when I was a junior there in 1962.

    I have put a couple of pics on the Web at http://pacioli.loyola.edu/rice/pics/ so you can see the approach I take. I have them hold up a piece of paper with their first name and Rice ID#. We make a big joke about how they looks like pics from a police lineup. I choose these two students because both of them had authorized their pictures being used on the AAA Technology CD-ROM which featured a section on my virtual lecture approach. I don't think they will mind having their pictures her for a month or so.

    Regarding publishing students' pics on the Web, I don't feel a need to do so for my undergraduate classes. However, I have published graduate students' pics with their written permission on our Blackboard Web site for their use for the last two years. They are only available to students in the class.

    I love this approach to keeping students engaged in the learning process and have never understood why I have never heard of anyone else using it. Have any of you done this? If you try it, please let us AECMers know how it worked out.

    Happy New Year!

    Barry Rice www.barryrice.com

    Just for Educators from the AICPA --- http://www.aicpa.org/edu/justedu.htm 

     
    Accounting Education: Charting the Course through a Perilous Future
    Taylor Report on Student and Academic Research Study
    AICPA Core Competency Framework for Entry into the Accounting Profession (The Framework)
    150-Hour Education Requirement
    Academic and Career Development
    Best Academic Practices
    CPA Examination Reformation and Computerization
    CPA Vision Project
    Conferences
    Curriculum Development Guidance
    Education Programs and Services
    Educational and Professional Updates
    Pathfinders
    Publications

    In general, if you need to find out "how something works," I suggest that you commence at http://www.howstuffworks.com/ 

    How Stuff Works is the place for you! Click on the categories below to see hundreds of cool articles.
    • Computers & Internet • Living & Entertainment
    • Engines & Automotive • Around the House
    • Electronics & Communications • Machines
    • Science & Technology • Cool
    • Aviation & Transportation • Buying Guides
    • Body & Health • New HSW Search Engine!

    Try the AskEric Toolbox at http://ericir.syr.edu/Qa/Toolbox/#education 

    Internet Resources from The Chronicle of Higher Education --- http://chronicle.com/free/resources/index.php3 

    From the Learning Edge
    Tools4Teachers --- http://www.thelearningedge.com/t4t/index.htm 
    A directory of recommended educational Web sites for educators, parents and their students.

    eCollege has a very helpful resource website at http://resources.blackboard.com/scholar/general/main.jsp 

    A great place to start in the general topic of education is the Education links page of Yahoo at http://dir.yahoo.com/Education/ 

    Network Social Science Tools and Resources http://www.nesstar.org/ 

    Electronic Commerce Resource Center (e-Commerce, e-Business)  http://www.becrc.org/index.html 

    Research Haven is a student research helper site that may also be of help to faculty --- http://www.geocities.com/CollegePark/6199/ 

    For MP3 compression of WAV files, I use an old (free) version of Blade described at

    http://bladeenc.mp3.no/skeleton/intro.html

    http://showcase.netins.net/web/phdss/mp3/encoders/blade.htm

    "Teachers' Tools for the 21st Century: A Report on Teachers' Use of Technology" is available online at 
http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2000/2000102.pdf

    I might give you some advice following my first try at using BladeEnc to covert WAV audio files into MP3 audio files.

    I downloaded BladeEnc from ZDnet at http://www.zdnet.com/ (simply type BladeEnc into the search box).

    Either turn off your screen saver or turn it temporarily up to a high enough number so that your screen saver does not kick in during the process of creating MP3 files. The screen saver does not stop the process, but you may get a blank screen that makes you think the program has crashed when it has not really crashed.

    I found it easier to copy my WAV files into the same folder as the BladeEnc.exe program.

    Recall how in may cases you can either run a program or drag files over a program (e.g., in Windows Explorer). For example, you can run Notepad.exe and then click on (File, Open) to load a txt file. Or you can use Windows Explorer and simply drag the txt file over Notepad.exe without opening Notepad.exe ahead of time.

    With BladeEnc you cannot run BladeEnc.exe and then load your WAV file into the open window. Instead you simply drag the WAV file over the BladeEnc.exe file and it automatically commences to covert that file into an MP3 file. When it is finished, you have both the original WAV file and a new MP3 file.

    In Windows Explorer you can hold down the Shift Key and multiple select files to drag over the BladeEnc.exe file. This will record the selected files automatically. However, I could not get this feature to work for a large selection of more than 12 files. Hence, I converted about 10-12 files at a crack.

    I no longer use BladeEnc.  It is so much easier to record MP3 audio using  Roxio's SoundStream in Easy CD Creater --- http://www.roxio.com/en/products/ecdc/index.jhtml 

    September 4, 2002 message from Richard Campbell [campbell@RIO.EDU] 
    Richard has remained a ToolBook loyalist while many of us former ToolBook enthusiasts gave up on Assymetrix/Click2Learn

    This site may be bigger than Bob Jensen's. Has all sorts of links on multimedia.

    http://www.inet.com.br/~mhavila/link/ 

    Richard Campbell

    Márcio's Hyperlink - Welcome!

    This site is a resource reference on authoring and development technology for Internet and Multimedia. There are over 2600 links with descriptions, organized into dozens of categories and frequently updated. The primary sections are summarized in the Index below.

    The information here is devoted to professionals in development and infra-structure activities on Internet and Multimedia: developers, authors, programmers, designers and administrators of information systems and IT, as well as graphic artists, content producers, electronic media professionals, technicians and other people involved with or interested in these technologies.

    Index

    Click2learn ToolBook
    Primary Help Sources, References covering Deployment and Runtime, ToolBook Sites, Utilities and Samples. ToolBook Information: Tutorials, Courses, Articles, Books, Discussion Groups.

    Multimedia
    General, Authoring, Hardware, CD, Media, Text, Images, Video, Audio, ActiveX, Education, Interactivity.

    Internet
    Web Authoring, HTML, Web Design, Images, Multimtedia, Tools, Programming, Server-Side, Security, XML, Entities, Protocols, Topics.

    Programming
    Java, Perl, Delphi, Python, Tcl / Tk, Tools, Software Engineering.

    Database
    SQL, Informação sobre banco de dados, Oracle, Outros SGBDs comerciais, SGBDs open source e freeware.

    Unix & Linux
    Unix, Linux, Variantes Unix, X Window System, Software.

    Webmonkey's Dreamweaver 4 Overview --- http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/01/01/index1a.html 

    There are new graphics editing features, a revamped user interface design, improved code handling support, and a heap of features specifically designed to help you get the most out of your Web development experience.

    By increasing the developer-friendliness of Dreamweaver in this version, Macromedia -- also the proud parent of Flash, Fireworks, and Generator -- looks to be really making it's move to become the one-stop shop for all of the development tools you need, and there's a great deal of inbreeding and cross-referencing among the Macromedia products: Dreamweaver 4 is being released along side Dreamweaver UltraDev 4 and Fireworks 4, so as we evaluate Dreamweaver 4, we'll also be taking a look at some of the cross-product integration that has been added to the lastest versions of the software applications.

    Webmonkey's summary of digital storage options --- http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/00/22/index3a.html 

    Webmonkey's How To Library

    Authoring
    Design
    Multimedia
    E-Business
    Programming
    Backend
    Jobs

    Threaded Discussion of ColdFusion --- http://hotwired.lycos.com/webmonkey/00/48/index0a.html 

    Carnegie Foundation for Advancement in Teaching --- http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/ 

    Andrew Carnegie founded The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching in 1905, "to do all things necessary to encourage, uphold and dignify the profession of teaching." The Foundation is the only advanced study center for teachers in the world and the third oldest foundation in the nation. A small group of distinguished scholars conducts the Foundation's research activities.

    New Publication --- http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/WhatsNew/docs/new.htm#opening 

    Essays by eight Carnegie Scholars that:

    Includes a CD-ROM with valuable resources and supplemental information.

    Order from: Carnegie Publications
    The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching
    555 Middlefield Rd.
    Menlo Park, CA 94025
    Phone: 650/ 566-5128
    Fax: 650/326-0278
    publications@carnegiefoundation.org

    Single copies are $15, with a 20 percent discount on orders of 20 or more

    Read the Introduction and Conclusion at http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/eLibrary/approaching.htm 

    The cases that constitute this volume represent work in progress by faculty selected as Carnegie Scholars with the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (CASTL). Each of the eight authors tells the story of her or his efforts at "opening lines" of inquiry into significant issues in the teaching and learning of the field. In particular, their accounts focus on the doing of this kind of investigative work—that is, on methods and approaches for undertaking the scholarship of teaching and learning.

    A key principle of this volume is that there is no single best method or approach for conducting the scholarship of teaching and learning. Indeed, the cases illustrate a need for approaches that are useful and doable in the varied contexts represented by their authors. Mills Kelly, for instance, explores questions about teaching and learning at a large public research university; Donna Duffy undertakes her investigation in the quite different setting of a community college. Both public and private institutions are represented; several are urban, one is Catholic, and another, Spelman, is an historically black college for women. The authors' fields are diverse as well, including humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, business, and an interdisciplinary program. Several of the eight are senior faculty, well along in their academic careers; one is not yet tenured. All of these differences play into the way the authors think about and undertake their scholarship of teaching and learning. The desire to illustrate a variety of approaches, and to preserve the contexts and particulars of their use, underlies our decision to build this volume around cases. Cases capture details and differences.

    But readers will find common themes as well. The cases were developed through a process designed to reveal aspects of the scholarship of teaching and learning that crosscut contexts and fields. This process began with two-hour phone interviews, conducted by me with each of the authors. The interview was turned into a rough transcript, which the author then reworked around a set of common topics or questions that emerged as the interviews were undertaken, and which appear as more or less standard headings in the finished cases collected here. For instance, all of the authors describe the process of formulating their question or questions. Each also describes the investigative strategies he or she considered using, how choices were made among these, how the various approaches worked or didn't, and what was learned from doing the work. In a final section of each case, the author offers advice to faculty newly undertaking the scholarship of teaching and learning. Our hope is that by organizing the cases around a set of standard elements we have made it easier for readers to extract transferable lessons and themes they can apply in their own work.

    As a further aid to this task, an accompanying CD-ROM provides additional information and resources. For instance, Dennis Jacobs talks, in his case, about a focus group protocol he adapted and used as part of his study of at-risk students in chemistry; that protocol appears in the "analytical tools" section of the CD-ROM, where it can be accessed, adapted, and used by readers. Additionally, the CD offers samples of student work, artifacts such as syllabi and exams, and links to electronic course portfolios as well as leads to further resources relevant to "how to" questions.

    More at http://www.carnegiefoundation.org/eLibrary/approaching.htm  

    ADEC Resource Site --- http://www.adec.edu/user/excellence.html 

    Microsoft Office News and Updates (Windows, Word, Excel, etc.) --- http://www.wopr.com/ 
    Woody's Office Portal includes free tips on use of MS Office software and free newsletters
    Example: the Placebar Customizer (for the Start bar in Windows) --- http://www.wopr.com/office2000/placebar.htm

    The WOPR PlaceBar Customizer is a powerful tool that allows you to customize the Office 2000 common dialog's Places Bar.

    The Placebar Customizer is only available as part of the WOPR 2000 add-in collection, which is included free with Woody Leonhard's new book titled Using Microsoft Office 2000, Special Edition.

