Barbara Grant and Trevor Holmes met to discuss their experience as co-editors. Based on what they learned by co-editing IJAD 12:1, they had the following advice for anyone thinking about proposing a special issue of a journal:

We don’t know if we can generalize our experiences too far, but we know for sure that we learned a lot by co-editing IJAD 12.1. Here are some of our own words of wisdom for future co-editors…

• It’s at least an 18-month process (!!!)
• Be sure to have filename conventions for version tracking; consider tools like Google Docs for the articles, possibly wikis (at least for the editorial). IJAD’s system now handles the reviewer feedback automatically (this is a plus)
• Set deadlines and stick to them, sending reminders at every stage
• Talk about your different strengths and play to them in your division of labour (e.g. the deadline stickler, the feedback giver, the cheerful emailer)
• Be ready to cover each other/pass the ball when necessary due to the rhythms of each other’s academic and personal lives
• Use occasional phone conversations to break the email monotony, to resolve certain kinds of issues or differences quickly, or just to decompress
• There will be heat. You are in the middle at times between reviewers and authors. Share the heat. Remember that your “buffer” role is really important.
• Be ready to receive and give feedback, including bad news and encouragement
• Keep each other in the loop with cc’ing conventions — cc each other on all publication-related correspondence (other than anything that would compromise a blind review of each other’s paper, if you have a paper in the same issue you’re editing)
• Experiment to find a co-voice for your editorial, or experiment with nontraditional editorial voice by trying dialogue, script, parallel reactions to a trigger, etc.
• Have fun! This is one of the most deeply rewarding things we’ve done! We learned a ton about ourselves, each other, the work of editing a journal, and about the field itself through the papers we read, and re-read, and re-read.

Barbara Grant & Trevor Holmes

1. Read the listserv postings and the WordPress archives (http://cadc.wordpress.com/) ie lurk!
2. Contribute to the listserv discussions (the recent one on “What does academic devt sound like?” led to a feast of different kinds of responses to a posting – including the sensual, the intellectual and some that mixed the two very nicely).
3. Use the listserv to get info about what other people are doing and what is working in areas of your/their AD practice.
4. Pick up ideas from the discussion and build them into a writing and/or researching project on your own or with others who have been in the discussion. (Distance-based collaborations can be really stimulating and enjoyable.)
5. Read each other’s drafts and give feedback (review form to be posted on WordPress).

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While meeting in a trendy inner city pizza restaurant to discuss the up-coming HERDSA conference with some CAD colleagues a few weeks ago, I raised the question of whether academic developers have anything to say about the truly large issues facing our time. Global warming, the water crisis, the invasion of Iraq, stem cell research are all part of our everyday discussions around kitchen tables but are they also something that academic developers ought to concern themselves with as part of what they do?

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By Barbara Grant with (in order of appearance) Nancy Turner, Val Clifford, Catherine Manathunga, Di Bills, Brad Wuetherick, Sue Clegg, Simon Barrie, and Trevor Holmes, of the CAD Collective

Internationalisation, the theme of ICED 2006, is a difficult agenda for higher education: it’s an unholy trio of altruism, greed and need…

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http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/sydney06/index.html

The ASCILITE conference theme that caught my eye is: “Technology in whose image?” What do you think?

A tentative symposium title:
“New technologies: New visibilities in Higher Education”

Kim: I’m coming to see that certain kinds of visibility/ies (images?) are im/possible in terms of the move to online learning (and teaching). I’m sure others are onto this already, and it has certainly been mentioned in some of the literature on change in higher education, but I’m not sure about the lived experience and repercussions… which is what I’m thinking about in my research presently.

The paper that might stimulate some creativity in relation to the topic is:
Clegg, S. Hudson, A. & J. Steel. (2003). The Emperor’s New Clothes:
Globalisation and e-learning in Higher Education. British Journal of
Sociology of Education. 24(1) pp. 39-53.

Would other CADers like to come in and comment on this? …indicate your interests, thoughts on this…? I think the topic lends itself to multiple perspectives… But is it substantial enough for a symposium? And at ASCILITE?

Over & out,
Kim

1. Academic Development in the ‘Contact Zone’: post-colonial ways of rethinking academic development (Manathunga)
2. A thing of beauty: Weaving as a metaphor for academic development work (Sutherland)
3. Carer-Lecturers and the Move Online: Relationships, trust and responsibility in online teaching and learning (McShane)
4. Enhancing academic development: a focus on language
(Hicks)
5. Key thinkers in higher education teaching and learning (Kandlbinder)
6. Supervision metaphors, nice and nasty (Grant)
7. Theorising ‘resistance’ to/in educational development: towards a productive conceptual framework (Manathunga, Peseta & Juwah)
8. Troubling the way we research and write about academic development practice: turning to notions of artfulness (Peseta)
9. Educational development as “Slow Rhizomatics”: reaffirming the critical in critical reflection (Holmes)