What speed did your Internet Service Provider (ISP) sell you?
Are you on a wired or wireless connection?
Is anyone else in the house sharing your internet?
Are you using a VPN ?
Example: let’s say your ISP is providing a “100Megabit” internet connection. This doesn’t mean that you will always get 100Mb of speed in both directions (upload and download.) In most cases for home ISP’s, the download speed will be faster than upload. On a 100Mb connection you may see speeds of 20-70Mb download and only 2-20Mb upload speed. Other factors can make that number lower than “advertised”. Wireless internet is not quite as fast as wired. If possible, test your home internet with a wired connection to find out your “best, possible” speed. Then you can compare that speed result to a wireless test. As noted in the article below, wired is faster, but wireless is certainly more convenient and may be “fast enough”.
Are you the only one using the internet at your home? If someone else is home and streaming Netflix, downloading/uploading files, or in a video call, etc., your speed will be affected.
The last thing to check is VPN. If you have a VPN connection going, disconnect it for the test.When you make a VPN connection, it affects your speed by 5-20%. Details of why VPN affects speed can be found in this article:
If you find your home internet isn’t as fast as you think it should be, first try a reboot of your networking gear (Router/modem.) Leave it powered off for at least 30 seconds and test again. Still slow? Contact your ISP’s support. They may know of a outage or problem in your area or walk you through some of these steps to assist you.
(This is a reprint of an article I wrote in 2018).
I was reading an article (THECB, 2018) the other day on the 60x30TX Initiative. This initiative, by the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, seeks to bring the percentage of adults with some form of higher education (defined as an associates degree or above) up to 60% by the year 2030. What caught my eye was goal number three, Marketable Skills;
Include interpersonal, cognitive, and applied skill areas that are valued by employers, and are primary or complementary to a major [in higher education programs]
Help students identify their marketable skills and communicate them to employers
The article went on to state, ” The plan requires institutions to formally identify those skills for each of its degree programs so that students are aware of and can communicate these skills to future employers.” Let’s unpack this a little bit.
Marketable skills (i.e., transferable skills, soft skills, employability skills) are already taught in virtually every course. I think faculty infrequently think about and document these soft skills in their courses. Rather, they think about their discipline, and what students need to know about it. Talking about identifying marketable skills sounds to faculty like “yet another thing you want me to do.” Herein lies the first problem to address:
Problem #1: How can we inform and persuade faculty that marketable skills complement rather than compete with their content?
Let’s take an example. Professor Smith teaches English literature. She is very good at teaching students how the great English writers express their thoughts and ideas. She encourages her students to learn from them and model the kinds of techniques they use to produce great writing. She has her students present their reports and thoughts orally to the class for discussion. So it’s probably not difficult for Professor Smith to demonstrate that she teaches some aspects of this marketable skill in her course. She just needs to know what those marketable skills are. Luckily, there are several resources that delineate them, including the NACE Career Readiness Competencies (National Association of Colleges and Employers, 2018), which serve as standards.
Let’s look at the NACE competency for Oral/Written Communications:
Articulate thoughts and ideas clearly and effectively in written and oral forms to persons inside and outside of the organization. The individual has public speaking skills; is able to express ideas to others; and can write/edit memos, letters, and complex technical reports clearly and effectively.
The NACE standards are organized into larger categories of marketable skills:
Critical Thinking/Problem Solving
Oral/Written Communications
Teamwork/Collaboration
Digital Technology
Leadership
Professionalism/Work Ethic
Career Management
Global/Intercultural Fluency
Back to the identification of marketable skills. Earlier, I pointed out that the initiative wants colleges to identify the marketable skills in their programs. I submit that this should NOT be our target. Let me illustrate. Suppose we did this. What would it look like? More than likely, each academic program/major would publish a document outlining the marketable skills taught in their programs. The skill descriptions would be at a high level, and based upon the major. It would be hard to measure these skills at a meaningful level because curricular content and techniques for any given course vary from semester to semester, even with the same instructor. Also, students don’t take 100% of their courses completely within their major. Rather students construct their course of study with electives and program options. This means that the best place to define marketable skills is at the course level, which leads to the next hurdle. Assuming we know what marketable skills we want to teach:
Problem 2: How do we provide a system for faculty to document the marketable skills taught in their courses?
The Higher Education Coordinating Board states that it will collect this information in future years, but what they are looking for is a list of supported skills per program that are “résumé ready.” While defining skills on the instructional side is part if this goal, the other half is a method for students to consume the information easily and be able to articulate it to a potential employer. In other words, we need a mechanism to give them a “marketable skills transcript.” This leads to the third issue:
Problem 3: How do we document and distribute marketable skills information to students in a way that puts them in control?
Here’s my fantasy.