    The free Journal of Accountancy has a monthly column called Technology Q&A.
    This is a great source for tips on how to use MS Office products, particularly tips on using Excel --- http://www.aicpa.org/pubs/jofa/joahome.htm 

    Bob Jensen's Threads summarize more resources at  http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/threads.htm 
    Helpers for Educators --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ 
    Bookmarks --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob.htm 

    Research Links

    * Book Store  
    Looking for cheap books, CD's, software.  Chapters.Ca offers everything you need, and best of all, at Canadian prices, stretch your US dollar as far as possible..
    * Get Your Free EMAIL account here. 
    Partnering with everyone.net, we are please to provide you with you very own e-mail address.  Forget about Hotmail and give us a try.
    * Start Earning Money Today  
    Looking at making a little profit on the internet?  Check out some of these amazing new business opportunities.  Within minutes you could be making money at no cost to you.
    * Participate in Surveys and Focus Groups
    Green Field Online offers you an opportunity to participate in live surveys and discussion groups.
    * Building a Web Site
    All the tools and sites you need to build or upgrade your web site.
    * On-line Dictionaries Thesaurus and Famous Quotes.
    Our on-line dictionaries and thesaurus as well as a list of famous quotes are perfect companion to any research paper.
    * On-line Resources
    Don't have time to run to the library. Check our extensive listing or on-line journals, magazines and newspapers for past and current issues.
    * On-line Libraries
    Trying to save yourself a trip to the library. Check these on line libraries which include most Universities and Government organizations in North America.
    * Tutorials
    Having trouble where to begin or are you just looking for some assistance in your research paper. Check these sites on steps to writing papers, formatting, and basic study tips and much more.
    * Free Research Papers and Writing Services
    Lost for a place to start. Check this extensive list of pre-written essays and research-writing services.
    * Fun Places to Visit

    For a listing of Yahoo's top distance education websites, go to http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/245progs.htm#Yahoo 

    One of Yahoo's winners is The Journal of Library Services for Distance Education at http://www.westga.edu/~library/jlsde/ 

    Another Yahoo pick is the University of Idaho's Engineering Outreach program at http://www.uidaho.edu/evo/distglan.html 
    This is a very important website for links to resources and advice to faculty and students.  For more on resources, go go my Helpers for new faculty at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/newfaculty.htm 

    Another one of the leading top Yahoo picks is UNext (see below).

    Wow Aid for Student Writing and Research

    McGraw-Hill Higher Education Launches Innovative Catalyst Writing and Research Tool Available in Handheld Format Companion to "A Writer's Resource" text also available Online and on CD-ROM --- http://www.creativepro.com/story/news/19060.html 

    McGraw-Hill Higher Education, a leading provider of electronic and print learning solutions, today unveiled Catalyst: A Tool for Writing and Research, a unique technology-based tool that enhances students' composition and research skills.

    Catalyst is thoroughly integrated with "A Writer's Resource," the leading student-centered text designed as a resource for achieving excellence in writing and learning. This powerful teaching and learning solution includes resources in Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) downloadable format, online, and on CD-ROM, including tools for learning, research, writing, and editing.

    "Catalyst utilizes today's technologies to access proven writing, research and composition resources," said Ed Stanford, president of McGraw-Hill Higher Education. "With Catalyst, students now have instant support at their fingertips for writing assignments in composition class and all other subjects."

    Major features of Catalyst include:

    Catalyst is available free of charge with every copy of "A Writer's Resource" for online and/or PDA use. It may also be purchased separately on CD-ROM, which includes access to all online material, including the download for PDAs.

    To view the online brochure for Catalyst, visit http://www.mhhe.com/wmg/catalyst. Catalyst will also be featured in an ongoing demonstration at the McGraw-Hill Higher Education exhibit at the 54th Annual Conference on College Composition and Communication, held at the Hilton Hotel in New York on March 20-22.

    McGraw-Hill Higher Education is a leading global provider of educational materials and professional information targeted at the higher education market. It is part of McGraw-Hill Education, a division of The McGraw-Hill Companies, a global information services provider meeting worldwide needs in financial services, education and business-to-business information through leading brands such as Standard & Poor's and BusinessWeek. Founded in 1888, the Corporation has more than 350 offices in 33 countries. Sales in 2002 were $4.8 billion. Additional information is available at www.mcgraw-hill.com.

    UNext is best known for its prestige partnerings with Stanford University, Columbia University, Carnegie-Mellon University, the University of Chicago, and the London School of Economics.  The first major product of UNext is Cardean University.

    The UNext website is at http://www.unext.com/ 

    The Cardean University website is at http://www.cardean.com/cgi-bin/cardean1/view/public_home.jsp 

    Pensare is another corporation partnering with such prestige universities as Duke, Harvard, Penn (Wharton), and USC.  See http://www.pensare.com/frame_expert.htm 

    Penn's Wharton School of Business has partnered with IBM --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/245prest.htm#Wharton01 

    You can read more about these and other prestige partnerings at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/245prest.htm 

    Facing Up to Multivariate Data

    The Future of Faces These days, all the hot-shot graphics folks are trying to figure out how to create realistic human faces with computer imagery. But photorealism can be pretty creepy. http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/blog.asp?blogID=1444&trk=nl 

    In 1971 was at Stanford University when Herman Chernoff developed the interesting theory for depicting multivariate data as features of faces that could be compared visually by humans.  I later applied his computer program in a AAA monograph: Jensen, R.E. (1976). Phantasmagoric accounting: Research and analysis of economic, social and environmental impact of corporate business, Studies in Accounting Research #14 (Sarasota, FL: American Accounting Association, Chapter 6)

    Shane Moriarity later applied this program in a financial reporting experimentr.  
    Moriarity, S. (1979). "Communicating financial information through multidimesional graphics," Journal of Accounting Research 17, Spring, 205-224.

    For more on this see http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/00jensen/research/232wp/232wp.doc and http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/00jensen/research/232wp/232head.doc 

    June 11, 2004 reply from Jagdish Gangolly [JGangolly@UAMAIL.ALBANY.EDU] 

    Bob,
     
    Nowadays it is very easy to draw these faces. I give drawing them for financial data as a routine exercise
    in my graduate statistics course (I usually ask the students to take paired samples of
    companies that failed/did not fail, and try various permutations of features/data to determine which assignment
    of data to features seem to produce reasonable fit.
     
    There are many programs that help draw these (S-Plus, my favourite, has 'faces' routine; 'faces' in SAS even draws
    asymmetric faces). Some standalone programs that   do the same include:
     
    http://people.cs.uchicago.edu/~wiseman/chernoff/
    http://hesketh.com/schampeo/projects/Faces/chernoff.html
     
    Some tutorials on faces are:
     
    Visualization Techniques of Different Dimensions http://seamonkey.ed.asu.edu/~behrens/asu/reports/compre/comp1.html

    Scientific Visualisation: A Practical Introduction: A one day course http://www.epcc.ed.ac.uk/computing/training/document_archive/SciVis-course/SciVis.book_1.html

     
    Jagdish

    "Animated face helps deaf with phone chat," by Will Knight, NewScientist.com, August 4, 2004 --- http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996228 

    Software that creates an animated face to match someone talking on the other end of a phone line can help people with hearing difficulties converse, suggests a new study.

    The animated face provides a realistic impersonation of a person speaking, enabling lip-readers to follow the conversation visually as well as audibly.

    The prototype system, called Synface, helped 84 percent of participants to recognise words and chat normally over the telephone in recently completed trials by the UK's Royal National Institute for the Deaf (RNID).

    The RNID trials involved hard-of-hearing volunteers trying to decipher preset sentences and also taking part in real conversations.

    Synface takes around 200 milliseconds - one fifth of a second - to generate the animated annunciations. But the system incorporates a fractional delay, so that the face is perfectly synchronised with the voice on the end of the line.

    Regional dialects

    Synface runs on an ordinary laptop and can be connected to any type of phone, including a cell phone. It uses a neural network to match voice to mouth movements. This mimics the way neurons operate inside the brain and can be trained to recognise patterns.

    The neural network used by Synface identifies particular sounds, or "phonemes", rather than entire words. This has been shown to be a particularly fast way of matching words to animation. By concentrating on sounds the system can also represent words that it has not encountered previously.

    The technology is not meant to assist people who are profoundly deaf, but rather those who have some hearing difficulties. Around one in seven people in western countries fall into this category. So far, Synface has been trained to work in English, Swedish and Dutch. It could also be fine-tuned to recognise different regional dialects.

    "The accuracy still needs to be improved," admits Neil Thomas, head of product development at the RNID. But he says it could eventually make life easier for many people who have trouble hearing.

    "There are a lot of people who struggle with using the telephone," Thomas told New Scientist. "It really gives them an added level of confidence."

    The system was developed by researchers at Royal Institute of Technology, in Stockholm, Sweden, University College London, UK as well as Dutch software company Viataal and Belgian voice analysis firm Babletech.

     

     

    Replays from Daring Educators on the Leading Edge of Education Technologies

    Free Audio and Presentation Files of Three Days of Workshops on Education Technologies --- 
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/CPEshows/CPEmenu.htm     

    Bob Jensen's Recent CPE/CEP Technology Workshops at the American Accounting Association Annual Meetings

    During the past decade, I have organized at least one all-day technology in education workshop at each of the American Accounting Association annual meetings.  In the early years, these were not videotaped.  The past three workshops were videotaped.  Both the presentation materials and the MP3 audio files of the various speakers can be downloaded from the following links:

    San Antonio on August 13, 2002 
    CPE/CEP Workshop Number 1 --- http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/002cpe/02start.htm 

    Free audio and presentation files of the following speakers:
    http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/002cpe/02start.htm 

    Atlanta on August 11, 2001
    CPE/CEP Workshop Number 1 --- http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/001cpe/01start.htm

    Free audio and presentation files of the following speakers:
    http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/001cpe/01start.htm

    Philadelphia on August 12, 2000
     CPE/CEP Workshop Number 1 --- http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/000cpe/00start.htm

    Free audio and presentation files of the following speakers:
    http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/000cpe/00start.htm

    Drama Simulations --- http://www.cob.tamucc.edu/ATABestPrac2K/drama-simulations.htm 
    (Including the use of Lego constructions in cost accounting classes.)

    January 21, 2003 reply from Paul Williams [williamsp@COMFS1.COM.NCSU.EDU] 

    Jagdish, et al,

    Wonderfully said. The Daily Chronicle of Higher Education has a very relevant article today by Peter Monaghan ( http://chronicle.com/weekly/v49/i20/20a01201.htm ) about the plight of economics ("Taking on 'Rational Man': dissident economists fight for a niche in the discipline") that begins with the sentence "How do you start a fire under a huge wet blanket?" The same can be said for accounting, which has been suckered into understanding itself as a purely imaginary activity through the language of neo-classical (now new-classical) economics. Jagdish observations are spot on. The Post-Autistic Economic Review referred to in the article may be found at http://www.paecon.net . Subscriptions are free.

    PFW

    On 18 Jan 03, at 17:00, J. S. Gangolly wrote:

    I do not believe any one professor will teach accounting without the   concepts. the use of computers will in fact enhance the chance and   give more time for students to understand the concepts rather than   spend long hours on figuring out where is the difference between   the debit and credit totals on the financial statements came from,   or post repeated journal entries that follow the same theory and   commit mistakes as students do that.... (I know that you can commit   mistakes when using the computer, but these mistakes will be found   quicker, or worst to happen we could blame the computer if we are   disparate) I guess we need to remember always that accounting was   the first business function to be computerized with the basic   accounting machine. So now we have the opportunity to graduate   students who were taught and trained to be accountants.  

    I have been reading the postings on concepts, procedures,... Let me as  usual play the devil's advocate once again.   Accounting, like law, is a language. An in depth understanding of any  language requires knowledge of all its aspects: lexicon, syntax,  lexical semantics, semantics, as well as pragmatics (spoken languages,  in addition, require knowledge of phonetics). Like law, accounting is  rich in its lexicon. However, in many ways, unlike law, accounting is  rather simple in its syntax, and rather poor in terms of semantics.  Accounting is also quite primitive compared with the law in the  importance attached to reasoning. That we should define most concepts  by citing examples or clear explication with a laundry list of  exceptions rather than clear explication of lexical semantics attests  to this argument.  

