I’ve also been hard at work getting an online version of the Projective Differential developed. The first version is just about ready, and will be for coaches, counsellors, consultants, and therapists who do one-on-one work with their clients. This project is actually being run through my other company, Tapintu Inc., and has certainly reminded me that you have to make some choices in development - on time, on budget, to spec… pick two. The next phase of development (which I hope will proceed more quickly given the foundation we’ll have in place) will move towards having a system that can also be used for small group work, or large scale assessment. Once I’ve got everything in place, I will also be making a version available to researchers. Details and agreements haven’t been determined yet, but the researcher version may be offered through what we’re planning for Multiple Angles.

Ryan’s been focused on two fronts: writing articles an the difference in expressive art created by individuals who have had a near-death experience and creating the best darn Angel Learning System user friendly online dissertation process that ever existed. His next project, meditating on humbleness and humility. On the non-academic side, Ryan has started a hiking and meditation group that so far has gone quite well - nobody showed up for the first session and he ended up meditating in the rain, by himself, on a mountaintop, likely surrounded by hungry mountain lions, and rabid squirrels.

Some time ago I made a shameless plug for the film my brother-in-law is making (actually, he was a fiancé-in-law at the time), and mentioned that they were funding the film with pocket change contributions. Well, they’ve finished filming, and are in post-production now, but that doesn’t mean it’s too late to contribute!! They’re still accepting contributions over at Pocket Change Film, and $100 will still get you a ‘funded by’ credit on the film.

Now, here’s some BIG NEWS about that - the film’s star, Kristin Booth, recently won the Genie Award (kinda like Canada’s Oscars) as Best Actress in a Supporting Role for her performance in ‘Young People F$#%ing)‘. But that’s not all!! Just announced today - Gordon Pinsent (a multi-award winning Canadian actor) has joined the cast as the Narrator. That’s pretty cool!

Our presentation focused on the research our group conducted over a year within our own psychology graduate school, the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology. Our cooperative inquiry research focused on six facets of assessing diversity - curricular review (through syllabus analysis), student course evaluations, a brief student survey, faculty interviews, re-analysis of a recent “cultural assessment” which included a section on diversity, and our own reflections both as researchers and as community participants.

We found a number of trends, a couple of which as a faculty I find particularly interesting. One is that syllabi do not tell the entire story - often faculty include additional, sometimes spontaneous, exercises or discussions which may include diversity but were not previously included in the syllabus, while at other times diversity discussions were planned but not carried out in the classroom. From a research perspective, syllabi are useful as a start but cannot be relied upon to demonstrate what is really happening in a classroom. Other data sources must be collected to provide a more complete picture.

A second interesting point was that we found two means by which faculty included diversity within the classroom. One way was for the faculty/instructor to intentionally make space for diversity issues or plan discussions/exercises focused on diversity. Another way faculty/instructors introduced diversity was to invite students with diverse perspectives to share their perspectives. Generally the students were of visibly diverse populations, usually of a a different race/ethnicity than the dominant makeup of the student population within the class. This second way of introducing diversity intersected with another finding that some students felt tired of holding the diversity flag, as it were. Thus, while inviting student sharing may help create an atmosphere of student participation, I now feel it is vital for faculty/instructors to intentionally create space for diversity issues through readings, assignments, and focused discussions rather than rely on spontaneous discussions or relying on students to teach diversity perspectives to fellow students. This seems like it should be intuitive and common sense, however it likely needs to be repeated.

A third finding was that the top 3 diversity areas mentioned in faculty syllabi were culture, race/ethnicity, and religion/spirituality. All other categories were mentioned much less. This is particularly interesting as the sex/gender topic, while 4th on the list, was not even close to the religion/spirituality topic and yet we have a large LGBT community.

There were other findings as well, but I’ll keep this post from getting too long by stopping here. Maybe it will whet your appetite for a future article on the topic.

However, I will note that we presented our findings to our community after completion of the research, and then we conducted interviews one year later with 6 top administrators in the school including the president, academic VP, and Chairpersons of the programs to learn how our research influenced change at the school and the feedback was quite positive. So, stay tuned!

If you are interested in the next NCORE, which will be held in San Diego, CA please visit the NCORE website. Proposals for presenting must be in by Dec. 15th, 2008 and the conference will be held May 26 - 30th. Hope to see you there!

Personally I (Ryan Rominger) have moved into a formal Core Executive Faculty within the Global Programs (distance learning program) at the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology. Part of this move was to take on the role of Associate Dissertation Director and help reform our dissertation departments into one unified dissertation department serving the 3 Ph.D. programs at the school. We are currently serving 155 students and will likely be up to 175 by holiday break, and 190 by the end of the academic year. In addition to the organizational change, the Director and I were charged with re-creating the forms, policies, and procedures for the entire dissertation process. Whew!

Besides the teaching and Associate Dissertation Director role, I am acting as the faculty trainer for our new online learning management system - (Angel Learning). It is quite a nice system, similar to eCollege, but the transition from our (ITP’s) old system to this new system has required quite a bit of training on my part so that I could train the Faculty! It has been fun, of course, as it pertains to online education and technology.

Meanwhile, there have been conference presentations (in particular the National Conference on Race and Ethnicity in Higher Education held in Orlando, FL this past year) and papers (1. Diversity Bibliography and Resources published through Division 2 - Society for the Teaching of Psychology - of the American Psychological Association Div. Biblio 2. Exploring the Aftereffects of the Near-Death Experience: A Summative Report to be published by the Journal of Near-Death Studies Exploring Aftereffects). So, yea, busy. However, it has been a good busy and quite a bit of fun amid the chaos. I look forward to getting back into blogging on this site, so stay tuned.

