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26 janvier 2014

Are adjunct professors the fast-food workers of the academic world?

The Guardian homeBy . Adjuncts are over-worked, underpaid and have little job security. It's an injustice, and it hurts higher education. I am what's called an adjunct. I teach four courses per semester at two different colleges, and I am paid just $24,000 a year and receive no health or pension benefits. Recently, I was profiled in the New York Times as the face of adjunct exploitation, and though I was initially happy to share my story because I care about the issue, the profile has its limits. Rather than use my situation to explain the systemic problem of academic labor, the article personalized – even romanticized – my situation as little more than the deferred dream of a struggling PhD with a penchant for poetry. More...

26 janvier 2014

… It’s How You Say It

http://chronicle.com/img/photos/biz/ubiquitouslibrarian-45.pngBy Brian Mathews. The theme of language keeps popping up in my conversations. I’ve become very conscious with how we communicate with users – not just the content, but the tone as well. A recent interaction with Google stimulated by thinking. They offered me a Glass upgrade and this was their confirmation message. More...

26 janvier 2014

Is a Picture Worth a Thousand Notes?

By Jessica Higgins. In a class this past December, after I wrote some directions on the board for students about their final examination, one young woman quickly snapped a picture of the board using her smartphone. It wasn’t the first time a student had taken a picture instead of taking notes, nor was she the only student in that class who was using this photographic note-taking method. But perhaps because she was sitting in the front row, or perhaps because her phone flashed, she drew my attention. More...

26 janvier 2014

From Weeder to Leader

By Jessica Higgins. Several years ago, I received a call from a student whose voice betrayed his sense of frustration and defeat. Despite studying for days, he had just failed the final exam in an introductory computer-programming course, along with the majority of the class. For the first time in my experience as an educator and administrator, I paused to wonder why we don’t question the failure rate in these classes. We’ve all met professors who point to a low pass rate as documentation of their ability to create a worthy college course. But in the world of continuing education—where we dedicate ourselves to healing those students who have been undermined by the pedagogy of elimination—we have a responsibility to challenge the philosophy behind a course whose primary role is to limit the number of students who pursue that field of study. More...

26 janvier 2014

How about a little humor in higher education?

http://chronicle.com/img/photos/biz/castingoutnines-45.pngBy Robert Talbert. Are you like me, and think that higher education could benefit from a sense of humor? That we’re hearing lots of dystopian stories about how bad things are but little about what people – individual people – are doing to effect positive change in their situations? If so, you might find this upcoming workshop called There’s Something Funny About Higher Education appealing. More...

26 janvier 2014

Making Things and MLA 2014

http://chronicle.com/img/photos/biz/profhacker-45.pngBy Anastasia Salter. I recently returned from an intense week at the Modern Language Association Conference. I’ve been attending MLA for a few years now and every trip feels like a very different conference, thanks to MLA’s scale and the endless supply of options. For someone early-career like me, that means that I try to find a thread in the giant tent of MLA that is most immediately useful to my work. This year, I found myself compensating for several months spent on very traditional writing by attending a number of sessions that were about making things. More...

26 janvier 2014

2014: a Year of ‘Consolidation’ in Britain

http://chronicle.com/img/photos/biz/icons/worldwise-nameplate.gifBy Nigel Thrift. For British higher education, 2014 will be a period of consolidation. Specifically, I think we will see four trends grow as budgets tighten, as the system becomes more market oriented, and as universities face more pressure to produce better education and research with less resources. These developments mean more universities will be forced to ask themselves whether they have the right scale of operations to succeed.
First, there will be much more competition around the student experience. As more and more students find themselves shopping around for the universities that offer the best value for the cost, not surprisingly they will demand more of institutions. Read more...
26 janvier 2014

Make Your WordPress Site More Accessible

http://chronicle.com/img/photos/biz/profhacker-45.pngBy George Williams. Like many blogs, ProfHacker runs on software called WordPress, and we’ve written many posts over the years about this software. WordPress is a great tool for creating a variety of different kinds of digital resources. An important issue to consider when creating a digital resource is how accessible it is to a diversity of users — including, but not limited to, people with disabilities. (For a consideration of the various reasons why, read “Why: The Case for Web Accessibility.”) However, if you’re not especially skilled in what might seem like highly technical web design requirements, the issue of accessibility can seem overwhelming. Fortunately, the WP Accessibility plugin — developed by Joe Dolson — can help non-expert blog owners correct a variety of technical accessibility issues within many WordPress themes. More...

26 janvier 2014

Preserve Peace of Mind on Twitter by Disabling Retweets

http://chronicle.com/img/photos/biz/icons/profhacker-nameplate.gifBy Jason B. Jones. Imagine, if you will, a family member or close friend. You care about this person, and value them for their perspective on the world. Except, as it happens, on that *one* subject. Maybe their political views are lifted wholesale from Fox or MSNBC. Maybe they parrot talk radio’s outrage of the day about sports or celebrity culture. Or during Premier League games they shout at the TV as if they were at a pub. Or perhaps this person loves to get your goat by telling you what other folks are saying about you, and then when you get mad backing off and saying, “hey, I’m not the one saying it!” (Or, in Twitter-speak: “RT != endorsement”.) Read more...
26 janvier 2014

Disability and Accessibility Edition

http://chronicle.com/img/photos/biz/profhacker-45.pngBy George Williams. Here in the United States, another week of extremely cold weather has passed, but at least the days are getting longer, providing us with more sunshine. (Okay, I like to tell myself that this makes a difference…) Below I’ve provided you with five interesting reads for the weekend, all of them related to issues of disability and accessibility. More...

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