    What is lacking in accounting, as I have stated in much of my work,  is the utter lack of a hermeneutic tradition that clarifies the  semantics of concepts, procedures, principles, and in general  reasoning about all of these entities. In the legal discipline, such a  hermeneutic tradition in the nature of exegesis of text forms the  bedrock on which the discipline itself is built and the legal  education is practiced. We, on the other hand are pretending to be  numbers people, ignoring that numbers take on meaning only in the  context of the surrounding text and the standards.   This lacuna makes accounting that much less interesting from the point  of the students as well as teachers. When I taught intro courses, I  found that the best students did not find accounting interesting  enough because of lack of analytical thinking (except in a trivial  double-entry sense) and hermeneutics in the above sense. Now I find  that most of my better students exit the profession for the same  reason: not because of its hard-ness or their failure to advance, but  simply because they simply do not find it intellectually challenging.   Many years ago, when I took an accounting course (it used to be called  Book-keeping & Commercial Arithmetic), it was taught the way law is  taught in a law school, and I found it fascinating, even though then I  was an outsider, an actuarial student.   I do hope we find a way to harness the richness of our language in all  its aspects and glory rather than concentrate just on the lexicon and  the syntax, both of which are rather quite uninteresting in the  absence of the rest of the aspects.  

    Jagdish S. Gangolly,
    Associate Professor ( j.gangolly@albany.edu ) 
    Accounting & Law and Management Science & Information Systems
    State  University of New York at Albany,
    Albany, NY 12222.
    URL: http://www.albany.edu/acc/gangolly

     

    Should I give students what they want or what they need?

    Generally, good students will master the material under most any pedagogy as long as they are clear about what they have to learn. They may, however, not learn at the same rates under different pedagogies. Technologies generally increase the rate of learning, but they do not necessarily improve long-term recall of what has been learned.

    Pedagogy may have more dramatic impacts on long-term memory than on short term performance across a given semester. These issues are taken up in Working Paper 265 at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/265wp.htm.  One of the real problems is that what students want versus what they need differs dramatically.  Students want us to make complex material fun, easy, and crystal clear. They want us to teach as if we can pour knowledge into their brains like a stop at a full-service gas pump! But for their own good, they are better off struggling on their own with lots of sweat, stress, ambiguity, competition, and even fear. It's a pity that our brains tend to work better when things learned were not learned easily! Thus we have a conflict between what students want and what they really need. There are no easy shortcuts with or without technology.  One problem with technology is the urge to make learning unambiguous and crystal clear in hypertext and hypermedia routings.  But preparing students for ambiguities they will encounter  in their careers should entail learning to cope with ambiguities that do not have routing lights.  Students think learning should be on a lighted path, when, in fact, the best learning entails groping in the dark.  Unfortunately students do not usually appreciate this until they graduate and discover that most roads in life are not lighted.

    Formal studies of technology versus traditional courses are almost useless. One problem is that technologies keep changing, and therefore anything discovered a year ago may not apply under new software, new learning materials, new uses of chat rooms, etc. Another problem is the Hawthorne effect problem that tends to bias outcomes in favor of technology applications. Still another problem is that both instructors who use technology and instructors who do not use technology tend to revise, adapt, add to, and otherwise change courses every time the course is taught. Comparing performance over time is very risky even when comparing two or more semesters of traditional courses.  In addition, each class tends to take on a life of its own.  For example, a case that worked wonderfully in one course may fall flat in another course.

    There is little doubt that technology probably improves both the effectiveness and efficiency of training (military experiments repeatedly bear this out). This may carry over into education, but with education there are many more variables and much more complex goals in learning and motivation. Results are less clear cut in the education arena. Hence, any published study comparing educational outcomes should always be viewed with skepticism.  

    Other advantages and disadvantages are dealt with much more extensively in Chapter 2 entitled "Why? The Paradigm Shift in Computer-Aided Teaching/Instruction and Network Learning" at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/245ch02.htm 

     

    How can I author my web materials?

    Other advantages and disadvantages are dealt with much more extensively in Chapter 2 at http://www.trinity.edu/~rjensen/245ch02.htm. And it is too costly and troublesome to maintain your own server, invest in backup servers, and have around-the-clock technician service for a Webserver in your office. If your students are depending on a web server, you just do not want to have the server be unreliable. In fact, some universities have such unreliable servers that faculty have chosen to install courses on some of the "External System Web Authoring Shell Alternatives That Do Provide External Servers" -see http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/290wp/290wp.htm  .

    Alternative web authoring and delivery systems are critically analyzed at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/245soft1.htm 

    Alternatives for creating MP3 audio files are given at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book99q4.htm#MP3 

    Should I Publish My Research and Teaching Materials on the Web?

    This is a complex issue for which there is no easy answer.  The spirit of education and research is to freely share your intellectual property.  I tend to do this more than many professors, and the messages of gratitude from literally all parts of the world sometimes bring tears to my eyes.  But for younger faculty, such a spirit of sharing must be constrained by individual circumstances.  Universities have an interest in both your course materials and your research.  You must be aware of what restraints are imposed by your employer.  

    In the 21st Century, the rights of professors versus the rights of universities are being pitted against one another.  These issues, including the lawsuit of Harvard University against one of its own professors, is reviewed at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/245prest.htm.  

    There is no crime in putting a price on your intellectual property.  The Harvard Business School charges $10,000 just to have breakfast with selected faculty members.  If there were no monetary rewards for development of both hard copy and hypermedia learning materials, the world will be deprived of great works that would just not be developed without rewards for effort and risk taking.

    For tenure, promotion, performance rewards, self respect, and reputation, professors must conduct research and publish research findings in refereed outlets (usually hard copy and/or online research journals).  When an article is published isn such outlets, it is common for the author to lose control over distribution rights.  The journal that accepts your paper may not allow you to make that paper available for free at a website.  In some ways that is unfortunate because this freezes your paper in time.  I prefer to publish "living documents" that sometimes change almost daily.  For example, the document you are reading now will be frozen in the American Accounting Association's New Faculty Handbook.  However, I am assuming that the AAA will also let me keep this document posted at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/newfaculty.htm.  I will probably update and modify the online living document from time to time.  That is what makes web publishing so great.  It does, however, create refereeing problems if the author can freely change the content of a document that was refereed and an earlier point in time.

    The following appears under "Promotions, Tenure, & Risk-Taking by Daring Educators" at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ideasmes.htm

    From: [Name Deleted]
    Sent: Tuesday, January 20, 1998 12:40 PM
    To: rjensen@trinity.edu
    Subject: Web projects

    Dear Bob,

    Thanks for sending along your web assignment and its rationale. I’m interested in doing a book-length project that has web links to my own set of materials and exercises. Or even doing the whole book in this way.

    Question is, does one receive academic credit for producing work on the internet? Have you ever discussed this with the Administration?

    Thanks,

    [Name of the Trinity University Faculty Member Deleted]

    ========================================================================

    Reply from Bob Jensen

    Hi ______

    One problem with web publishing is that if you submit your stuff to a top journal, the editor wants you to hide your research from the world until the journal gets around to publishing your work (which in a recent case took five years "in press" for an accepted Jensen and Sandlin article to finally get published). I recently had another paper accepted for publication. Then I had a long ‘fight" with the editor over whether I can keep a "live" and ever-changing version of the essence of that paper at my web site.

    I have discussed web publishing with administrators in many universities. They have not and cannot take much of an official position without action by the faculty. Matters of promotion and tenure are pretty well decided all along the way (departmental faculty, Chair, Dean, and P&T comittee) with rare administrative reversals of recommendations. Faculty bring individual biases into peer evaluation, and ,at the moment, web publishing is a new thing to most of them. Until the peer evaluation culture is changed, web publishing will not count heavily toward promotion, tenure, or take home pay.

    The main issue is that web publishing is not refereed with the same rigor as refereeing in leading journals, or, in most cases, is not refereed at all. This is a concern because it is pretty easy to disguise garbage as treasure at a web site. Leading journals will one day offer refereeing services for web publishing and may, in fact, do away with their hard copy editions. Until then what do we do? Most certainly we do not put up a web counter and brag about the number of hits --- Playboy probably gets more hits per day than all professors combined.

    Somewhat of a substitute for hard core refereeing is a record of correspondence that is received from scholars and students who use your web documents. This lacks the anonymity of the refereeing process. Also, there are opportunities to cheat (I’ll lavishly praise your work if you will adore mine in a succession of email messages), but most scholars have more integrity than to organize that sort of conspiracy. If you have a file of correspondence from people that your peers know and respect, chances are that your peers will take notice. You can include copies of this correspondence in your performance reports, but this process is more anecdotal than the genuine blind refereeing process.

    Until a rigorous web refereeing process is established, those who must evaluate a web publisher must do more work. They must study your web materials and make their own judgments regarding quality and relevance. It is much easier to simply tick off the refereed hits (for when the binary scorer comes to write against your name, he writes only ones or zeros; to him the unread articles are all the same). It is easy to become too cynical about the refereeing process. We have all had frustrations with what we considered to be bad referees, including acceptances of our weaker output and rejections of our best work. At my web site, I have a section for my "big ones that got away" (see http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/#BigOnes).   Refereeing is a little like democracy --- it ain’t perfect, but until a better system comes along it beats the alternatives over the long haul.

    My trouble, and I suspect that others have the same problem, is that web publishing is addictive. The responses that you get from around the world set "your tail wagging." I have published many papers and several books (a sign of my advanced age), but I have never had the "action" following hard copy publication that I get from web publication. There are many reasons for this, including the fact that more people than you can imagine stumble upon your web documents while using a search engine on the web. Not all of them send you nice messages, but a typical message received by me is reproduced be low:

    ==================================================================

    Dr. Jensen,
    Wanted to say thanks for maintaining your Technological Glossary page. I
    am currently studying for my Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer exams. Your page has been a god-send.

    Pacificare,Network Associate II
    Al Janetsky
    Microsoft Certified Professional

    ==================================================================

    Messages like that shown above "keep my tail wagging." I even like the messages that signal items to be corrected --- at least those users found my stuff worth correcting. If you have audio on your computer, you can listen to Mike Kearl (a Trinity Psychology professor) discuss what makes his "tail wag." Mike also discusses the issue that you raised in your message to me. The web address for Mike’s audio on this is at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/ideasmes.htm . That particular article is entitled "Daring Professors" and contains audio and email messages from other faculty members who were willing to take some chances with their careers.

    I can offer you a wagging tail and small pay raises if you rely entirely on web publishing as evidence of scholarship. Old hounds like me can opt for more tail wagging, but young pups need more nourishment shoved into the other end. (Actually I still publish hard copy to maintain respectability, but I personally am far more proud of my "living" web research documents than of my annual refereed "dead" hits over the past few years).

    Until the evaluation culture is changed in peers who hold you on a leash, try to do web publishing alongside your refereed journal publishing. But don’t let the tail wag the dog or you will wind up in the dog house. If your book or journal editor objects to having your working documents published at your web site, remember who your master is at all times. His title is Editor in Chief!

    An interesting paper by William H. Geoghegan at IBM Academic Consulting is entitled "WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO INSTRUCTIONAL TECHNOLOGY?".  It discusses some of the issues as to why the faculty are not yet adapting to education technologies. Estimates are that as much as 95% of higher education faculty are not using these technologies. Geoghegan analyses social and diffusion barriers in particular. His paper is at http://w3.scale.uiuc.edu/scale/links/library/geoghegan/wpi.html

    Bob Jensen
    Professor Robert E. Jensen (Bob) http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen
    Jesse H. Jones Distinguished Professor of Business Administration
    Trinity University, San Antonio, TX 78212-7200
    Voice: 210-999-7347 Fax: 210-999-8134

     

    How much help should I give my colleagues?

