Dhruv Apte

Dhruv Apte

Ph.D. Student at Virginia Tech

GRAD5104 posts

Hidden curriculum

, , 2021

We started to discuss the hidden curriculum in academia this week, something akin to ‘Easter Eggs’ in movies: unless you don’t see the movie, you don’t know. Similarly, unless you experience it yourself at a university or a research institute, it is difficult to understand the hidden curriculum. For example, before coming to Virginia Tech, I had no idea that football games are a huge deal and that the whole town is either closed or stuck in traffic and it’s best not to venture out those weekends for a bite or a drink (or even order takeout!). As someone coming from an entirely different country having barely an idea of how the US university system works, my peers helped me when I came here. I often thought of writing a ‘hidden curriculum’ document after coming here to help my upcoming peers but the volume of work made me forget about it after a while.

Technology and Innovation in higher education

, , 2021

Hello again! This week, we are discussing about Technology and innovation and its applications like MOOcs and social media in academia. I was drawn to this post on the London School of Economics Blog which promoted the idea of growing the outreach of institutional social media after the pandemic.

Open access journals

, , 2021

So, I have been searching about open-access journals and what do they actually do? They are journals distributing peer-reviewed research literature for free of cost. Initially, I was a bit confused; gee, I get always my journal articles free. But when I thought about it, I remembered, I had to login using my VT ID and I realized that Virginia Tech has a journal subscription because of which I could read them freely. I wondered how do small colleges and research institutes are able to cope up with large subscription costs of these journals and are there any open-access journals in my field?

Future of the University

, , 2021

Hello again! Well, this week’s discussion is on the ‘Future of the university’- well, we are not expected to predict university enrollments but what we expect should change in higher education. Now, the most common things we expect in US higher education to change could be decrease in tuition fees, more research funding opportunities, more tenure-track positions and conversion of adjunct professorships and instructorships to tenure-track positions.

Ethics statements

, , 2021

Hello again! So, after a strenous effort for 2 hours, I was finally able to separate my blog from this course’s blog posts. We will start talking about Ethics statements. What is ethics? Well, you would be like, everyone in academia is an ethical person, right? Otherwise they would be ejected out of academia or their research won’t be valued enough. Now academia has a different standard of ethical research- no plagiarism, no tampering/falsifying/fabricating data or re-using data of any kind and reporting methods not conducted in the studies. The list is exhaustive yet important.

Mission and vision statements

, , 2021

Hello there! We have been studying how universities work and how their mission and vision statements define them. This article helps to give a global idea of how universities function but we need a more deeper comparison. A mission statement explains the existence of the university, the policies that govern it and the methods the university uses to achieve its desired policies.

A New Hope

, , 2021

Well, hello there! Quite surprised to see myself writing another blog post barely within a month and that too, with no errors. No, I have not mastered the art of typing without corrections. This is a one of the first in this new series titled “GRAD5104”. I have been taking this course titled “Preparing the Future Professoriate” and this tag will be connected to the series of weekly blog posts I write about it. This will be a more formal part of the blog with more punctuation, less slang and some more serious talks you would generally expect from people when they have drunk some good wine (I am not drunk at all).