career – Page 2 – techKNOWtools

Mentoring of doctoral students is varied and diverse depending on the degree, discipline, and institution. I know that mentoring happens informally and formally from peers, professors, colleagues, and more. Sometimes it is from a faculty advisor or supervisor; however, more often then not we meet professionals, practitioners and other scholars who offer some form of personal/professional mentoring while completing a terminal degree. In thinking back to my graduate school experience, there was definitely a tribe of mentors who supported my professional development, research and career plans. From my departmental ATPI Research/Writing Group and LPQ Journal editing on campus to digital networks like #phdchat, many #edtech colleagues, my @BreakDrink podcasting family, the @AcAdvChat community, and MANY more, who mentored me formally and informally during my Ph.D. journey.

HOW were YOU mentored as a doctoral student or in your terminal degree program?

What sort of mentoring experiences did experience in your Ph.D., Ed.D., or M.F.A. program?
Who did you seek out to build formal or informal mentoring relationships?
How did you “stay in touch” or connect with these mentors from a distance, if they were not on campus?
How did these individual, group, or peer-to-peer mentoring experiences impact your own career development and professional growth?
OR if you feel like you didn’t really have opportunities to be mentored formally/informally, tell us what you WOULD have liked during and post-graduate degree?

Exploring the Impact of Mentoring for Doctoral Students

If you have some answers to any or all of the above questions, consider helping one of my own doctoral scholars with her research project. We are curious to learn about the nature and dynamics of mentoring relationships, specifically HOW they impact students in terminal degree programs. This might include mentoring experiences outside of the faculty advisor/supervisor role and even beyond campus. Mentoring experiences we know often occur from conference attendance, academic meetings, professional organization involvement and within your own or other disciplines of scholarship/work

The goal of this research is to understand how doctoral students experience mentoring during and after the completion of their terminal graduate degree programs in both face-to-face and distributed environments. There are a variety of campus stakeholders and professionals who form a collective of mentoring experiences for individuals who are pursuing a terminal degree. With a variety of career paths post-degree, we want to know how doctoral students establish, communicate, and sustain mentoring relationships that support their personal and professional development. We want to know more about these mentoring relationships through the shared narratives of doctoral students who are currently in-progress and/or who has recently completed (in the last 2-5 years) a terminal graduate degree (e.g. Ph.D., Ed.D., M.F.A, etc.).

We would love to know how technologies shape and support these mentoring relationships? This might be to stay in touch, communicate, share on social networks, or even exist within digital learning environments. With the opportunity to connect to scholars and practitioners beyond geographic boundaries, it is now possible for graduate students to establish mentoring relationships with other scholars, peers, and professionals from afar. How are these doctoral scholars finding resources, support, and kinship within peers in online networks? What type of mentoring opportunities have doctoral learners found either formally or informally to reach their personal and professional goals? Are there mentoring groups, peer-to-peer, or professional experiences that have guided their early career decisions and/or direction?

To volunteer for a 30-minute interview for this study, please complete this form: https://unt.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_d06SO2d0GL8al6d

To learn more and/or participate in the project, please find further details about this study here: https://ltiwithme.wordpress.com/2018/04/27/exploring-mentoring-relationships/ or contact Laura Pasquini (Laura.Pasquini@unt.edu) or Meranda Roy (Meranda.Roy@unt.edu).

Career, Reflections, Workplace

What’s Your “Ideal” Job?

February 3, 2016April 20, 2022 Laura Pasquini

Have you ever been asked to describe your “ideal” job? Sometimes this comes up in a traditional job interview. Or perhaps you had someone (a teacher, family member, or friend) just ask you about your career goals. Have you thought about what sort of work drives you? Do you know what sort of “job” you are looking for in your field that best fits you? How does work design impact what you do daily? What inspires you in your day-to-day work? How do you prefer to function and perform?

These are questions I have asked for years. We spend a lot of time in the world of work. So, it’s a natural to want to know about goals and purpose as a student discusses courses in an academic advising appointment. And it is even more intentional as I have worked with undecided majors and first-year students (undergraduate and graduate) to help with their career exploration journey. This semester I am instructing LTEC 3010: Personal Development (a scaled up version that I promise to blog about soon), where we dive into these specific issues (follow #LTEC3010):

Determining avenues to find a job and planning your career
Preparing for the workforce: job search, interviews, resumes, applications, etc.
Getting started at your new job: dress, etiquette, digital identity, etc.
Being productive: Managing stress and time effectively, & working with others
Developing your career: Finding support, connecting to professional organizations, strategies & challenges for moving up the ladder, and seeking out mentoring experiences.