    After reading my essay, Tom Omer added the following advice for new faculty.

    Hi Bob,
    For those with some tech skills learn how to politely say "No" or "I don't know" when asked by older non-tech faculty or non-tech faculty in general the following question(s).   Insert the following words as needed:

    Dial-up Networking
    FTP
    Word
    Excel
    FrontPage
    WebPage
    Laptop
    Desktop
    Audio
    Video
    Courseware
    Classpage

    Will you help me with__________

    My ________ won't________(failure supplied by questioner), do you know why?

    For new faculty with low tech skills (probably few relative to older faculty).

    Learn to ask

    Insert words listed above as needed

    What University office provides instruction and support for___________.

    While this may sound rather harsh and anti-older faculty (maybe nontech faculty), new faculty need to devote their time to things that will have the best chance of getting them tenure. Being polite keeps you from making people mad, learning to say no keeps you from being the support person at the expense of your own career and learning where the University support office is keeps you from spending time learning something inefficiently by the seat of your pants along with your colleagues. Not something I would put in your essay but a hard learned lesson that that might make a difference to a few.

    Tom

    Professor Thomas Omer [tcomer@uic.edu]  
    Accounting Department 
    College of Business Administration University of Illinois at Chicago 
    Voice 312-996-4438 FAX 312-996-4520

    A March 17, 2000 Letter to The Wall Street Journal

    A free university that intends to be "Top Class" --- http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,34988,00.html 

    Billionaire to Fund Free Net U Reuters 12:20 p.m. 15.Mar.2000 PST WASHINGTON -- 
    Internet software billionaire Michael Saylor plans to donate $100 million to launch a free online university that could reach hundreds of millions of people worldwide, his company said on Wednesday.

    MicroStrategy spokesman Michael Quint said Saylor would announce his cyber university plans at a philanthropy conference in Washington on Thursday. America Online chairman and chief executive officer Steve Case will also be at the meeting.

    "The idea is to create a higher learning center online for hundreds of millions of people throughout the world, which will be classified as top class," Quint said. "It's fairly hazy at the moment as to how this will work and the university is in its infancy stage."

    In an interview with The Washington Post published on Wednesday, Saylor said he anticipated online courses that would include lectures from the world's "geniuses and leaders." The interviews would be videotaped at a studio to be built in the Washington area in the coming months.

    Jim Borden led me to the March 16 editorial in The Wall Street Journal written by Mr. Saylor himself.  A portion of his sincere editorial reads as follows (note the reference to "knowledge base"):

    It's time to create a universal knowledge database on video -- a cyber-library made available to everybody. It could feature not just calculus courses taught by leading mathematicians, but Warren Buffett on investing, Scott Turow on writing, Steven Spielberg on how to direct, John Williams on how to compose, Issac Stern on how to play the violin, and Michael Jordan on how to play basketball. All Nobel laureates on the subject that won them recognition; all Pulitzer Prize winners on their books.

    This online library could be a resource not only for those living in the U.S. but in Calcutta and Beijing. For some it might replace a traditional university; for others, it would be a supplement, allowing them to take a course or two in a subject that interests them. There would still be plenty of reason to attend traditional colleges, but this would fill nooks and crannies not served by existing institutions.

    A letter from Bob Jensen to The Wall Street Journal

    Robert L. Bartley,  Editor
    The Wall Street Journal
    200 Liberty Street
    New York, NY 10281

    Dear Bob: 

    I don’t know if you recall me or not, but in 1957 and 1958 I was one of your fraternity brothers at Iowa State University.  In any case, would you please forward this as a Letter to the Editor.  Thanks!

    In academe, we are always grateful to our benefactors.  I would like to point out that, for Mr. Saylor's lofty goals, not even a $100 billion gift could make a very big dent given such very big dreams.  I hope that his gift will help to seed a knowledge base that will serve academe in carrying out his vision.

    In a recent essay ( http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/newfaculty.htm  ), I asked the following question:
    What is the most frustrating aspect of modern technology?      

    My Answer:  The pace of change in scholarship that we should be teaching.  In the past, scholarly publications came out at discrete points in time such as every three months.  If we put learning materials on library reserve at the beginning of the semester, the materials probably were relevant for the entire semester.  Now thousands upon thousands of scholarly publications are put on the web every day.  There are search engines to help us and electronic media to signal what appears where, but each morning we awaken to a whirling blizzard of new happenings in our discipline.  All academic documents should be subject to change at any time.  What was posted yesterday to the web may be changed if and when you assign it for your students to read.  Unless we accept being stamped "blissfully out of date," we will perpetually live at a pace that ruins our fingernails, harms our families, impairs our diets with fast foods, reduces friendships to email messages, creates encounters as fleeting as passing trains, and bewilders our students because what we taught last week is out of date this week.  For example, this semester I spent a goodly part of the summer preparing web documents on FAS 133 (hedge accounting) only to awaken in mid-semester to the  Financial Accounting Standards Board  Exposure Draft of proposed FAS 133 amendments.  The standard is "possibly" being amended prior to when FAS 133 is slated to go into effect.  On top of that there are almost daily happenings that affect FAS 133, notably the pronouncements of the FASB's Derivatives Implementation Group.  And FAS 133 is but a grain of sand in the world of knowledge.

    Mr. Saylor mentions that his vision of a knowledge base is video-centric.  In the present world of technology, this is the wrong place to begin when constructing a knowledge base.  The most important ingredients in a knowledge base are text and links to text files on other servers.  Text is cheap to store, is efficient to transmit across the Internet, is somewhat easily translated into other languages, can be searched very efficiently, and can be sliced, diced, quoted, and reassembled for a particular contextual purpose.  The second most important ingredient is a file of graphics to accompany text.  Graphics allow students to efficiently visualize some aspects of knowledge that are ineffectively demonstrated in text.  Graphics can also be animated for greater understanding.  The third most important ingredient is audio.  Audio is a learning tool when hands and eyes are occupied as, say, in driving a vehicle.  Audio can aid memory and attracts attention more than text.  The fourth and least important ingredient to date on the Internet is video.  Video streaming in at about 30 images per second along with accompanying audio is extremely expensive to store and transmit across clogged network lines.  Both audio and video are extremely inefficient to search electronically and are difficult to slice, dice, and reassemble for teaching in a particular class on a particular day.  The main drawback, however, is the cost and difficulty of editing and updating old audio and video files in a knowledge world that keeps changing in real time.  

    And even if Mr. Saylor's generous gift serves to unite other institutions to cooperate in building a multimedia knowledge base for educational purposes, that knowledge base is only a small part of the educational process.  Think of our primary duties in academe other than to create knowledge bases.  Some of these other duties are as follows:

    To accomplish the above duties on the global scale envisioned by Mr. Saylor requires trillions of dollars.  This can only be accomplished in the combined efforts of government and industry with educational foundations and educational institutions the comprise what we refer to as academe or the higher education "academy."  With the help of Mr. Saylor and the other major players in this effort, the academy can and will adapt to newer technologies to deliver quality education to all parts of the earth.

    In closing, I once again want to stress that the generous gift of Mr. Saylor can help the academy do its job if the money is spent at a more basic level of knowledge base.  Shooting thousands of hours of video of experts frozen in time is not the place to begin.  Instead, Mr. Saylor's gift would better serve us at a grass roots level of knowledge where we will soon be attempting to build knowledge bases of text and graphics in a multiple language Resource Descriptor Format (RDF).  This is not the place to delve into RDF, but RDF will be to knowledge what HTML was to the world wide web.  Readers can learn more about RDF and the efforts underway to create a world RDF standard at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/xmlrdf.htm.  Readers interested in academe and the efforts of academe to adapt to changing technologies are encouraged to explore some of the links at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/bookbob.htm .  My homepage devoted to helping academe is at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/.

    In any case, let me once again thank Mr. Saylor for his lofty goals for education and his generous gift.

    Sincerely,
    Bob Jensen

    Acknowledgement:  I want to thank my colleague Petrea Sandlin for making some editorial revisions and suggestions for this document.

    Onsite versus Online Universities in the 21st Century

    Is the University of Phoenix really better positioned for the 21st Century than "many non-elite, especially private, traditional academic institutions?"

    "Remaking the Academy", by Jorge Klor de Alva, Educause Review, March/April 2000, pp. 21-40.
     http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/erm0023.pdf  

    As education moves toward the certification of competence with a focus on demonstrated skills and knowledge— that is, on “what you know” rather than on “what you have taken” in school—more associations and organizations that can prove themselves worthy to the U.S. Education Department will likely be able to gain accreditation. This increased competition worldwide—from, for instance, corporate universities, training companies, course content aggregators, and publisher media conglomerates—will put a premium on the ability of institutions not only to provide quality education but to do so on a continuous and highly distributed basis and with convenient access for those seeking information, testing, and certification. In short, as education becomes a continuous process of certification—that is, a lifelong process of earning certificates attesting to the accumulation of new skills and competencies—institutional success for any higher education enterprise will depend more on successful marketing, solid quality assurance and control systems, and effective use of the new media than on production and communication of knowledge. This is a shift that I believe University of Phoenix is well positioned to undertake, but I am less confident that many non-elite, especially private, traditional academic institutions will manage to survive successfully.

    That glum conclusion leads me to a final observation: societies everywhere expect from higher education institutions the provision of an education that can permit them to flourish in the changing global economic landscape. Those institutions that can continually change, keeping up with the needs of the transforming economy they serve, will survive. Those that cannot or will not change will become irrelevant, will condemn misled masses to second class economic status or poverty, and will ultimately die, probably at the hands of those they chose to delude by serving up an education for a nonexistent world. Policy Issues for the New Millennium March 30–31, 2000 Washington, D.C., Renaissance Hotel Networking 2000 is the premier conference on federal policy affecting networking and information technology for higher education. The conference engages higher education and government policy leaders in constructive dialogue on the latest policy issues posed by information technology and network development. Detailed information and an online registration form for Networking 2000 are available at Deadline for early registration: www.educause.edu/netatedu/contents/events/mar2000/

    I don't think Jeoge Klor de Alva and I agree on the roles of what I called Type 2 (onsite) versus Type 1 (online) universities in the 21st Century.  I wrote the following in the April 4, 2000 edition of New Bookmarks at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/book00q2.htm#EducationIntangibles

    Education Intangibles:  
    Will accountants "rule the world" of the future of educational institutions?

    I was challenged by the recent TigerTalk exchanges on the emerging dominance of economics and accounting in higher education.  Although I still have hundreds of unopened email messages, I did encounter messages from Dr. Spinks (English) and Dr. Meyer (Director of Trinity University's Library)

    Unfortunately, I agree that accountants should never "rule the world."  Actually business firms and educational institutions have much more in common than non-accountants tend to realize.  The race of Ivy League institutions to capitalize on their logos by partnering with corporations like UNext and Pensare is only the tip of the iceberg in this age of technology.  But the value of their logos and other assets cannot be realistically accounted for due to the many intangibles that defy accounting. 

