Rick West

An issue raised at the AECT convention this year is whether graduate students should be allowed to review proposals for future conventions. The concern is that if students review, the conference will no longer be seen as "peer-reviewed" for tenure boards. Most people I talked to said this issue will not pose a problem for […]

I was surprised and honored to receive a plaque and recognition from the AECT distance learning division today in our member meeting. The award is for my service as communications officer these last two years. It is interesting to think I no longer will have an official role within the division. It has definitely been […]

These are some notes from the AECT Distance Learning division member meeting, held today.
Discussed items:
1. Outgoing officers: Vance Durrington, former past-president; and Rick West (er, me) as former communications officer
2. Renewed collaboration with QRDE. Tony Pina has done a great job re-establishing our connection with the Quarterly Review of Distance Education. IAP (the publisher of […]

Notes from the session on "Perspectives on Grant Writing" a panel discussion with Ammon Kelly, Chris Hoadley, Brenda Bannon-Ritland, and two others I don’t know their last names (Cindy, Yasmine). This was a great session on Thursday night at the AECT Convention where a panel of folks who have received NSF grants discussed tips and […]

Hearkening back to my post on "Sexy Research," I attended a presentation today, not because I was particularly interested in the topic, but because it was such a cleverly-written abstract. Now, for the life of me, I can’t find the session’s abstract in either the online or the printed schedule. I must be blind. If […]

Today at the meeting for the Graduate Student Assembly, we had elections for executive board member, representing the graduate students to the AECT general board. What happened, was I think, unexpected. A good friend of mine and I both volunteered to run for the position, and in two elections, we remained tied. So now they […]

We had a big headache last night finding a hotel with decent wireless, that would be affordable and on the South Harbor strip close to the AECT conference. Our original reserved hotel, Travelodge, had problems, as did the Best Western (although they have kudos for having a great manager trying to fix the problem).
Finally, […]

Preston Parker, an intern from last year’s AECT conference, asked me if I would give a presentation this year in the Graduate Student Lounge about "How to Get Involved with AECT as a Graduate Student."
I’m honored and excited to do so! To anyone reading this post, please offer me any ideas from your own […]

I’m a big fan of Freakonomics, not because I agree with everything the authors claim, but because it makes me think, and isn’t that what defines a great book?
I’m also a big fan of inquiry-based education, where children learn domain knowledge through problem solving and inquiry. So I enjoyed reading one of the authors of […]

Hooray to David Wiley and the group at Utah State University for finding such a great way to archive on the Internet the happenings at this year’s Open Education Conference. I’ve attended this in the past and quite enjoyed it. I’m looking forward to following this link and listening in on some of the presentations.
I […]