Compromisos

We have a good process at the Tecnológico de Monterrey where we define our commitments (“Compromisos”) for the academic year in advance and then review them at points during and at the end. Part of a holistic view of our roles as educators at our institution.

I’m busy reviewing mine from this year and realized that putting these in the open is a decent idea and I plan to do that going forward. Since I have no time machine to go back to the beginning of the year and post this, I’ll post both what the plans were and a reflection of where I am so far on this.

The Big Five

Here is the list of the five factors which we look at:

  • Personal Development (Compromisos de Desarrollo Personal)
  • Teaching (Compromisos de Docencia)
  • Academic Vitality (Compromisos de Vitalidad Académica)
  • Service and Leadership (Compromisos de Servicio y Liderazgo)
  • Transformation and Continuous Improvement (Compromisos de Transformación y Mejor Continua)

Plans Best Laid

Lifted from https://www.jborden.com/the-best-laid-plans/

Awaiting response on ownership license from Jim Borden but this was too good to not use for now. Image from his blog post at https://www.jborden.com/the-best-laid-plans/

So my original plans stated back a the beginning of last year were:

  • Personal Development:
    • Finding balance among many projects on campus.
    • One key role here will be collaboration and mentoring other faculty members.
  • Teaching:
    • Continue trajectory with good evaluations and contact with alumni.
  • Academic Vitality:
    • Continue with keynotes and participation at international level.
    • Reintegrate in national research community (committee and paper push).
    • Reach goal (2019 or 2020) coauthor of a book or major paper.
  • Service and Leadership:
    • Participate in at least one project in the community with social impact during 2019.
  • Transformation and Continuous Improvement:
    • Reboot of my projects with cMOOCs and training/inspiring faculty at the national level as well as internationally.

Reality Bites

"reality bites empire records" flickr photo by Pink Cow Photography https://flickr.com/photos/pinkcowphotography/6460219525 shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC) license

“reality bites empire records” flickr photo by Pink Cow Photography https://flickr.com/photos/pinkcowphotography/6460219525 shared under a Creative Commons (BY-NC) license