    If you aggregate all the prices of all the shares of companies traded in the world markets, the tangible assets that accountants account for on balance sheets tally up to only 17% of business "value."  The other 83% is comprised of intangible assets (largely a business firm's human resources, intellectual capital, organizational synergy, name recognition, goodwill, leadership, and R&D) that we do a miserable job of accounting for in business firms. In not-for-profit organizations, and especially educational institutions, accountants perform  even worse, because the proportion of intangible assets is even higher in those institutions.  Anyone interested in problems of accounting for intangibles should take a look at http://www.fastcompany.com/online/31/lev.html 

    The problem with curriculum design is that it tries to turn intangibles into tangibles.   For instance, the term "Western Culture" is intangible and ambiguous. Adding specific courses with specific content to the "Western Culture Curriculum" is in some sense an attempt to "account for" what qualifies as tangible learning of an intangible topic.  In spite of our efforts to declare these "tangible" curriculum requirements, intangibles in the curriculum and other areas of living and learning dominate as much or more as intangibles dominate in business firm valuation.  In this context, curriculum design is a form of accounting for intangibles that becomes more and more hopeless as we attempt to turn intangibles into tangibles.

    I think we give Trinity University students the full measure of what they bargained for even if they don't realize all they bargained for when they first appear on campus. The curriculum is only a part, albeit vital part, of living and learning while they are here. It is generally the most stressful aspect of college life, because satisfying the curriculum is where students discover that there is so much to be learned, and so little time in which to learn, from faculty with integrity and standards for demonstrating that learning takes place at equal or higher levels relative to our own peer competitors. To do anything less would be the real "bait and switch," because if the curriculum becomes too easy or irrelevant in changing times, then respect for a Trinity degree plunges.

    The point here is that if you base predictions on 17% or less of the "total" data, then you hardly stand on sound footing for making predictions. One of the main problems accountants have in dealing with intangibles is that, relative to tangible assets, intangible assets are very fragile. Today you have them, but tomorrow they may disappear without even being stolen in a legal sense. For example, I suspect that Bill Gates is far less concerned about the anti-trust lawsuit than he is about emerging signs of inability of Microsoft's "intangibles" to prosper in a networked world of e-Commerce, ubiquitous computing, and wireless technologies.  Virtually all universities have been shocked by the paradigm shift in distance learning and are now worried about whether their "intangibles" can prosper in the new "McLearn" paradigm.

    Having said this, I think that there will be two types of higher education institutions in the future.  Type 1 will be run like a business whether it is a corporation or a traditional university with web training and education programs.  This is what I will call a McLearn online university.  Type 2 is a traditional onsite university brimming with more intangibles.

    McLearn online universities (or traditional universities operating like businesses) will provide certificate and degree programs from anywhere in the world. They will be very efficient and reasonably effective for topical coverage. The world will flock to them just as the world flocks to fast food restaurants for convenience, price, efficiency, and sometimes a craving for the food itself (e.g. a taco salad or a milk shake) that just seems right for the time. They may also have nutritious items on the menu. See Maitre d'Igital's cafe at http://www.technos.net/.  In the same context, McLearn's online knowledge bases will proliferate and become spectacular due to the billions of dollars that will be available for building such knowledge bases.

    Business is not an evil thing per se.  Outstanding research takes place in the private sector as well as the public sector. Outstanding performances (music, theatre, film, etc.) take place in the private sector as well as the public sector. Even though we view Hollywood as blatantly commercial, some of our finest works of art have appeared in commercial films. The power of films and television to impact upon culture is both magnificent and scary.  On the magnificent side, do you think there ever has been anything more powerful than Hollywood in fighting bigotry in the hearts and minds of succeeding generations following the Civil War?  The same will be said, ultimately, for global and life-long learning in McLearn online universities.  In fact, for certain types of learning there is little doubt that corporations can and are doing a better job than the public sector (e.g., the success of Motorola University in delivering technical engineering training and education to the Far East.  See http://mu.motorola.com/.)

    Be that as it may, McLearn online universities will have a difficult time putting together a cost-effective total education menu that competes with Type 2 onsite universities like Trinity University. This is largely due to intangibles that lie outside the grasp of McLearn online curriculum.  It happens that some of our best Type 2 onsite students are also varsity athletes, musicians, actors, etc. Athletic competition and artistic performances are part and parcel to living and learning for many students.  McLearn universities may have online debates and chess competitions, but these will never take the place of the roar of the fans, slapping your buddy on the butt with a wet towel, getting chewed out by a tempered coach, having your boyfriend or girlfriend in the audience even if you only have a bit part in a performance, etc.  McLearn online university will probably never find a way of making a bottom-line profit on building and running a chapel, having faculty that students consider friends as well as teachers, and having students learn about what real life is all about with loves gained and lost, living in rumor mills, enduring insults, helping someone who has lost the way, and learning to deal with greater diversities in life styles, and cultures.

    Accountants will not rule the world at large. And curriculum designers will not rule the university at large. We are only bit players in immense productions in Type 2 onsite universities.  And we may need some of those cursed marketing metaphors that indicate how living and learning universities differ from learning universities.  Providing a student with a chapel, a theatre, a concert hall, a playing field, a dormitory, and a geology professor named Glenn Kroeger can all be described as a "service" in a broad sense.  Students are our "clients" in a very broad sense.  But neither our "service" nor our "clients" constitute very good business in an accounting sense, because more than 83% of the value of our service to clients is intangible and subject to circumstances outside our control.  Serendipity rules supreme in a Type 2 onsite education.   There's no accounting for serendipity.  What we do best is to create an environment where serendipity has more opportunity.  Perhaps this is one of the main distinctions between training and education.  In this context, curriculum design is necessary to a point but should never become too structured or too specific as a "tangible" asset in either the online or the onsite universities.

    Bob (Robert E.) Jensen Jesse H. Jones Distinguished Professor of Business Trinity University, San Antonio, TX 78212 Voice: (210) 999-7347 Fax: (210) 999-8134 Email: rjensen@trinity.edu  http://www.trinity.edu/rjensen 

    -----Original Message----- From: c. w. spinks [mailto:cspinks@Trinity.edu]  
    Sent: Friday, March 31, 2000 12:44 PM 
    To: rmeyer@Trinity.edu; tigertalk@Trinity.edu Subject: 
    RE: Windmill #3: Blade 3 (marketing metaphors)

    Nah, Rich, I'm not caught . If a University is an economic enterprise like a corporation, then it may be true, but that was my whole point, the university ain't that kinda beast.

    Beside economic theorists don't really have a outstanding track record on predictions, definitions, or stipulations. What else would you expect of folk who have expropriated an energy quotient into economic theory? Efficiency (other than in a physical sense as an energy quotient) is still metaphoric and as hard to define as "service" and equally in need of clarification of its hidden assumptions.

    If accountants rule the world, I am sure "bottom-line" is a primary value, and if these economic theorists (not all are efficiency readers), then I am sure efficiency is the primary value, but neither set of rules is privileged to the point of disallowing discussion of the consequences of the rules.

    I surely will be caught in one of these verbal spins as my own gaminess collapses, but I don't think so yet.

    bill

    -----Original Message----- 
    From: owner-tigertalk@Trinity.Edu [mailto:owner-tigertalk@Trinity.Edu] 
    On Behalf Of Richard Meyer 
    Sent: Friday, March 31, 2000 12:03 PM 
    To: tigertalk@TRINITY.EDU  Subject: RE: Windmill #3: Blade 3 (marketing metaphors)

    -- snip--

    Alas, Bill, you may be stuck. Economic theory predicts that institutions that emerge do so as the result of their provision of greater efficiency. The consumer metaphor may be the most efficient one to communicate the concept of a university. -- Rich

     

    How to and how not to deliver distance education --- http://ubmail.ubalt.edu/~harsham/interactive.htm 
    War stories from teachers in the first accredited online MBA program.

    This site constitutes a report from the "frontliner" of e-learning, since the University of Baltimore was the first school to offer all-online accredited Web MBA. I taught the first course in this Web MBA program, which was Business Statistics: Revealing Facts from Figures. A second course in this same program was Applied Management Science: Making Good Strategic Decisions. The site covers how to begin, how to operate, and how to make e-learning successful and enjoyable. Its contents are developed over years, and is intended for my current students, and sharing my personal experiences and exchange of ideas with other educators.

    Kindly e-mail me your comments, suggestions, and concerns. Thank you.

    Professor Hossein Arsham 
    http://ubmail.ubalt.edu/~harsham/index.html       

    Especially note the questions worth asking at http://ubmail.ubalt.edu/~harsham/interactive.htm#rqwa 

    Hi Yvonne,

    For what it is worth, my advice to new faculty is at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/newfaculty.htm 

    One thing to remember is that the employers of our students (especially the public accounting firms) are very unhappy with our lecture/drill pedagogy at the introductory and intermediate levels. They believe that such pedagogy turns away top students, especially creative and conceptualizing students. Employers  believe that lecture/drill pedagogy attracts savant-like memorizers who can recite their lessons book and verse but have few creative talents and poor prospects for becoming leaders. The large accounting firms believed this so strongly that they donated several million dollars to the American Accounting Association for the purpose of motivating new pedagogy experimentation. This led to the Accounting Change Commission (AECC) and the mixed-outcome experiments that followed. See http://accounting.rutgers.edu/raw/aaa/facdev/aecc.htm 

    The easiest pedagogy for faculty is lecturing, and it is appealing to busy faculty who do not have time for students outside the classroom. When lecturing to large classes it is even easier because you don't have to get to know the students and have a great excuse for using multiple choice examinations and graduate student teaching assistants. I always remember an economics professor at Michigan State University who said that when teaching basic economics it did not matter whether he had a live class of 300 students or a televised class of 3,000 students. His full-time teaching load was three hours per week in front of a TV camera. He was a very good lecturer and truly loved his three-hour per week job!

    Lecturing appeals to faculty because it often leads to the highest teaching evaluations.  Students love faculty who spoon feed and make learning seem easy.  It's much easier when mom or dad spoon the pudding out of the jar than when you have to hold your own spoon and/or find your own jar.

    An opposite but very effective pedagogy is the AECC (University of Virginia) BAM Pedagogy that entails live classrooms with no lectures. BAM instructors think it is more important for students to learn on their own instead of sitting through spoon-fed learning lectures. I think it takes a special kind of teacher to pull off the astoundingly successful BAM pedagogy. Interestingly, it is often some of our best lecturers who decided to stop lecturing because they experimented with the BAM and found it to be far more effective for long-term memory. The top BAM enthusiasts are Tony Catanach at Villanova University and David Croll at the University of Virginia. Note, however, that most BAM applications have been at the intermediate accounting level. I have my doubts (and I think BAM instructors will agree) that BAM will probably fail at the introductory level. You can read about the BAM pedagogy at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/265wp.htm 

    At the introductory level we have what I like to call the Pincus (User Approach) Pedagogy. Karen Pincus is now at the University of Arkansas, but at the time that her first learning experiments were conducted, she taught basic accounting at the University of Southern California. The Pincus Pedagogy is a little like both the BAM and the case method pedagogies. However, instead of having prepared learning cases, the Pincus Pedagogy sends students to on-site field visitations where they observe on-site operations and are then assigned tasks to creatively suggest ways of improving existing accounting, internal control, and information systems. Like the BAM, the Pincus Pedagogy avoids lecturing and classroom drill. Therein lies the controversy. Students and faculty in subsequent courses often complain that the Pincus Pedagogy students do not know the fundamental prerequisites of basic accounting needed for intermediate and advanced-level accounting courses.  Two possible links of interest on the controversial Pincus Pedagogy are as follows:  

    Where the Pincus Pedagogy and the BAM Pedagogy differ lies in subject matter itself and stress on creativity. The BAM focuses on traditional subject matter that is found in such textbooks as intermediate accounting textbooks. The BAM Pedagogy simply requires that students learn any way they want to learn on their own since students remember best what they learned by themselves. The Pincus Pedagogy does not focus on much of the debit and credit "rules" found in most traditional textbooks. Students are required to be more creative at the expense of memorizing the "rules."

