By Robert Talbert. Last week I was honored to be part of the MOOC on An Introduction to Evidence-Based Undergraduate STEM Teaching that’s currently being offered by Vanderbilt University through Coursera. Derek Bruff (who did a 4+1 interview for us last year) is one of the lead instructors of the MOOC, and he asked me to contribute three videos about my use of screencasting and lecture as part of the flipped classroom. More...
02 novembre 2014
Making screencasts: The pedagogical framework
Beyond books… thinking about the “living tradition” and the “virtual research environment” of scholarly discourse
By Brian Mathews. I met with a group of students earlier this month and the topic of eBooks came up. They unanimously expressed a preference for print. I was curious. What I found was that none of them had read a book on an eBook Reader. More...
In Praise of ‘Paper Space’
By Douglas Groothuis. In the old school, a professor graded a student’s paper or essay test in what I call paper-space. That is, the student wrote and printed out an embodied object containing his work, complete (the professor hoped) with page numbers, staple, and a title page on which the student should have, at minimum, spelled the professor’s name correctly—something I cannot assume. More...
Untethering in the Classroom
By Amy Cavender. I hate being tethered to the podium computer in my classroom. Seriously. I have a strong preference for being able to move about the room, but I also frequently need to use the projector, which is connected to — you guessed it — the podium in the front of the room. There’s really no simple way around this. More...
MooT Pursuits
By Lucy Ferriss. I have a soft spot for people who invent games, especially games with words. And by way of some random keystroke, I found myself on the mailing list of Jon Steeves, inventor of MooT, “the game of semantics, etymology, and grammar.” More...
Professor Pinker and Professor Strunk
By Geoffrey Pullum. The voice on BBC radio was that of Professor Steven Pinker, fluent and engaging as ever. But my blood froze as I listened to what he said. More...
Czars in Their Eyes
By William Germano. It’s been a big month for the czars. The White House has appointed Ron Klain as Ebola czar. Not capo or boss, but czar, the Russian term (also transliterated as tsar) related to Latin Caesar and German Kaiser. More...
Student-Loan Servicers Are Often ‘Unfair’ to Borrowers, U.S. Finds
By Chronicle Staff. Report: “Supervisory Highlights”
Organization: Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
Summary: Earlier this month, in the third annual report of its student-loan ombudsman, the bureau reported that private loan servicers aren’t doing much to help borrowers understand their repayment options. Well, here’s more bad news: Some of those servicers are doing a bunch of “unfair” and legally dubious things, too. More...
Harvard Leads ‘U.S. News’ Ranking of Global Universities
By Andy Thomason. U.S. News & World Report’s annual global college rankings are out, and Harvard University tops the list, followed by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of California at Berkeley, Stanford University, and the University of Oxford. The list’s methodology favors global reputation and research volume, among other factors. Because of the distinct methodology, Princeton University, which the magazine named the top American university this year, was ranked 13th on the global list. More...
What the Wonks Are Saying About the Final Gainful-Employment Rule
By Andy Thomason. The U.S. Department of Education released the full text of its final gainful-employment rule on Thursday morning, and it’s a big one, weighing in at 945 pages. But sheer volume has never been enough to discourage the most devoted of higher-education observers: the diehard policy wonks, who took to Twitter with observations and analysis. More...