I typically ask my students what their “ideal” job and/or career entails — however until recently I haven’t flipped the tables on myself. After a recent prompt from someone, I decided to list what MY “ideal” interests are for the world of work — specifically targeted towards learning and development.

In general, I am interested in understanding how to build and support the complex learning spaces we work in, specifically, as we consider the connection between formal to informal learning (found among K-12, higher education & the workforce). If I was on a formal job hunt, here are a few items I would be scanning for in the job posting descriptions for, specifically to uncover the culture of an organization:

The opportunity to research the challenges/barriers facing our learning landscapes, which includes pedagogy and design of online, blended, and F2F learning. In particular, the issues encounter with higher ed faculty and staff development, systemic challenges, and student access. Those organizations who are aligned with a similar research agenda, i.e. new ideas of learning, learning delivery, and approaches to educational models impacting us now and in the future, would entice me to apply.
The ability to apply research into practice. This means continuing to be active in the field of learning and teaching, through course instruction and/or training & development programs for formal and informal learning. The idea of creating and delivering curriculum to various campus stakeholders who share similar emerging ideas for learning and research is exciting to me.
The opportunity for community building and network development to enhance the work of our segregated professional learning organizations that support higher ed faculty, practitioners, and administrators — specifically distributing knowledge, resources, and issues across these sections of our institutions. I would love to be part of an organization with a broader vision that can offer an avenue for social sharing/learning; considering these contributions beyond a space or place (i.e. conference, event, etc.) to allow for on-going dialogues; being a central hub to cross-pollinate ideas and deal with issues
Being encouraged to collaborate and support design thinking as a process for innovation within a team across our higher education organizations and/or institutions. In working with a number of talented and thoughtful folks, I have learned the value of incubating ideas to solve problems and work on shared projects. We need to apply this nimble sort of thinking to our learning organization. We need to value both the process and not just the final product, in an environment that values and encourages sharing.

Those are my general thoughts for my future focus for work, and here are a few practical/personal preferences* for my world of work. Here are a few “must haves” for my ideal job:

Shared vision with the organization; appropriate cultural fit that supports the above ideas and goals
Balance between shared projects and individual assignments
Opportunity to continue current research projects and/or contract instructional assignments within higher education and/or learning institutions
Flexibility for my work environment, i.e. ability to work within an office and the allowance to be a distributed team member (telecommutes/remote work)
Open & available for traveling to consult, work, train, etc.
Preference for project-based work vs. a set schedule of hours per day/week, while offering regular updates and progress reports as required
Being both challenged and supported on assignment projects and contributions
The culture of learning is embedded to the work functions; learning is not just something we talk, research, or do — the organization lives its mandate for all employees (i.e. professional development, mentoring, coaching, etc.)

*Note: I am sure I have other preferences (wants & needs) for a job — but let’s just start with this list and see what is out there first.

Can you describe your “ideal” job? If so, please share!

Learning Community, Professional Development, UGST1000

Help My #ugstSTORY Class Tell Their Story

September 12, 2013September 12, 2013 Laura Pasquini

It seems that all is quiet on the TechKNOW Tools blog front… Sorry about that.

The start of the academic semester came fast and furious, and I have been busy engaging with and learning about my students’ stories for my #ugstSTORY class this Fall 2013 semester. This is my UGST 1000 – First Year seminar class where my students explore their major/career options, get support with transition to college, and learn more about themselves. Feel free to follow along with our “story” this Fall if you would like:

Subscribe/follow/save this blog: http://ugststory.wordpress.com/
Follow @ugstSTORY on Twitter and the hashtag #ugstSTORY
Collection of a few of our stories (tweets, blogs & photos) on Storify: http://storify.com/ugstSTORY/
Read & comment on some of my student blogs or connect with them on Twitter: http://ugststory.wordpress.com/class-blogs-twitter/

With this seminar class, a great portion of the focus is on self discovery and exploration for personal, academic, and career options. Like many students who are “undecided” or exploring their options, many of my #ugstSTORY students have more than one interest and want to make sure they are going down the right path for them. In learning about many of their talents and skills, I can see why it might be a challenge to just focus on one major. They are a creative and involved class who what to include what they VALUE in their future world of work and life.

During the Fall 2013 semester, my #ugstSTORY students will leave a digital footprint, and will be encouraged to explore their personal and professional options. In their research to make an informed decision, a number of my students will reach out to professionals and industry leaders in the world of work to answer: “What do I want to do with my life?” and “How did you get to where you are?” I am not sure these BIG QUESTIONS will and/or can be answered in just one semester; however I think a few of the assignments and projects will hopefully get them started.

