Teaching at Hogeschool Zuyd

And finally we meet...

2005-06-23T15:46:00.000-07:00

For months, Sylvia and I planned this exchange via email, and one very long telephone converstaion. During the exchange, Sylvia worked from my office along side my colleagues, while I took her place on the Heerlen campus -- she was meeting my colleagues while I met hers. And after two weeks of living each other's lives, we finally met! It was surprising to both of us how similar we are in many ways.

The exchange experience was meaningful and productive in ways that neither of us imagined during the germination days of the idea.

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Maarten, with the participants of his first successful international faculty exchange.

Two who've been there

2005-05-22T11:08:00.000-07:00

Below are Egon, Jerone and I. When they attended NW, people they didn't even know would wave hello to "the Dutch boys!!" Here, we met at the Shamrock in Old Town Maastricht, where a NW t-shirt hangs on the wall.

Aachen by bus

2005-05-21T23:12:00.000-07:00

Today I took a quick trip to Aachen, Germany. It's about 50 minutes by bus. Click the apple struedel photo below to see even more photos of this very nice city.

The Hogeschool Zuyd scene

2005-05-20T07:44:00.000-07:00

Now that I've been here at the school for a full week, it's safe to say that I'm part of the scene here! The atmosphere feels very high-tech, thanks first to the modern architecture, and next to the equipment throughout the building. Not only does the school house teaching facilities for computer design, but also for mechanical engineering, plastics, and many other technological disciplines.

I've spent my time in office D 1.224 where it seems about seven faculty members teaching in the CMD program come and go all day. It's a pleaseure for me to interact with so many people with specialized skills in marketing, design, audio/video, theories, etc. In fact, it's turned out that I don't work much in the office, but I talk a lot and learn a lot more.

These photos give an overview of the school, but click here for a full array.

Learning Dutch

2005-05-18T14:05:00.000-07:00

Today I received a lesson on the various ways to say "Thank you!"

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Maastricht

2005-05-18T13:38:00.000-07:00

It's safe to say that Maastricht is one of the finer European cities! First and foremost is the history, which is evident most in the Old Town. The city is very comfortable, livable and diverse. The attention given to biking is particularly nice. I have biked to, and through, town several times. On Monday, I biked to Belgium, which sounds exotic, but it was just a 20-minute ride. There was a very large flea market held every year on the Pentecost Sunday, the Christian feast commemorating the descent of teh HOly Spirit upon the Apostles on the 50th day after the Resurrection of Christ (description complements of the World Tribune!)

The new pedestrian bridge over the River Maas.

The main train station.

A line for frites.

The first day

2005-05-16T22:33:00.000-07:00

In roughly one hour, Maarten Shrevel will pick me up here at the villa and deliver me not only to Hogeschool Zuyd, but probably directly to my temporary office.

The school is about a 30-minute drive, on weekedays, from Maastricht, where the villa is located. Even though Maarten has generously offered to drive me to work every day, I think I will try my hand at the train system. This really means I want to try my hand at getting up early enough to walk 25 minutes to the station, figure out how to pay with the automatic ticket machines, figure out how to purchase the correct ticket, and then try to board the proper train!

The subjects I'll be teaching, Search Engine Optimization/Driving Traffic to Web Sites, and Social Publishing and building blogs, I've covered many times at my home institution, Northwest Missouri State University. However, as is my nature, I've become nervous. I am overcompensating, as is my nature, by spending hours and hours preparing.

Today, I only teach one 45-minute lecture. A light load by most standards. But tomorrow is quite a different story!

The villa

2005-05-15T22:57:00.000-07:00

Hogeschool Zuyd is housing me, and all its guests for that matter, at a beautiful home in central Maastricht, just minutes from the old town center.

A faculty exchange experiment

2005-05-14T22:43:00.000-07:00

Typically, it proves near impossible to exchange faculty members from one university to another, particularly from one country to another. Yet, that is excactly what I am engaged in here: a faculty exchange.

Our students have been attending each others schools (Hogeschool Zuyd, in Heerlen, Netherlands, and Northwest Missouri State University in Maryville, Missouri) for years. This time a faculty exchange has been arranged since both uinversities have new, and very similar, degree programs for Internet-oriented students. Zuyd offers a Communication and Multimedia Design degree, and Northwest offers an Interactive Digital Media degree. (Note: to reach the CMD degree program information in the link in this paragraph, you'll have to click on the "Communication and Multimedia Design" link.)

Sylvia Pisters, who teaches Web Usability and Interactive Writing, currently sits at my desk in Maryville, while I sit at her desk in Heerlen.

This is a two-week experiment. Sylvia and I have exchanged many details about our respective coursework, and each of us is trying to integrate our lecture materials into the other's classes. This is not too much of a problem, since we teach a course that is nearly idential. For her, it is titled "Usability," and for me it is titled "Introduction to Web Publishing," in which I focus on Usability. Both of us use as an instruction guide, Jakob Nielsen's book, Designing Web Usasbility.