Using collaborative autoethnography to explore online doctoral mentoring: Finding empathy in mentor/protégé relationships.

We used collaborative autoethnography (CAE) to investigate how we, in our prior work as doctoral mentors at an online institution that assigned students to dissertation chairs, navigated the challenges associated with relationship deterioration with some of our student protégés. We explored how the process of reflection and interrogation might shape our future responses to conflict so that we might improve our strategies for successful and satisfying mentoring outcomes. We applied Rusbult, Zembrodt, and Gunn’s (1982) framework, with constructs Exit, Voice, Loyalty, and Neglect (EVLN), to examine specific cases from our work as dissertation mentors. Originally created to help explain responses to romantic relationship deterioration, we applied this framework to the dissertation mentor-protégé relationship in order to reflect on ways to improve student progress. Two themes from our analysis of each case emerged from the data. Each theme tied to the student’s behavior and the impact that behavior had on our collective perception. Implications are provided for mentoring students in online doctoral programs

Online Graduate Study in Education: An Examination of Tuition Costs and Faculty Salaries for Public, Private, and Proprietary Institutions of Higher Learning in Texas

Technology plays a major role in the delivery of educational services in today’s colleges and universities. Gumport and Chun (2005) stated that enrollment in for-credit distance education courses had more than doubled between 1997 and 2000. Distance education is undergoing rapid growth and expansion as colleges and universities rush to offer online courses and degrees in a variety of subject areas. Schrodt and Turman (2005) found students often expect college instructors to incorporate some form of technology into the class design even in traditional non-distance education courses. Although many educators feel that advances in technology will positively change the way classes are taught, Gumport and Chun (2005) indicated that technological improvements do not always measure up to initial expectations. Regardless of any negative side effects, such as cost or training for faculty, technology continues to advance in society and specifically in the college classroom

Examining the Support of Modern Athletic Reform Proposals Developed by the Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics in Response to Higher Education Athletic Reform: A Case Study

This study was conducted to determine the success for the diffusion of the Coalition on Intercollegiate Athletics (COIA) white paper Framing the Future: Reforming Intercollegiate Athletics. The Stages of Concern Questionnaire (SoCQ) and personal interviews were utilized to collect data and purposeful sampling was used to identify one NCAA Division I university in the state of Texas. Athletic personnel and faculty senate members were asked to complete the SoCQ and participate in an interview for the study. Findings provide evidence that the participants share common concerns in relation to the adoption of the COIA white paper such as creating a balanced approach to academics and athletics, increasing campus pride, and academic integrity. Participants also felt that meaningful collaboration among faculty and staff members can prove beneficial to helping individuals take ownership in the adoption process.  &nbsp

Using Collaborative Autoethnography (CAE) to Reflect On and Examine Doctoral Mentoring

Collaborative autoethnography (CAE) “focuses on self-interrogation, but does so collectively and cooperatively within a team of researchers” (Chang et al., 2013, p. 21). CAE allows multiple authors to participate in collective and cross-analytic questioning, in order to both encourage multi-vocality in reflection and collaborative process in self-analysis. Through this process we were able to each examine our practice of “teaching through feedback,” explore our relationships with our students, and find the nuances of relationship dissatisfaction. We then brought those examples to the group. We shared our thoughts and reflections on these examples. In each group session, as we listened to each other share our cases, we questioned and empathized with similar situations and feelings. We also expressed where our experiences differed, or suggested alternative reflections on the meaning of the experience. All of us are dissertation chairs who mentor doctoral students who use a variety of research designs and methods in their dissertations. Often we, as chairs, have more expertise with certain methodologies than with others. In this presentation, we chose to explore the use of a new methodology—CAE—to achieve two purposes. First, we discuss how we used the method to reflect on and understand our mentoring with respect to relationship deterioration; and, second, we set out to learn some of the important nuances of the method in order to mentor students who might want to explore and implement CAE. We provide implications for those who teach research methods in doctoral programs

Overcoming social and psychological barriers to effective on-line collaboration

Research suggests that collaboration in an on-line course can enhance learning, reduce feelings of isolation, increase satisfaction with the course, and increase motivation. Unfortunately, creating an environment within which collaboration can occur doesn’t happen automatically. A review of the literature suggests that for on-line collaboration to be most effective, participants must: (1) see the value of expending the (considerable) effort required, (2) be comfortable with and trust the medium, (3) be comfortable with and trust their instructor (or facilitator) and their fellow collaborators, and (4) feel as though they are immersed in a rich, engaging, and rewarding social experience. While many papers suggest that one or more initial face-to-face meetings will expedite trust, familiarity, and a willingness to collaborate, one of the primary reasons why students engage in distance learning is the convenience of anytime, anyplace learning. Thus, face-to-face meetings are not always possible or desirable, leaving us with the need to address these issues in more creative ways. This paper reports on how researchers and practitioners have begun to address the challenges associated with on-line collaboration

Transgenic Targeting of Recombinant Rabies Virus Reveals Monosynaptic Connectivity of Specific Neurons

Understanding how neural circuits work requires a detailed knowledge of cellular-level connectivity. Our current understanding of neural circuitry is limited by the constraints of existing tools for transsynaptic tracing. Some of the most intractable problems are a lack of cellular specificity of uptake, transport across multiple synaptic steps conflating direct and indirect inputs, and poor labeling of minor inputs. We used a novel combination of transgenic mouse technology and a recently developed tracing system based on rabies virus (Wickersham et al., 2007a,b) to overcome all three constraints. Because the virus requires transgene expression for both initial infection and subsequent retrograde transsynaptic infection, we created several lines of mice that express these genes in defined cell types using the tetracycline-dependent transactivator system (Mansuy and Bujard, 2000). Fluorescent labeling from viral replication is thereby restricted to defined neuronal cell types and their direct monosynaptic inputs. Because viral replication does not depend on transgene expression, it provides robust amplification of signal in presynaptic neurons regardless of input strength. We injected virus into transgenic crosses expressing the viral transgenes in specific cell types of the hippocampus formation to demonstrate cell-specific infection and monosynaptic retrograde transport of virus, which strongly labels even minor inputs. Such neuron-specific transgenic complementation of recombinant rabies virus holds great promise for obtaining cellular-resolution wiring diagrams of the mammalian CNS