CASE STUDY
Hannah is a student at LGU (i.e., Land Grant University) in Environmental Design. Her department led the charge several years ago to define marketable skills in all of their major courses. They also worked with other colleges such as Liberal Arts and Business to make sure marketable skills were documented in common courses necessary for their degrees. They went a step further in defining a quantitative measurement for each marketable skill that indicates the magnitude of teaching and engagement provided for each on a per-course basis. Skills and measurements are updated by course professors each semester. They know how to do this because they receive continuing education provided by the university’s Center for Instructional Excellence. For example, Professor Martin’s computer-aided design course offers 3 points of Communication, 4 points of Teamwork, and 2 points of Digital Technology.
After four years of hard work, Hannah receives her B.S. in Environmental Design. As she searches for a job, she shares her academic transcript with potential employers. This details her coursework and grades. But Hannah also has access to a marketable skills transcript. This details marketable skills by course with a description of each course’s specific experiences. Furthermore, since the skills have been quantified, Hannah also has a marketable skill “profile” that gives her a total picture of her strengths in the various skill areas. Hannah has 20 points of communication and 34 points of teamwork over the course of her degree, giving her an advantage in organizational environments requiring strong team skills. Her marketable skills transcript also notes the average skill profile for students coming out of her program, giving potential employers a comparison of Hannah to her peers.
Additionally, each course’s skill experiences are documented via blockchain. This gives Hannah access to her skill credentials conveniently. She is able to distribute her blockchain documented skills in an independently verifiable manner. Furthermore, Hannah can “tailor” what skills and experiences she shares with any given employer. She can shape the picture of what a potential employer sees about her.
During the pandemic, my observations of employees’ productivity while working from home (WFH) have varied. Some are more productive – some less. What I crave are facts supporting or refuting TTI’s productivity.
For example, is our increase in research expenditures this year indicative of increased productivity in WFH? Have time-off requests changed during the pandemic and what do they say about productivity? Are particular job roles more or less conducive to WFH? What kinds of social factors (e.g., family, community, health) affect productivity? What kinds of environmental factors (e.g., technology, office space, furniture) are relevant? I’m sure you have similar questions.
I came across an article this morning that reports decreased productivity, at least in the finance industry:
Productivity slipped when JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s employees worked from home (the article doesn’t specify HOW they measured productivity)
Work output was particularly affected on Mondays and Fridays
WFH affected “organic interaction”
Younger workers may be affected to a greater extent because they “could be disadvantaged by missed learning opportunities” by not being in offices
Overall, [CEO Jamie Dimon] thinks a shift back to the office will be good for the young employees and to foster creative ideas
As I’ve reflected on our WFH experience so far, the best productivity solution seems to be a hybrid model of work that combines WFH with WFO and takes advantage of both environments. The right mix is likely different for different people. But the bottom line is that we currently have very little in the way of supporting data to formulate a policy which is in keeping with the perspective of our Agency.
Thanks to Beatrice Navarro for researching this guest column about assessing your home Internet connection.
Pingplotter – used to diagnose network traffic patterns
One of the most frustrating things that can happen when you’re working from your home is to be in the middle of a video call, perhaps you’re even presenting information, and your connection goes out. Argh! Here are some tips to assess potential issues in your home Internet connection.
Know your Numbers
If your having connection issues, you can’t tell what’s going on unless you know your numbers. Is the problem with your technology or the service provider? Is it really a connection problem or something about my computer? Knowing your connection numbers can help.
Latency – the time it takes for packets of data to be delivered
Jitter – the variance of latency (see above)
Packet Loss – the percent of data that is “lost in transit” between you and someone else
Bandwidth Speed – the rate of data transfer. This can be the “purchased” rate from your service provider as well as the “actual” rate you are getting, which can vary widely and is usually lower than what you bought.
Generally, you want to find out if your numbers are reflecting a problem within your local network or with your provider. A good tool for this is PingPlotter. There is a free version, and you can use their professional version for a limited time for free as well. Below is a graphic is taken from PingPlotter detailing the “path” of my network connection from my house to tti.tamu.edu:
The top table/graph represents the 21 “hops” data takes to get to my computer from tti.tamu.edu. The middle graph is the network performance of my home network measured in latency (green-yellow-red) and jitter (the top band that has a dotted line). You can see that the average latency inside my home network is 0.8ms. This is VERY fast and indicates that I do not have a problem with my home network. The bottom graph is the latency of data from the destination. The average latency for this source is 314.1ms, which is bad. Anything above 200ms is considered unacceptable.
Notice in the top graphic that the hop line labels are color-coded. My first hop (home network) is green, while the rest are red. One more thing, hops nine and ten have some packet loss (noted by the PL% column). This could indicate a saturated network at this hop.