You may recall, back in January 2007 (was it really that long ago?) - I wrote a post about my sister’s fiancé’s short film “For All the Marbles”. Well, he’s now co-written a screenplay for a feature film which he will co-produce and direct. They’ve started quite a phenomenon with their means of raising the money to get the film made - they’re making the film on pocket change!

People from all over are donating small sums (and some not so small sums) to help get this film made. It all started with a jar, and some change out of someone’s pocket, and it’s become much more.

Anyone who donates $100 or more also gets a “Funded by” credit on the film.

You can learn more at their blog Pocketchange Film, or their Facebook group I’m Making a Feature Film with Pocket Change.

Stanford School of Medicine Health Improvement Program Workshop

Wisdom Therapy™: Reducing Anxiety and Anger
at Home and at Work

Wisdom Therapy has been scientifically established as a comprehensive and effective program for addressing the cognitive, behavioral, physiological, and social components that tend to give rise to and anxiety at work and at home. Wisdom Therapy is an integration of modern cognitive-behavioral techniques, meditation, relaxation practices, and problem-solving perspectives associated with traditions. The goals of this day-long course are to teach the reducing one’s anger and anxiety and consequently improving life satisfaction and health.

The instructor Shani Robins, PhD is a licensed psychologist, author of numerous scientific journal articles and book chapters. has given presentations worldwide. He is an Assistant Professor the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, President of the Wisdom Therapy Institute, and a member of Integrated Healing Arts.

Date: Saturday, 4/19
Time: 9:00am-4:00pm
Fee: $175
Location: Hoover Pavilion, #400
Instructor: Shani Robins,
Class Code: wt-01
STAP Fund: YES

To Register, please use links below:

http://hip.stanford.edu/classes/register.html
or
http://hip.stanford.edu/ec_hipwebpages/reg_files/any_reg.php

Can also navigate there from: http://hip.stanford.edu/

Wikis are now being used in a large variety of ways, including as business web pages and as means for students and teachers to collaboratively create content for courses (be it to deliver course material or to post papers or even to create their own specialized topical wiki). Additionally, individuals are using wikis as a type of public mind-map, personal web page, or basic organizational space to help them keep projects in line.

To see examples of the use of wikis or to find out more…. please visit the following wiki page:

PBWiki: http://pbwiki.com/
This site has examples of Business and Class wikis and info on how wikis work.
Wikipedia (Wiki): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki
This describes what a wiki is and the communities connected with various wikis.

And for a list of hosted wikis, try:
Wiki Farms: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiFarms

And for those who want to host a wiki on their own server, you might like these sites:
Wikipedia (Wiki software): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki
Wiki Engines: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WikiEngines
Top Ten Wiki Engines: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?TopTenWikiEngines
Choosing a Wiki: http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?ChoosingaWiki

And this is just a start. Enter “wiki” into any viable search engine, and I’m sure you will receive even more information and web pages to visit. Even if you don’t use a wiki yourself, I believe it will be important for us all to know how wikis work. The reason I believe this has to do with the evolution of the internet: the internet is changing, becoming more dynamic and interactive. The wiki is one example of this, and if you understand the wiki system, then you can see the relational manner of information exchange within our public internet today. So, take a minute, take an hour, but take some time and learn a bit more about wikis. You might just be surprised and find you could host your own wiki about your particular specialty topic!!

Presentation Zen is a blog dedicated to providing information, tips, ideas, etc. about creating good, compelling presentations.

Presentation Zen author Garr Reynolds has also created a presentations tips area on his personal site.

Guy Kawasaki’s 10/20/30 Rule of Powerpoint suggests that a Powerpoint presentation should have no more than 10 slides, last no more than 20 minutes, and contain no fonts smaller than 30 points:

For those of you who, like me, use Keynote, here are some sites that have created and sell some pretty nice Keynote themes:
http://keynoteuser.com/prothemes/
http://www.keynotethemepark.com/index.html
http://www.keynotepro.com/themes/
http://www.jumsoft.com/themes/

Do you have some good presentation resources? Leave a comment and let us and our readers know!

However, when dealing with individuals in graduate schools, those conducting research, or those in the business field, it has been quite helpful to start with this simple triangle and then work into deeper issues of, for example, “am I *good enough* (whichever level you want to take that on) to succeed.” At other times we have found that intentional distractions, and even unintentional distractions, are really alternative ways of engaging the topic at hand.

Let me give an example. At one point a client was intent on completing a specific part of her project. The project was quite large, so she we had helped her to break down the project into manageable chunks in order to work toward her various goals. At one point she found that she felt absolutely stuck. And even with our accountability efforts in place, she wasn’t moving forward. On her next consulting visit we asked what she had been doing instead. As it turned out, she had watched 4 movies rather than complete the project. On the surface this would seem mere distraction - but I wanted to take it a bit further this time. After inquiring as to the *topic* of the movies and the *moral of the story* in each, the client was led to an epiphany. Every movie had the same basic topic, plot, and moral - and all of these had to do with her feelings of being stuck at this particular part of her project. After recognizing this consciously, and engaging in her own *plot* as compared to the characters in the movies, she was able to come to her own resolution and complete that part of her project.

Without going a bit deeper, she would not have likely recognized her connection with those protagonists in the movies nor would she have likely moved forward anytime soon.