    The Pincus Pedagogy is motivated by the belief that traditional lecturing/drill pedagogy at the basic accounting and tax levels discourages the best and more-creative students to pursue careers in the accountancy profession. The BAM pedagogy is motivated more by the belief that lecturing is a poor pedagogy for long-term memory of technical details. What is interesting is that the leading proponents of getting away from the lecture/drill pedagogy (i.e., Karen Pincus and Anthony Catenach) were previously two of the very best lecturers in accountancy. If you have ever heard either of them lecture, I think you would agree that you wish all your lecturers had been only half as good. I am certain that both of these exceptional teachers would agree that lecturing is easier than any other alternatives. However, they do not feel that lecturing is the best alternative for top students.

    Between lecturing and the BAM Pedagogy, we have case method teaching. Case method teaching is a little like lecturing and a little like the BAM with some instructors providing answers in case wrap ups versus some instructors forcing students to provide all the answers. Master case teachers at Harvard University seldom provide answers even in case wrap ups, and often the cases do not have any known answer-book-type solutions. The best Harvard cases have alternative solutions with success being based upon discovering and defending an alternative solution. Students sometimes interactively discover solutions that the case writers never envisioned. I generally find case teaching difficult at the undergraduate level if students do not yet have the tools and maturity to contribute to case discussions. Interestingly, it may be somewhat easier to use the BAM at the undergraduate level than Harvard-type cases. The reason is that BAM instructors are often dealing with more rule-based subject matter such as intermediate accounting or tax rather than conceptual subject matter such as strategic decision making, business valuation, and financial risk analysis.

    The hardest pedagogy today is probably a Socratic pedagogy online with instant messaging communications where an instructor who's on call about 60 hours per week from his or her home. The online instructor monitors the chats and team communications between students in the course at most any time of day or night. Amy Dunbar can tell you about this tedious pedagogy since she's using it for tax courses and will be providing a workshop that tells about how to do it and how not to do it. The next scheduled workshop precedes the AAA Annual Meetings on August 1, 2003 in Hawaii. You can also hear Dr. Dunbar and view her PowerPoint show from a previous workshop at http://www.cs.trinity.edu/~rjensen/002cpe/02start.htm#2002 

    In conclusion, always remember that there is no optimal pedagogy in all circumstances. All learning is circumstantial based upon such key ingredients as student maturity, student motivation, instructor talent, instructor dedication, instructor time, library resources, technology resources, and many other factors that come to bear at each moment in time. And do keep in mind that how you teach may determine what students you keep as majors and what you turn away. 

    I tend to agree with the accountancy firms that contend that traditional lecturing probably turns away many of the top students who might otherwise major in accountancy. 

    At the same time, I tend to agree with students who contend that they took accounting courses to learn accounting rather than economics, computer engineering, and behavioral science.

    Bob Jensen

    -----Original Message----- 
    From: Lou&Bonnie [mailto:gyp1@EARTHLINK.NET]  
    Sent: Thursday, January 16, 2003 5:03 PM

    I am a beginning accounting instructor (part-time) at a local community college. I am applying for a full-time faculty position, but am having trouble with a question. Methodology in accounting--what works best for a diversified group of individuals. Some students work with accounting, but on a computer and have no understanding of what the information they are entering really means to some individuals who have no accounting experience whatsoever. What is the best methodology to use, lecture, overhead, classroom participation? I am not sure and I would like your feedback. Thank you in advance for your help. 

    Yvonne

    January 20, 2003 reply from Thomas C. Omer [omer@UIC.EDU] 

    Don’t forget about Project Discovery going on at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana

    Thomas C. Omer Associate Professor 
    Department of Accounting University of Illinois At Chicago 
    The Art of Discovery: Finding the forest in spite of the trees.

    Thanks for reminding me Tom. A good link for Project Discovery is at http://accounting.rutgers.edu/raw/aaa/facdev/aeccuind.htm 

    January 17, 2003 reply from David R. Fordham [fordhadr@JMU.EDU] 

    I'll add an endorsement to Bob's advice to new teachers. His page should be required reading for Ph.D.s.

    And I'll add one more tidbit.

    Most educators overlook the distinction between "lectures" and "demonstrations".

    There is probably no need for any true "lecture" in the field of accounting at the college level, even though it is still the dominant paradigm at most institutions.

    However, there is still a great need for "live demonstrations", **especially** at the introductory level.

    Accounting is a complex process. Introductory students in ANY field learn more about complex processes from demonstrations than probably any other method.

    Then, they move on and learn more from "practicing" the process, once they've learned the steps and concepts of the process. And for intermediate and advanced students, practice is the best place to "discover" the nuances and details.

    While "Discovery" is probably the best learning method of all, it is frequently very difficult to "discover" a complex process correctly from its beginning, on your own. Thus, a quick demonstration can often be of immense value at the introductory level. It's an efficient way of communicating sequences, relationships, and dynamics, all of which are present in accounting processes.

    Bottom line: You can (and should) probably eliminate "lectures" from your classes. You should not entirely eliminate "demonstrations" from your classes.

    Unfortunately, most education-improvement reform literature does not draw the distinction: anytime the teacher is doing the talking in front of a class, using blackboard and chalk or PowerPoint, they label it "lecture" and suggest you don't do it! This is, in my view, oversimplification, and very bad advice.

    Your teaching will change a whole lot (for the better!) once you realize that students only need demonstrations of processes. You will eliminate a lot of material you used to "lecture" on. This will make room for all kinds of other things that will improve your teaching over the old "lecture" method: discussions, Socratic dialogs, cases and dilemmas, even some entertainment here and there.

    Plus, the "lectures" you retain will change character. Take your cue from Mr. Wizard or Bill Nye the Science Guy, who appear to "lecture" (it's about the only thing you can do in front of a camera!), but whose entire program is pretty much devoted to demonstration. Good demonstrations do more than just demonstrate, they also motivate! Most lectures don't!

    Another two pennies from the verbose one...

    David R. Fordham 
    PBGH Faculty Fellow 
    James Madison University

    January 16, 2003 message from Peter French [pjfrench@CELESTIAL.COM.AU] 

    I found this source http://www.thomson.com/swcp/gita.html  and also Duncan Williamson has some very good basic material on his sites http://duncanwil.co.uk/index.htm  ; http://www.duncanwil.co.uk/objacc.html  ;

    Don't forget the world lecture hall at http://www.utexas.edu/world/lecture/  ;

    This reminds me of how I learned ... the 'real learning' in the workplace...

    I remember my first true life consolidation - 130 companies in 1967. We filled a wall with butchers paper and had 'callers', 'writers' and 'adders' who called out the information to others who wrote out the entries and others who did the adding. I was 25 and quite scared. The Finance Director knew this and told me [1] to stick with 'T' accounts to be sure I was making the right entry - just stick the ones you are sure in and don't even think about the other entry - it must 'balance' it out; [2] just because we are dealing with 130 companies and several hundreds of millions of dollars don't lose sight of the fact that really it is no different from the corner store. I have never forgotten the simplistic approach. He said - if the numbers scare you, decimalise them to 100,000's in your mind - it helps ... and it did. He often used to say the Dr/Cr entries out aloud

    I entered teaching aged 48 after having been in industry and practice for nearly 30 years. Whether i am teaching introductory accounting, partnership formation/dissolution, consolidations, asset revaluation, tax affect accounting, I simply write up the same basic entries on the white board each session - I never use an overhead for this, I always write it up and say it out aloud, and most copy/follow me - and then recap and get on with the lesson. I always take time out to 'flow chart' what we are doing so that they never loose sight of the real picture ... this simple system works, and have never let my students down.

    There have been several movements away form rote learning in all levels of education - often with disastrous consequences. It has its place and I am very proud to rely on it. This works and when it isn't broken, I am not about to try to fix it.

    Good luck - it is the greatest responsibility in the world, and gives the greatest job satisfaction. It is worth every hour and every grey hair. To realise that you have enabled someone to change their lives, made a dream come true, eclipses every successful takeover battle or tax fight that I won i have ever had.

    Good luck - may it be to you what is has been to me.

    Peter French

    January 17, 2003 reply from Michael O'Neil, CPA Adjunct Prof. Weber [Marine8105@AOL.COM] 

    I am currently teaching high school students, some of whom will hopefully go on to college. Parents expect you to teach the children, which really amounts to lecturing, or going over the text material. When you do this they do not read the textbook, nor do they know how to use the textbook to answer homework questions. If you don't lecture then the parents will blame you for "not" teaching their children the material.

    I agree that discovery is the best type of learning, and the most fun. I teach geometry and accounting/consumer finance. Geometry leans itself to discovery, but to do so you need certain materials. At our level (high school) we are also dealing several other issues you don't have at the college level. In my accounting classes I teach the debit/credit, etc. and then have them do a lot of work using two different accounting programs. When they make errors I have them discover the error and correct it. They probably know very little about posting, and the formatting of financial statements although we covered it. Before we used the programs we did a lot of pencil work.

    Even when I taught accounting at the college and junior college level I found students were reluctant to, and not well prepared to, use their textbooks. Nor were they inclined to DO their homework.

    I am sure that many of you have noticed a drop off in quality of students in the last years. I wish I could tell you that I see that it will change, but I do not see any effort in that direction. Education reminds me of a hot air balloon being piloted by people who lease the balloon and have no idea how to land it. They are just flying around enjoying the view. If we think in terms of bankruptcy education is ready for Chapter 11.

    Mike ONeil

    January 17, 2003 reply from Chuck Pier [texcap@HOTMAIL.COM] 

    While not in accounting, I would like to share some information on my wife's experience with online education. She has a background (10 years) as a public school teacher and decided to get her graduate degree in library science. Since I was about to finish my doctoral studies and we knew we would be moving she wanted to find a program that would allow her to move away and not lose too many hours in the transfer process. What she found was the online program at the University of North Texas (UNT) in Denton. Through this program she will be able to complete a 36 hour American Library Association accredited Master's degree in Library Science and only spend a total of 9 days on campus. The 9 days are split into a one day session and 2 four day sessions, which can be combined into 1 five and 1 four day session. Other than these 9 days the entire course is conducted over the internet. The vast majority is asynchronous, but there are some parts conducted in a synchronous manner.

    She has completed about 3/4 of the program and is currently in Denton for her last on campus session. While I often worry about the quality of online programs, after seeing how much work and time she is required to put in, I don't think I should worry as much. I can honestly say that I feel she is getting a better, more thorough education than most traditional programs. I know at a minimum she has covered a lot more material.

    All in all her experience has been positive and this program fit her needs. I think the MLS program at UNT has been very successful to date and appears to be growing quite rapidly. It may serve as a role model for programs in other areas.

    Chuck Pier

    Charles A. Pier 
    Assistant Professor Department of Accounting 
    Walker College of Business 
    Appalachian State University 
    Boone, NC 28608 email:     pierca@appstate.edu  828-262-6189

    I have heard some faculty argue that asynchronous Internet courses just do not mesh with Trinity's on-campus mission. The Scale Experiments at the University of Illinois indicate that many students learn better and prefer online courses even if they are full-time, resident students. The University of North Texas is finding out the same thing. There may be some interest in what our competition may be in the future even for full-time, on-campus students at private as well as public colleges and universities.
    On January 17, 2003, Ed Scribner forwarded this article from The Dallas Morning News

    Students Who Live on Campus Choosing Internet Courses Syndicated From: The Dallas Morning News

    DALLAS - Jennifer Pressly could have walked to a nearby lecture hall for her U.S. history class and sat among 125 students a few mornings a week.

    But the 19-year-old freshman at the University of North Texas preferred rolling out of bed and attending class in pajamas at her dorm-room desk. Sometimes she would wait until Saturday afternoon.

    The teen from Rockwall, Texas, took her first college history class online this fall semester. She never met her professor and knew only one of her 125 classmates: her roommate.

