By Maura Elizabeth Cunningham. Back in the spring of 2011, I was planning a summer of preliminary dissertation research in Shanghai but coming up short in ways to fund my trip. My advisor suggested I get in touch with the director of a study-abroad program that I had previously attended in China, and ask if he needed any temporary instructors for the summer session. Read more...14 octobre 2014
Intentional Goal-Setting and Declaring Your Own “New Year”
By Jason McSheene. We all know how the new academic year begins: You tell yourself, “This will be my best, most productive year of grad school yet!” But now many of us are more than a month into the fall term, and it’s a good time to ask: What are you really doing differently to ensure this outcome? Has that start-of-school energy dissipated? To get it back, one key strategy is to outline your goals and pursue them intentionally. Read more...
Moving Your Classroom Overseas
By Maura Elizabeth Cunningham. Back in the spring of 2011, I was planning a summer of preliminary dissertation research in Shanghai but coming up short in ways to fund my trip. My advisor suggested I get in touch with the director of a study-abroad program that I had previously attended in China, and ask if he needed any temporary instructors for the summer session. Read more...Explain It to Your Grandmother
By Michelle Lavery. No matter whether Albert Einstein, Richard Feynman, or Ernest Rutherford said it, the sentiment above rings true for researchers in all disciplines from particle physics to ecopsychology. We’ve all been at that Thanksgiving dinner, with those misguided questions and blank stares. However, becoming able to communicate your research to your grandparents has many benefits beyond the dinner table. Read more...Are MOOCs Killing Our Conference Presentation Attention Span?
By Joshua Kim. I’m just starting a new MOOC on Coursera, An Introduction to Evidence-Based Undergraduate STEM Teaching.
The first week is terrific, if a bit video heavy. No worries, as I watch my MOOC video (MOOCideo?) at 2X speed. Double speed actually works well for teaching videos. Read more...
Will You Read My Long E-Mail?
By Joshua Kim. There are two types of people in the world. Those who are happy to get a long e-mail from me. And those who are not. (The first category is, shall we say, an exclusive and select group).I’m a long e-mail writer. One of those folks who causes waves of panic when a one of my e-mails makes it past your spam filter and into your inbox. All I can do is apologize. Read more...
5 Computer Peripherals I No Longer Use
By Joshua Kim. The other day my wife wanted me to order her a mouse. A mouse? I had no idea where to start. The last time I used an external mouse was during George W. Bush’s presidency. My complete lack of mouse knowledge didn’t slow her down. She just went to Amazon. (To quote my wife during our mouse discussion: “What do you do all day long? I thought you were a tech nerd or something”). Read more..."Make It Stick" and "How We Learn"
By Joshua Kim. Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning by Peter C. Brown, Henry L. Roediger III and Mark A. McDaniel Published of April of 2014.
How We Learn: The Surprising Truth About When, Where, and Why It Happens by Benedict Carey
Published in September of 2014. Read more...
3 Guesses Why Your To-Do List Is Insane
By Joshua Kim. Somebody needs to declare a national moratorium on new items for our to-do lists. Everybody that I know has more tasks than time. More to-do items than mental bandwidth. Nobody is caught up. The must get done right now list keeps displacing the things I should be doing list. Read more...
Cushions
By Matt Reed. This weekend, two thoughtful stories about community college students got unusual play. Both were about sympathetic students whose studies were in constant tension with the need to make money (and, in one case, with the needs of a young child). In both cases, you couldn’t help but root for the student, and in both cases, relatively small amounts of money made a terrible difference. Read more...
Fast Failure or Slow Success?
By Matt Reed. Last year we started a self-paced version of developmental math, in hopes of allowing students who can move faster than the standard developmental class to progress as quickly as their talent and drive will take them. The self-paced option is proving fairly popular, though it’s far too early to render any judgment on its relative success at this point. Read more...