  • Personal Development:
    • I am finding balance but saying ‘no’ can be difficult for myself and the receiver of any “no”. Work in progress.
    • I have had some success reaching out to incoming faculty and giving them professional and personal advice.
    • Hitting both points, I was successful in passing on the responsabilities of our local ACM ICPC leadership to a fellow faculty member who expressed a desire to take that on.
    • I am extremely excited to be enrolled in (and supported by my leadership) a five week course led by Howard Rheingold starting on May 3 titled “Augmented Collective Intelligence“. The cohorts in my group has me both excited and a little bit intimidated.
    • I remain an Associate Professor and will need to plan for a review of that status in 2020.
    • I particpated in a full week training course July 31st – August 3rd, 2018 titled “Qradar training + Tec.Cyber” at IBM in Cambridge, MA, USA.
  • Teaching:
    • My evaluations have been ‘fine’. Not high enough to apply for awards such as “Profesor Inspirador”. Perhaps in 2020. I had applied way back in 2014 and 2015.
    • I implemented my own mid-semester survey (anonymous) to all of my students in March so solicit feedback which was very useful to myself and hopefully to my students.
    • I am guiding a masters student (Gibran) as his thesis advisor. This is my first in quite a few years. I had four previous students as co-advisor (Helen, Erika, Yolanda, Ramiro).
    • I have continued my system of “requiring” three meetings from each student individually to discuss their progress in my course as well as in their lives. This has been a big success and the students have told me that they very much appreciate this. I have much more to write about this and should publish about it.
    • Students are able to schedule appointments with me that fits their own schedules. I have used this scheduling system in place of static office hours for years and this practice has been adopted by many other faculty.
    • Created a new topics course on “Smart Cities” collaborating with colleague Dr. Eleni Stroulia at the University of Alberta Computing Science department. One of the teams in my course is collaborating with a team in Edmonton on a project “YEG-AR”.
    • Designing a new topic to be offered to international students as well as to students across degree programs (target candidates in computing in international relations) titled #SmartCitizens to be offered in August 2019.
  • Academic Vitality:
    • We completed our NOVUS 2017 project “MolCaGeTe” and presented our final report AT CIIE 2018 in December. This project was led by my colleague Alejandro Parra with the invaluable work of students Lucía Velasco and Carolina Castañeda.
    • I presented MolCaGeTe as a poster at #OpenEd18 in Niagara Falls, NY in October 2018. Good feedback was received “MolCaGeTe – Replacing our Chemistry Textbook and Quiz System with Open Resources”
    • I presented on a panel at #OpenEd18 on “CC Open Education Platform: International Collective Action” with Amanda Coolidge, Cable GreenCindy Domaika and Nate Angell.
    • Keynote at The 6th International Conference in Software Engineering Research and Innovation. October 24-26, 2018. San Luis Potosi, SLP, México.
    • Keynote at 4o Foro Educativo de La Red Durango de Investigadores Educativos, A.C. Nov 23-24, 2018. Victoria de Durango, Durango, México.
    • Will be a keynote in September 2019 at FlipTech Latin America in Bogotá, Colombia.
    • Working with the MolCaGeTe team on producing a published paper for the upcoming CIIE 2019.
    • Collaborating with an international team of researchers led by Dr. Hector G. Pérez González of the Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí on a paper on improving object-oriented thinking in undergraduate students.
    • Invited and coordinated the visit of two faculty from the University of Alberta Computing Science department as Academic Leaders (Líderes Academicas) November 2018. Dr. Eleni Stroulia and Dr. Ioanis Nikolaidis.
    • Still aiming with the above research and contemplating participating in a book project in 2020.
    • We developed and delivered the 2nd version of our Linux USB Exam system with my service students. Currently in operation with two teacher users.
  • Service and Leadership:
    • Chair of the Board of Directors of the Flipped Learning Network, July 2016 – present.
      • The FLN is a non-profit with a mission of being the international resource on flipped learning.
      • Personally produced (and hosted most) of 25 podcasts of “Ask the Flipped Learning Network”, more still in production with a bi-weekly schedule.
      • Sponsored FlipTech East Coast 2018 conference, NJ, USA. June 29th and 30th, 2018.
      • Upcoming FlipTech New England conference, Waltham, MA, USA. June 28th and 29th, 2019.
      • Upcoming FlipTech Latin America conference, Bogotá, Colombia. September 27th and 28th, 2019.
    • Latin America Lead for the non-profit Virtually Connecting. Lead, coordinated and participated in various remote events connected to international conferences.
    • Outgoing team coach for ACM ICPC (programmign competitions) up to and including 2018. See above, I passed this role on to another faculty member in 2019.
    • Academic sponsor for the Association for Computing Machinery Student Chapter for our campus in Guadalajara. I was the original sponsor when the group was formed in 2002 and remain the faculty sponsor for most of the years since.
    • Registered for the campus program to be part of a permanent list of volunteers in programs connected to our campus (“oferta permanente del Voluntariado Tec”)
    • I have registered the Tecnológico de Monterrey in Guadalajara as a Pharo Consortium Academic Partner.
    • I participated as a member of the Cyber Security Innovation Council at our meeting in Mexico City on November 7, 2018.
  • Transformation and Continuous Improvement:
    • I have not (yet) rebooted my cMooc offered in the past titled “OpenFlip“. This was offered various semesters starting in the summer of 2014 and offered a total of six times. I intend to start another in June/July 2019. This is a free and open connected MOOC.
    • Coordinator for the CS1 course “TC1017” August-December 2018 and January-May 2019.
    • Regional leader (Occidente) for transfer of upcoming Tec21/Plan2019 CS1 courses TC1028 and TC1023 to be offered in August 2019.
    • Participated as a mentor in the March 2019 Assessment Center where we give graduating students in the computing program feedback on their coverage of core competencies of their degree program.
    • Participating in preparation of hybrid content for TC1033 in a national committee.
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