    "I take convenience over lectures," she said. "I think I would be bored to death if I took it in lecture."

    She's part of a controversial trend that has surprised many university officials across the country. Given a choice, many traditional college students living on campus pick an online course. Most universities began offering courses via the Internet in the late 1990s to reach a different audience - older students who commute to campus and are juggling a job and family duties.

    During the last year, UNT began offering an online option for six of its highest-enrollment courses that are typically taught in a lecture hall with 100 to 500 students. The online classes, partly offered as a way to free up classroom space in the growing school, filled up before pre-registration ended, UNT officials said. At UNT, 2,877 of the about 23,000 undergraduates are taking at least one course online.

    Nationwide, colleges are reporting similar experiences, said Sally Johnstone, director of WCET, a Boulder, Colo., cooperative of state higher education boards and universities that researches distance education. Kansas State University, in a student survey last spring, discovered that 80 percent of its online students were full-time and 20 percent were part-time, the opposite of the college's expectations, Johnstone said.

    "Why pretend these kids want to be in a class all the time? They don't, but kids don't come to campus to sit in their dorm rooms and do things online exclusively," she said. "We're in a transition, and it's a complex one."

    The UT Telecampus, a part of the University of Texas System that serves 15 universities and research facilities, began offering online undergraduate classes in state-required courses two years ago. Its studies show that 80 percent of the 2,260 online students live on campus, and the rest commute.

    Because they are restricted to 30 students each, the UT System's online classes are touted as a more intimate alternative to lecture classes, said Darcy Hardy, director of the UT Telecampus.

    "The freshman-sophomore students are extremely Internet-savvy and understand more about online options and availability than we could have ever imagined," Hardy said.

    Online education advocates say professors can reach students better online than in lecture classes because of the frequent use of e-mail and online discussion groups. Those who oppose the idea say they worry that undergraduates will miss out on the debate, depth and interaction of traditional classroom instruction.

    UNT, like most colleges, is still trying to figure out the effect on its budget. The professorial salary costs are the same, but an online course takes more money to develop. The online students, however, free up classroom space and eliminate the need for so many new buildings in growing universities. The price to enroll is typically the same for students, whether they go to a classroom or sit at their computer.

    Mike Campbell, a history professor at UNT for 36 years, does not want to teach an online class, nor does he approve of offering undergraduate history via the Internet.

    "People shouldn't be sitting in the dorms doing this rather than walking over here," he said. "That is based on a misunderstanding of what matters in history."

    In his class of 125, he asks students rhetorical questions they answer en masse to be sure they're paying attention, he said. He goes beyond the textbook, discussing such topics as the moral and legal issues surrounding slavery.

    He said he compares the online classes to the correspondence courses he hated but had to teach when he came to UNT in 1966. Both methods are too impersonal, he said, recalling how he mailed assignments and tests to correspondence students.

    UNT professors who teach online say the courses are interactive, unlike correspondence courses.

    Matt Pearcy has lectured 125 students for three hours at a time.

    "You'd try to be entertaining," he said. "You have students who get bored after 45 minutes, no matter what you're doing. They're filling out notes, doing their to-do list, reading their newspaper in front of you."

    In his online U.S. history class at UNT, students get two weeks to finish each lesson. They read text, complete click-and-drag exercises, like one that matches terms with historical figures, and take quizzes. They participate in online discussions and group projects, using e-mail to communicate.

    "Hands-down, I believe this is a more effective way to teach," said Pearcy, who is based in St. Paul, Minn. "In this setting, they go to the class when they're ready to learn. They're interacting, so they're paying attention."

    Pressly said she liked the hands-on work in the online class. She could do crossword puzzles to reinforce her history lessons. Or she could click an icon and see what Galileo saw through his telescope in the 17th century.

    "I took more interest in this class than the other ones," she said.

    The class, though, required her to be more disciplined, she said, and that added stress. Two weeks in a row, she waited till 11:57 p.m. Sunday - three minutes before the deadline - to turn in her assignment.

    Online courses aren't for everybody.

    "The thing about sitting in my dorm, there's so much to distract me," said Trevor Shive, a 20-year-old freshman at UNT. "There's the Internet. There's TV. There's radio."

    He said students on campus should take classes in the real, not virtual, world.

    "They've got legs; they can walk to class," he said.

    Continued in the article at http://www.dallasnews.com/ 

    January 17, 2003 response from John L. Rodi [jrodi@IX.NETCOM.COM] 

    I would have added one additional element. Today I think too many of us tend to teach accounting the way you teach drivers education. Get in the car turn on the key and off you go. If something goes wrong with the car you a sunk since you nothing conceptually. Furthermore, it makes you a victim of those who do. Conceptual accounting education teaches you to respond to choices, that is not only how to drive but what to drive. Thanks for the wonderful analogy.

    John Rodi 
    El Camino College

    January 21 reply from 

    On the subject of technology and teaching accounting, I wonder how many of you are in the SAP University Alliance and using it for accounting classes. I just teach advanced financial accounting, and have not found a use for it there. However, I have often felt that there is a place for it in intro financial, in managerial and in AIS. On the latter, there is at least one good text book containing SAP exercises and problems.

    Although there are over 400 universities in the world in the program, one of the areas where use is lowest is accounting courses. The limitation appears to be related to a combination of the learning curve for professors, together with an uncertainty as to how it can be used to effectively teach conceptual material or otherwise fit into curricula.

    Gerald Trites, FCA 
    Professor of Accounting and Information Systems 
    St Francis Xavier University 
    Antigonish, Nova Scotia 
    Website     - http://www.stfx.ca/people/gtrites 

    The SAP University Alliance homepage is at http://www.sap.com/usa/company/ua/ 

    In today's fast-paced, technically advanced society, universities must master the latest technologies, not only to achieve their own business objectives cost-effectively but also to prepare the next generation of business leaders. To meet the demands for quality teaching, advanced curriculum, and more technically sophisticated graduates, your university is constantly searching for innovative ways of acquiring the latest information technology while adhering to tight budgetary controls.

    SAP™ can help. A world leader in the development of business software, SAP is making its market-leading, client/server-based enterprise software, the R/3® System, available to the higher education community. Through our SAP University Alliance Program, we are proud to offer you the world's most popular software of its kind for today's businesses. SAP also provides setup, follow-up consulting, and R/3 training for faculty - all at our expense. The SAP R/3 System gives you the most advanced software capabilities used by businesses of all sizes and in all industries around the world.

    There are many ways a university can benefit from an educational alliance with SAP. By partnering with SAP and implementing the R/3 System, your university can:

    Bob Jensen's threads on asynchronous versus synchronous learning are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/255wp.htm 
    Note in particular the research outcomes of The Scale Experiment at the University of Illinois --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/255wp.htm#Illinois 

    Judge for yourself on the "sick" link forwarded by Ed Scribner --- teaching philosophy from http://hibp.ecse.rpi.edu/~connor/two.html.

    Once again, my advice to new faculty is at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/newfaculty.htm 

    January 21, 2003 reply from Paul Williams [williamsp@COMFS1.COM.NCSU.EDU] 

    Jagdish, et al,

    Wonderfully said. The Daily Chronicle of Higher Education has a very relevant article today by Peter Monaghan ( http://chronicle.com/weekly/v49/i20/20a01201.htm ) about the plight of economics ("Taking on 'Rational Man': dissident economists fight for a niche in the discipline") that begins with the sentence "How do you start a fire under a huge wet blanket?" The same can be said for accounting, which has been suckered into understanding itself as a purely imaginary activity through the language of neo-classical (now new-classical) economics. Jagdish observations are spot on. The Post-Autistic Economic Review referred to in the article may be found at http://www.paecon.net . Subscriptions are free.

    PFW

    On 18 Jan 03, at 17:00, J. S. Gangolly wrote:

    I do not believe any one professor will teach accounting without the   concepts. the use of computers will in fact enhance the chance and   give more time for students to understand the concepts rather than   spend long hours on figuring out where is the difference between   the debit and credit totals on the financial statements came from,   or post repeated journal entries that follow the same theory and   commit mistakes as students do that.... (I know that you can commit   mistakes when using the computer, but these mistakes will be found   quicker, or worst to happen we could blame the computer if we are   disparate) I guess we need to remember always that accounting was   the first business function to be computerized with the basic   accounting machine. So now we have the opportunity to graduate   students who were taught and trained to be accountants.  

    I have been reading the postings on concepts, procedures,... Let me as  usual play the devil's advocate once again.   Accounting, like law, is a language. An in depth understanding of any  language requires knowledge of all its aspects: lexicon, syntax,  lexical semantics, semantics, as well as pragmatics (spoken languages,  in addition, require knowledge of phonetics). Like law, accounting is  rich in its lexicon. However, in many ways, unlike law, accounting is  rather simple in its syntax, and rather poor in terms of semantics.  Accounting is also quite primitive compared with the law in the  importance attached to reasoning. That we should define most concepts  by citing examples or clear explication with a laundry list of  exceptions rather than clear explication of lexical semantics attests  to this argument.  

    What is lacking in accounting, as I have stated in much of my work,  is the utter lack of a hermeneutic tradition that clarifies the  semantics of concepts, procedures, principles, and in general  reasoning about all of these entities. In the legal discipline, such a  hermeneutic tradition in the nature of exegesis of text forms the  bedrock on which the discipline itself is built and the legal  education is practiced. We, on the other hand are pretending to be  numbers people, ignoring that numbers take on meaning only in the  context of the surrounding text and the standards.   This lacuna makes accounting that much less interesting from the point  of the students as well as teachers. When I taught intro courses, I  found that the best students did not find accounting interesting  enough because of lack of analytical thinking (except in a trivial  double-entry sense) and hermeneutics in the above sense. Now I find  that most of my better students exit the profession for the same  reason: not because of its hard-ness or their failure to advance, but  simply because they simply do not find it intellectually challenging.   Many years ago, when I took an accounting course (it used to be called  Book-keeping & Commercial Arithmetic), it was taught the way law is  taught in a law school, and I found it fascinating, even though then I  was an outsider, an actuarial student.   I do hope we find a way to harness the richness of our language in all  its aspects and glory rather than concentrate just on the lexicon and  the syntax, both of which are rather quite uninteresting in the  absence of the rest of the aspects.  

    Jagdish S. Gangolly,
    Associate Professor ( j.gangolly@albany.edu ) 
    Accounting & Law and Management Science & Information Systems
    State  University of New York at Albany,
    Albany, NY 12222.
    URL: http://www.albany.edu/acc/gangolly

    Hi XXXXX,

    These are among the toughest requests for advice that I receive. I get these questions now and then from new faculty and faculty who find themselves rejected for tenure. Second I get these questions from faculty who find themselves treading water as tenured associate professors lost at sea.

    First, my answer is contingent upon your own credentials and skills.
    Accounting professors with doctorates who have great quantitative skills for accountics science will have an easier time getting those all-important hits in top accounting research journals. For them my advice is to make friends with lots of potential co-authors (the journals don't care if an article has ten authors) and carefully read my paper on how to play the game:
    Gaming for Tenure as an Accounting Professor ---
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/TheoryTenure.htm
    (with a reply about tenure publication point systems from Linda Kidwell)

    Second, my answer is contingent upon your particular college or university.
    As long as you get a few refereed publications (even in obscure journals), some colleges will bend every which way to keep you if you are both a good teacher among your students and a good team player among your colleagues. However, this can be a mixed blessing. I know of some liberal arts universities where the Department of Business gave glowing recommendations for tenure/promotion of a faculty member weak on publications only to have the college-wide P&T Committee object because of a feeling that the same standards for research and publication that apply to chemists and psychologists should also apply to accountants. There are also envy objections if the accounting assistant professor has twice as much salary as a full professor in chemistry and psychology.