The first assignment, the Road Trip Nation (RTN) Project, is designed to help my students explore personal, academic, and career paths. More importantly, it allows them to understand that many directions will lead you towards your goals and dreams. Their recent blog posts identified what how to find their “Red Rubber Ball,” that is, where do they get their inspiration, passion, interests, values, and likes. Specifically, I asked what potential careers, professions or industries would they like to learn more about. Here’s a short list from their in-depth blog posts this week:

Interview: Potential Careers & Industry	Interests & Passions
Journalism; Sports Journalism; Broadcaster	Friends; Family; Hockey; Sports
Artist; Engineer; Philanthropist; Advertising; Therapist	Stability; Helping Others
Journalism; Pre-Law; Psychologist	Community Involvement; Travel; Family
Clinical Psych; Greenpeace	Environment Activism; Animals; photography; food; language
High School Librarian	Reading; books; writing
Engineering; Tourism; Economics	Travel; Stability; Accomplishing goals
No Clue	Relationships; Smile; Creativity; Individuality
Writer; Journalism	Music; Belonging; Writing;
National Geographic; Journalism	Travel; Photography;
Broadcaster/Journalism Sports	Talking; Sports; Opinions to voice
Photojournalist; Forensics; Library Science	Cartoons; Anime; Photography; Music
Psychology; Fashion Merchandising; Law	People; Cultures; Travel;
Sales Engineering	Music; Activism; Star Wars
Sports Analyst; Broadcaster/Journalist	NFL Analyst; sports industry
Neurology; Psychology; Editor/Publishing	Anime; Neuroscience; travel; career student; small business

The reason I am sharing more about my class with you is to get them connected beyond our class and the UNT campus. Since I have some phenomenal friends, family, and colleagues in my own learning and professional network, I thought a few of YOU might be able to provide some of your own experience and wisdom for their exploration, specifically by:

SHARING A Resource: We tweet with the #ugstSTORY hashtag, so if you see a link, article, website or anything related to major and career exploration – cc: @ugstSTORY or just put the #ugstSTORY hashtag on it!
READING Their Blog Posts: If you have time to read, comment & post on their WordPress blogs, that would be super rad. Although many are just blogging for the first time, a number of my #ugstSTORY students have very thoughtful and creative perspectives about life in college so far. It would be great if they got a response or two outside our #ugstSTORY class – drop them a comment or like. 🙂
MENTOR Virtually: For the RTN Project a number of the #ugstSTORY learners will be seeking informational interviews with companies, professionals, and different organizations (listed above or might not be listed as they don’t know your about your occupation yet); if you OR someone you know is available and interested in sharing with my students what they do for a living and why they love it – LET ME KNOW! Yes! I want to MENTOR a #ugstSTORY Student p.s. Pass this link onto a friend you might know as well. Thanks!

EdTech, PhD, Professional Development, Reflections

#et4online What Happens In Vegas, Should be Blogged

April 16, 2013April 23, 2013 Laura Pasquini

Much to my surprise, my first visit to Sin City was less about the bright lights, gambling, or trouble I could cause…and more about innovative ideas and collective sharing for learning technologies. This is what happens when you attend the 6th Annual International Symposium on Emerging Technologies for Online Learning (#et4online).

In returning from the #et4online conference, I think that there are a number of great conversations, thoughts, and questions I am left with. So, fortunately for my readers, what happens at an #et4online conference in Las Vegas, will NOT stay in Vegas.

Here are a few #et4online conference highlights, notes & tweets (I am not alone – as I know @tjoosten does this as well):