So. You’ve determined that the problem is with your service provider. Is the problem bandwidth or something else? What’s next? Tune in for tips on how to deal with your service provider.
TTI is partnering with Global Knowledge to host an ITILv4 Managing Professional Transition course on October 12-16, 2020. This is an online course offering. The purpose of the course is to transition those of you with ITILv3 Expert certification into the new ITILv4 Managing Professional certification.
The cost of the five-day course is $2,300. The format is online. The cost includes a Global Knowledge instructor for five days, printed courseware, and a voucher to take the certification exam. A retake of the exam is not included. This is a 30% discount off of the regular course price ($3,250) and you don’t have to pay for travel.
… as the pandemic obliterates any hint of work-life balance, many are seeing the office for what it really was: an escape from domestic life that helped to more fully define them.
(Feintzeig, 2020)
Is that what work really is? An escape from domestic life? Is that why we work?
Don’t get me wrong. I have five children. My parents-in-law and brother-in-law live next door. My domestic life runneth over. While I like to get away from the crush of the brethren occasionally, it’s kind of what I signed up for. At the end of the day, I don’t mind my domestic life and, frankly, am thankful for it.
But if I’m totally honest, work does define who I am to a certain extent. I like to think that I work so that I can focus on the things that truly matter – family, friends, service to others, worship. But pride in my job also defines who I am. I’m proud to be in a role that I think can make a difference. My job helps me fulfill my life goals.
In light of COVID-19, it begs the question – what role will my work life have in the future? Is my contribution less valuable because of the method or location of my work? There’s no doubt in my mind that our work is going to change. As I read articles like this, I’m struck by the angst many people have about the future. Many of us are truly fearful of a changing workplace. But we can choose how we approach this situation, and look at it as an opportunity rather than a problem.
What will change?
As the article points out, working from home (WFH) weakens the boundaries between work and home life. This suggests that we have to assess whether an appropriate boundary can be established at home. This boundary is defined by things like good space in which to work, reliable technology, appropriate supervision of children, and demarcations between work time and home time. Some of us will NOT be able to achieve these at home, and so are not good candidates for WFH. That’s OK.
With more remote work comes more conversations and meetings remotely. While technology affects this issue, the greater issue, in my opinion, is effectiveness in remote communication assuming technical requirements are met. Case in point; most of us have learned to mute our microphones during meetings. But this has a tendency to encourage multitasking, lack of attention, and less engagement. The good news is that we can acquire the skill of being present in remote meetings through training and discipline, even with a muted microphone.
If WFH becomes more prevalent in the future, the consequences of reduced transportation will have effects at both the micro- and macro-levels. At the micro-level, spending less time in my car going to and from work decreases my costs and increases my available time to do other things. It eliminates desirable down-time that I may need to decompress and set demarcations between work and home. At the macro-level, decreased transportation results in less pollution, fewer collisions and fatalities, and less economic activity, just to name a few. For us, it could also mean an increase in transportation research questions that need to be answered, i.e., greater opportunity.
At the macro-level, it also seems obvious that WFH will change the distribution of our economic sectors. It’s hard to predict what permanent changes in our economy will happen, but it seems reasonable to assume that as more people WFH, the economy will change. We can be fearful of this change or embrace it.
So I’m going to apply something I studied during my dissertation on audio learning – an advance organizer(Ausubel, 1960). Basically, this is a summary of the main bullets placed at the top of a longer pedagogical piece. It allows a learner to do two things. First, the learner can quickly determine if the piece is relevant to them. Second, it scaffolds the information allowing a learner to better organize the material in a meaningful way, thus increasing retention and comprehension.
So here are my takeaways from the HBR article:
Productivity – while managers generally believe that employees are less productive at a distance, the literature indicates otherwise.
Distractions at home – while dedicated workspace and childcare during work hours are recommended, in the current situation, these may not be possible. Managers should understand this and adjust expectations.
Daily Check-Ins – yet another source extolling the value of daily check-ins, either one-on-one or groupwide.
Video vs. Text – video is better when you need to gauge a person’s reaction – text is better when simpler, less formal, and/or time-sensitive communication is desired.
Setting clear expectations – define a routine cadence of meetings, and “rules of engagement” for contacting you and other team members. For example, I prefer MS Teams chat to email. I prefer MS Teams audio/video calling for detailed discussions. I set my “status” in MS Teams, and if I’m available, you can call.
Morale and Culture – the message you convey to your team sets the tone. If your tone is stressed and helpless, this will have a “trickle-down” effect on employees.
Ausubel, D. P. (1960). The use of advance organizers in the learning and retention of meaningful verbal material. Journal of Educational Psychology, 267–272. doi: 10.1037/h0046669
