By Lee Skallerup Bessette. Nicholas Kristof is at it again. This time, he is encouraging all students to take a gap-year or advantage of study abroad opportunities. This in and of itself isn’t tremendously controversial; international experiences (particularly in aid of learning a foreign language) can be a valuable learning experience. Read more...22 mars 2014
More, More, More! (With Less, Less, Less!)
By Lee Skallerup Bessette. Nicholas Kristof is at it again. This time, he is encouraging all students to take a gap-year or advantage of study abroad opportunities. This in and of itself isn’t tremendously controversial; international experiences (particularly in aid of learning a foreign language) can be a valuable learning experience. Read more...Math Geek Mom: New Buildings
By Rosemarie Emanuele. Recently, as we were studying probability in my Statistics class, a student asked me about the use of probability in math and economics. Actually “where will we ever use this?” might be a better way of explaining what was asked. I explained that probability is the foundation of all of statistics, and that economists, whose field is based on statistics, also use probability to study decisions made under uncertainty, when the best one can do is maximize profit or utility given the expected value of the outcome of a choice. Read more...A Year After 'Leaning In'
By Laura Tropp. I was at a meeting this week with about twenty people. We could not all fit around the conference room table, so someone brought in extra chairs. I ended up seated at the edge of the crowd, nowhere near the conference table. I make a joke about how, seated where I was, I wouldn’t be able to “lean in.” Apparently, I was the only one who found it funny (maybe this wasn’t a Sheryl Sandberg crowd?). Read more...St. Patrick's Day
By Susan O'Doherty. As I have described here before, all of my Irish Catholic relatives (and there were a lot of them; both my maternal grandfather and my father came from large families) disowned my family because we were heathens and going straight to hell. I grew up not identifying as Irish at all. The extended family that did embrace my brother and me was my maternal grandmother's. They were of French and English descent and could trace their American roots to the Revolutionary War. That was the heritage I identified with, since that was the world that welcomed me. Read more...IPAT considered harmful (#3 of more)
By G. Rendell. IPAT (environmental Impact = Population * Affluence * Technology) is deeply embedded into the mind of pretty much any student who’s ever taken an Environmental Studies course. Previously, I pointed out that notating the formula as a multiplication is misleading, and that expressing the formula using discrete, averaged, variables is destructive of meaningful information. Read more...
IPAT considered harmful (#2 of more)
By G. Rendell. The IPAT equation (environmental Impact = Population * Affluence * Technology) has another weakness that is derived, yet different, from its presentation as a simple multiplication of three terms. To present as a simple multiplication, it needs simple operands. Simplifying those operands eases the pedagogical task, but it also destroys critical information. Read more...
Books are for (Re)Use
By Barbara Fister. Back in January, I invited faculty to take a survey to get faculty perspectives as a group of libraries considers whether to start an open access press. Thanks to everyone who participated. The results are in, and very interesting they are, too. The thing that impressed me the most about the responses was the fact that so many faculty said they might consider publishing a book with an open access press (with faculty in the arts and humanities most interested). Given the amount of FUD being spread about open access (claims that it's poor quality, requires author payments, or is some of kind of scam), I was pleased to see such positive results. You can read reports on the surveys at the Lever Initiative website. Read more..."The Ed-Tech Establishment"
By Joshua Kim. Doc_Docorstein, in an exchange with Michael Feldstein in the Disqus / comments section of my post, talks about the existence of an “ed-tech establishment."
By “ed-tech establishment” I take Doc_Docerstein to be referring to those of us who are apt to find ourselves at EDUCAUSE, Sloan-C, or NMC. Full-time administrators. People working in and around academic IT. Read more...
How Annual (Staff) Performance Reviews Should Work (Maybe?)
By Joshua Kim. This will be the first year in a while that I do not have any direct reports, and therefore will not be conducting annual performance reviews.
Is this a process that you participate in?
Are you asked to evaluate your direct reports?
I am not an expert on the employee review process, and I understand that many people work very hard to make this process as valuable, fair, and productive as possible. Read more...
Dr. Doctorstein's Guest Post
By Joshua Kim. Who is Dr. Docorstein? He provided a bio that reads “Dr. Doctorstein teaches at a small, cash-starved state university where all the faculty are smart, all the administrators are good-looking, and all the IT staff are above average.” Dr. Docorstein asked if I’d be willing to publish a guest post in response to my blog post on The Ed-Tech Establishment. Read more...
