By Lee Skallerup Bessette. This semester, I’m doing all my classes in some form of peer-driven learning or another. On top of my usual peer-driven Writing II classes, I am also doing a peer-driven Introduction to World Literature course and an Interdisciplinary Honors course covering the Renaissance and Enlightenment. In both classes, we are working together to curate the content for the course, but we’re spending the first few weeks of the semester doing research to ensure that we are making informed choices. Read more...07 décembre 2014
On Fear and Peer-Driven Learning
By Lee Skallerup Bessette. This semester, I’m doing all my classes in some form of peer-driven learning or another. On top of my usual peer-driven Writing II classes, I am also doing a peer-driven Introduction to World Literature course and an Interdisciplinary Honors course covering the Renaissance and Enlightenment. In both classes, we are working together to curate the content for the course, but we’re spending the first few weeks of the semester doing research to ensure that we are making informed choices. Read more...Seven Years
By Lee Skallerup Bessette. I’m using this app called TimeHop, which goes back in time and reminds me of the things I said and pictures I took and posted to social media. While I wasn’t on Twitter until 2010 (I know, seems longer), I was on Facebook (early 2006). We had just moved to another country, and it seemed like a great way to keep in touch with friends and family. Read more...MOOC Research Learning Curves
By Marshall Thomas. MOOCs are at an interesting phase in their evolution. With MOOC mania subsiding somewhat, the field is coalescing around aspirational goals to make MOOCs more engaging, interactive, personalized, and sustainable.
Some thought leaders are calling it MOOC 2.0. Just as MOOC 1.0 research stimulated a healthy debate about the market for free online courses, MOOC 2.0 is motivating a debate about best practices in teaching and learning at a massive scale. Studies on retention rates and the unique MOOC audience of lifelong learners reshaped our thinking, and now we have a bit more data to go on when it comes to bringing teaching back to the fore in higher ed (yes, ed stands for education). More...
A Gamified Approach to Teaching and Learning
By Steven Mintz. Mark Carnes’s "Minds on Fire: How Role Immersion Games Transform College” offers evidence that an immersive gamified pedagogy can significantly increase student engagement and motivation. More...
Sex, Class and Race
By Tracy Mitrano. There. I have distilled the analytic framework of my doctoral education. Just about anything from social to cultural historiography could theoretically be understood if broken down by those factors. Too simplistic? Of course, just as it is to parrot back blithely the four (Lessig) factors used to analyze the Internet (market, technology, social norms and the law). Read more...What Can Be Known?
By Oronte. In Form and Theory of Fiction we just read Ben Lerner’s Leaving the Atocha Station, continuing our discussion this semester of “stories about nothing” that included Chekhov’s “Lady with the Dog,” Jean-Philippe Toussant’s novel Running Away, and Stanley Crawford’s novella Log of the SS The Mrs. Unguentine. Read more...
The Middle
By Matt Reed. The Middle: A Response to Goldie BlumenstykOver the weekend, I read American Higher Education in Crisis, by Goldie Blumenstyk, because that’s how I roll. It’s an accessible introduction to many of the major issues in higher ed, but it makes a claim in passing that I think needs a closer look. Read more...
Reactions to the Inaugural Leading Academic Change Summit
By Joshua Kim. I’ve spent the past two days participating in the Inaugural Leading Academic Change Summit, an event co-hosted by the University System of Maryland’s Center for Academic Innovation (thank you MJ Bishop) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (thank you Anne Keehn). Read more...Books or Articles on Academic Change?
By Joshua Kim. I’m looking for books or articles on academic change. Can you help?
The sort of books or articles that I’m looking for will hopefully cover the following ground:
Why: Why do our higher education institutions even need to change? This may be a hard question to answer in an industry as diverse as postsecondary education. Read more...How I Give Big Talks
By Joshua Kim. Every time that I give a keynote address or some other big talk I get nervous. During the talk I’m fine. I actually really like the speaking in front of an audience. It is the time leading up to the talk that is nerve wracking. Read more...