    Third, my answer is contingent upon the value your university may place upon innovation and teaching evaluations.
    Some faculty have discovered how to build worldwide reputations as innovators in edutainment and/or technology. Read about some of the faculty that won the Innovations in Accounting Education Award at
    http://aaahq.org/awards/awrd6win.htm
    Winning this award can go a long way toward tenure and promotion. However, the odds of winning such an award are small. You might spend a great deal or time and effort being an innovator that is not particularly appreciated by students or colleagues. Sadly most students want to be spoon fed from textbooks as long as they can also have an easy time getting A and B grades in this era of grade inflation:
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/HigherEdControversies.htm#GradeInflation
    Sadly, most colleges evaluate teaching on the basis of student evaluations. And students often demand high grades for glowing evaluations.

    Fourth, beware of being viewed as too soft and easy.
    When instructors are trying too hard to please students with grades and gut courses, this effort to win over students and colleagues can backfire. Some professors earn stellar reputations for teaching tough courses with high standards. Be prepared, however, to read damning student evaluations and/or four-letter words about yourself on RateMyProfessor.com.

    Fifth, work, work, work
    Sadly, some faculty don't get tenured/promoted because they set priorities in life that detract from job performance. I know more than one accounting associate professor who earned a PhD from a top-ten research university, got enough TAR, JAR, and JAE hits to make tenure at an R1 research university, and then has not been heard from since earning tenure. In most instances that associate professor changed priorities in life, including parenthood to a fault, chasing around after a divorce, taking on hobbies like building a real airplane/yacht in a barn, building harps accords, building violins, performing in string quartets, etc. Some just plain burn out and become diseased with depression and alcoholism.

    Six, become a quality administrator and or servant of your profession
    There's no shame in burning out at research and/or teaching if you have skills and ambitions for other alternatives in a college. There's no honor in becoming a lousy dean if you've been a lousy researcher or teacher. However, if you're a good researcher/teacher who just wants other challenges in life, there are some terrific challenges when becoming a serious administrators. Being a good administrator also takes a different kind of skill set and dedication. There are extensions of this concept in the field of public and professional service. Exhibit A is the quality reputation that Dan Deines (Kansas State University) built over a lifetime of dedication of promoting accountancy among K-12 students and their advisors and parents.

    Seven, become a researcher/publisher and consultant in a small niche
    Sometimes earning a worldwide reputation in research takes dedication toward research in a small niche. For example, accounting professors in the past have found niches in such things as oil and gas accounting, accounting history, or accounting for interest rate swaps (like me). Few, however, have explored becoming accounting experts in synthetic leasing, XBRL, securitizations , casualty insurance, or in managerial accounting for specific industries like funeral parlors, QVC, or Avon.

    Eight, take other roads less traveled
    I know quite a few accounting and business faculty who became totally dedicated to NACRA and other case writing associations. Unable or unwilling to build accountics science reputations, they built international reputations for writing both teaching and research cases. My threads on case writing are at
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Cases
    This route sometimes becomes popular for lawyers who do not have PhD-level research training.

    Nine, consider the possibility of becoming a special needs student expert
    It's rare for an accounting professor to become an expert for special needs students such as students who are hearing impaired, vision impaired, paralyzed, hyperactive, bipolar, etc. I think there's a real niche here. My threads on this topic are at
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm#Handicapped

    Ten, remember that respect for scholarship is depth and content
    It can be dysfunctional to become a superficial blogger or a maintain a superficial Website. Reputations are not built on publishing, blogging, social networking, or Websites alone. Reputations are built upon the content of publishing, blogging, social networking, or Websites. And reputable content can take a lifetime of blood, sweat, and tears!

    My threads on Tools and Tricks of the Trade are at
    http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/thetools.htm
    There really is no easy way out in terms of a quality long-term professional reputation. Too many failed professors tried to do too many things superficially and failed to build a quality reputation that stands out when the Great Scorer comes to write against their names. Good guys often finish last.

    "Thinking Like an Entrepreneur," by Kevin M. Guthrie, Inside Higher Ed, June 25, 2008 --- http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2008/06/26/guthrie

    Increasingly, therefore, foundations, government agencies and universities are asking where they will find the recurring funding to sustain these online resources over time. They are requiring the leaders of such projects to develop sustainability plans that include ongoing sources of revenue; in short, they are looking for academics to act as publishing entrepreneurs. Success in such endeavors requires entrepreneurial expertise and discipline, but in our experience at Ithaka, few OAR projects employ fundamental principles of project planning and management. Why don’t they?

    What we have observed is that deep cultural differences separate the scholarly mindset from the mindset of the e-entrepreneur. Most people overseeing online academic resources are scholars, raised in the academy, accustomed to its collegial culture and deliberative pace, shielded from traditional market forces. However, the rapid changes and ruthless competitive landscape of the Internet require a different mindset. The challenge for a successful OAR project leader is to marry the scholarly values essential to the project’s intellectual integrity with the entrepreneurial values necessary for its survival in the Internet economy.

    To assist project leaders in successfully managing digital enterprises, Ithaka embarked on a project to study the major challenges to the sustainability of these online academic resources. Working with support from the Joint Information Systems Committee and the Strategic Content Alliance, we interviewed a range of people both in the academy and industry. During that effort, the fruits of which were published last week, we identified several aspects of the entrepreneurial approach that seem particularly important to creating sustainable digital projects:

    1. Grants are for start-up, not sustainability. Most often, project leaders should regard initial funding as precisely that — start-up funding to help the project develop other reliable, recurring and diverse sources of support. The prevailing assumption that there will be a new influx of grant funding when the existing round runs out is counter-productive to building a sustainable approach. There are exceptions to this assertion — for example, if a grantee offers a service that is vital to a foundation’s mission or is exclusively serving an important programmatic focus of the funder — but these cases are unusual.

    2. Cost recovery is not sufficient: growth is necessary. Project leaders need to adopt a broader definition of “sustainability” that encompasses more than covering operating costs. The Web environment is evolving rapidly and relentlessly. It is incorrect to assume that, once the initial digitization effort is finished and content is up on the Web, the costs of maintaining a resource will drop to zero or nearly zero. Projects need to generate surplus revenue for ongoing reinvestment in their content and/or technology if they are to thrive.

    3. Value is determined by impact. OAR project leaders tend to underestimate the importance of thinking about demand and impact and the connections between those elements and support from key stake holders. The scholarly reluctance to think in terms of “marketing” is a formula for invisibility on the Internet. Without a strategic understanding of the market place, it is only through serendipity that a resource will attract users and have an impact on a significant population or field of academic endeavor. And of course, attracting users is essential for garnering support from a variety of stake holders: host universities, philanthropies and government agencies, corporate sponsors and advertisers. The most promising and successful online resource projects are demand driven and strive for visibility, traffic and impact.

    4. Projects should think in terms of building scale through partnerships, collaborations, mergers and even acquisitions. Project leaders need to consider a range of options for long-term governance. Start-ups in the private sector, for example, aim for independent profitability but they also consider it a success to merge with complementary businesses or to sell their companies to a larger enterprise with the means to carry those assets forward. Not-for-profit projects should think similarly about their options and pursue different forms of sustainability based on their particular strengths, their competition, and their spheres of activity. Given the high fixed costs of the online environment, collaborations and mergers are critical for helping single online academic resource projects keep their costs down and improve chances for sustainability.

    5. In a competitive world, strategic planning is imperative. In the highly competitive environment of the Web, project leaders must embrace the best operating practices of their competitors — a group that includes commercial enterprises — for mindshare and resources. That means they will have to act strategically, develop marketing plans, seek out strategic partnerships, understand their competitive environment, and identify and measure themselves against clear goals and objectives for how they will accomplish their missions successfully and affordably. An academic disdain for “commercialism” can doom many a promising scholarly project to failure on the Internet.

    Historically, academic projects have been shielded from commercial pressures, in part by funders, but mainly because their economic environment operated independently from other areas of commerce. This separation between the “academic” and “commercial” economies is no longer meaningful. The project leaders that are most likely to succeed in today’s digital environment are those who can operate successfully under the pressures of competition and accountability, and in the messiness of innovation and continual reinvention.

    6. Flexibility, nimbleness, and responsiveness are key. OARs need to develop the capability for rapid cycles of experimentation (“fail early and often”), rather than spending years attempting to build the optimal resource in isolation from the market. Unfortunately, many OARs are structurally set up to do the latter – their grants commit them to promised courses of action for several years and tie them to specific deliverables. Leaders of online academic resources may not realize that many funders would prefer nimbleness if it means that the OARs will have a greater impact. Funders, for their part, must recognize that multi-year plans need to be highly flexible to allow for adaptation to new developments in technology and the marketplace.

    7. Dedicated and fully accountable leadership is essential. Running a start-up – and developing an online academic resource is running a start-up – is a full-time job requiring full-time leadership. The “principal investigator” model, in which an individual divides her time among a variety of research grants, teaching assignments, and other responsibilities, is not conducive to entrepreneurial success. New initiatives aiming for sustainability require fully dedicated, fully invested, and intensely focused leadership. If a principal investigator cannot provide it, he or she will have to retain a very capable person who can.

    If new digital academic resources are going to survive in the increasingly competitive online environment, the academy needs a better understanding of the challenges of managing what are essentially digital publishing enterprises. Leaders and supporters of these projects must orient themselves to an entrepreneurial mindset and embrace principles of effective management. If they are unable to do that, important resources serving smaller scholarly disciplines will disappear, leaving only those projects that are commercially viable.

    Judith Boettcher in Syllabus, June 1999, 18-24 Judith Boettcher is affiliated with CREN. She predicts the following scenarios (which appear to be heavily in line with the emerging WGU programs mentioned above):

    1.  A "career university" sector will be in place (with important partnerships of major corporations with prestige universities).

    2.  Most higher education institutions, perhaps 60 percent, will have teaching and learning management software systems linked to their back office administration systems.

    3.  New career universities will focus on certifications, modular degrees, and skill sets.

    4.  The link between courses and content for courses will be broken.

    5.  Faculty work and roles will make a dramatic shift toward specialization (with less stress upon one person being responsible for the learning material in an entire course).
    (Outsourcing Academics http://www.outsourcing-academics.com/ )

    6.  Students will be savvy consumers of educational services (which is consistent with the Chronicle of Higher Education article at http://chronicle.com/free/99/05/99052701t.htm   ).

    7.  The tools for teaching and learning will become as portable and ubiquitous as paper and books are today.

    Will Universities Be Relics? What Happens When an Irresistible Force Meets an Immovable Object? John W. Hibbs

    Peter Drucker predicts that, in 30 years, the traditional university will be nothing more than a relic.    Should we listen or laugh? Hibbs examines Drucker's prophesy in the light of other unbelievable events, including the rapid transformation of the Soviet Union "from an invincible Evil Empire into just another meek door-knocker at International Monetary Fund headquarters." Given the mobility and cost concerns of today's students, as well as the growing tendency of employers to evaluate job-seekers' competencies rather than their institutional affiliations, Hibbs agrees that the brick-and-mortar university is doomed to extinction.

    Jensen Comment
    I think bricks and mortar will be around for a long time as long as young and naive students commencing adulthood need more than just course content in the process of becoming well-rounded adults. Behind the bricks and mortar there are some very inspiring and motivating scholars. Even those professors, however, must change with the times as asynchronous learning keeps becoming more superior on tough content items --- http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/255wp.htm

    Bob Jensen's threads on education technology are at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm

    Bob Jensen's advice for new faculty can be found at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/newfaculty.htm

    Bob Jensen's other updates on education technology can be found at http://faculty.trinity.edu/rjensen/000aaa/0000start.htm