Location Location Location – Kudos for the Planet Hollywood site. Easy to get around, wifi access was great, it was the middle of the strip & close to some great restaurants, and, most importantly, Rex Manning from Empire Records looked over me while I sleep. What more could a gal want?
#EdTechCareer Forum Round Tables – This was the 1st year to start this initiative; however we had a decent turn out and more importantly conversation with our facilitators @amcollier , @veletsianos, @tjoosten, @whitneykilgore, Kevin Grazino & Rachel Salas-Didier. Thank you to the emerging scholars and career-seekers who stopped by to talk about direction in the field, finding passion, planning for career applications, and more around the job search and career development we have in the #edtech field.
Keynote: What’s That Coming Over the Hill? Digital Futures, Emerging Cultures, New Learning c/o @timbuckteeth This chat had a malay of ideas and experiences for connected learning and pedagogy. Unfortunately Steve had to return back to #PELC13 back in Plymouth, otherwise it would have been great to pick his brain about e-learning more. Here are a few notes myself & others took via Twitter from his talk.
Plenary: Seven Tales of Learning Online with Emerging Technologies with @veletsianos I like how George shared his learning experiences as a student, researcher, and instructor to help us look critically and realistically at how we are using emerging technologies in education. Here are a few collected tweets from the talk.
The Launch Pad: What a great way to show case Ed Tech start ups, and provide an space in the conference to discuss how educators/developers can work together and collaborate to pilot these initiatives. It was great to connect with Lida & Scott from @Ginkgotree after our BreakDrink.com podcast last October to demo the product. Great to hang out & hopefully we’ll connect again in MI soon!
Discussion & Dialogues of Education Is and Is Not – Specifically what is broken or needs to be fixed, and the reality of this statement. I appreciate how George Veletsianos engages in this more on his blog post, and chat with Amy Collier encouraged me more to think about the change, challenges, and issues being labeled in higher education and for online learning.
#UNet4online: Open Space Technology – These sessions were threaded throughout the conference program and facilitated by Jennifer Ross (@jar) to encourage conversations and idea-swapping for online learning. I was able to attend one on April 10th and the final one on April 11th. I appreciated the free space to challenge, ask questions, brainstorm, and share ideas/practices with peers. Shout out to the #unet4online tweeps: @amcollier ,@rasebastian, @veletsianos, @KavuBob, @jleung81, @g4m, @johnrturnerhpt, @jar, @hollyrae, @desertjul & @markjwlee who joined in on various unconference conversations. We were able to talk about valuable ideas for learning including distributed flip educational models (not.a.MOOC), higher education organizational design/culture, and ownership in education. Want to learn more? Check out the fantastic post on the (f)unconference from Amy Collier or my rough Google doc notes.
Getting Social – For me, this is why you attend a conference. I love connecting with others and learning how they are working with students, researching ideas, and just having some great banter. I am glad I got some quality time with @amcollier, catch up time with @tjoosten & @veletsianos, and hang time with new friends, such as @jar @dwicksspu & @kavubob. For those of you who were social [media] online – it was nice to connect via the #et4online hashtag. Let’s continue the conversation.

Thanks to David Wicks (@dwicksspu) for inviting me to join the #et4online conference steering committee. I look forward to 2014 #et4online planning in Dallas, TX. Giddy up! For those of you who are going to Summerfest & #Blend13 – I will see you in July. 🙂

EdTech, Professional Development

Career Forum Roundtables – The #EdTechCareer Line Up for #et4online

April 6, 2013April 9, 2013 Laura Pasquini

The Emerging Technologies for Online Learning (#et4online) Conference in Las Vegas NV is just around the corner (April 9-11, 2013). As mentioned in a previous post, I will be helping to support a new initiative at the conference – the Career Forum Roundtables.

We are very excited to offer the career roundtables as an opportunity for graduate students, junior scholars, and other interested #et4online participants who would like to chat about Ed Tech career planning and development. If you are interested, please feel free to join us for any of the scheduled sessions, and take advantage of meeting the career roundtable facilitators who have offered to share their career insights and experiences.

CAREER FORUM ROUNDTABLES (#EdTechCareers)

Please join us in the Westwood Boardroom for three Career Forum Roundtable sessions:

EdTech Career Tracks Tuesday, April 9 – 2:30pm-3:20pm	There are a number of career directions and opportunities to apply for with your graduate degree. Join this roundtable to ask career questions and gain advice on which path is right for you: · Higher Education Faculty/Instructor – teaching vs. research institutions · Industry Research & Development · Consulting/Other Facilitators: Whitney Kilgore from Academic Partnerships & Dr. Kevin Grazino from Nevada State College
Career Skills Wednesday, April 10 – 10:10am-11:00am	In developing career skills for the educational technology field, it is critical to get involved and connected to both professional affiliations and peers. Come learn about how to build your CV and also showcase your experiences, as we talk about: · Professional Networking · Getting Involved in Professional Organizations · Scholarship Development – teaching, publishing, service · Interview Advice Facilitators:Dr. George Veletsianos from the University of Texas & Dr. Rachel Salas-Didier from Nevada State College & Dr. Tanya Joosten from the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee
Career Applications Thursday, April 11 – 10:10am-11:00am	Applying to your first faculty position? Looking for industry positions? Perhaps you should consider how you present yourself via your job application. Join us as we talk about things to consider when developing your career materials, including: · CV & Resume Writing · ePortfolio Development · References Facilitators: Dr. Amy Collier from Stanford University & Laura Pasquini from the University of North Texas

See you at #et4online!

Tag: career

How Were You Mentored as a Doctoral Student? Tell Us About It!