Having recently put myself forward as a potential candidate for the forthcoming Oxford poetry professorship election, I am gobsmacked to discover that this venerable university has pulled a drawbridge up against anyone older than 69 qualifying for such a long-memoried position. More...
Minister’s attempt to curb unconditional offers is illegal, say universities
Leading academics are accusing the government of unlawfully threatening their autonomy by trying to curb the use of unconditional offers. More...
Tory hand-wringing for students from the poorest countries is pure hypocrisy
As news leaked that the government was planning to introduce higher fees and restrict access to student support for EU students, we were treated in parliament to a fine display of hand-wringing from supporters of this change. Apparently it would be morally indefensible, post-Brexit, to offer preferential terms to EU nationals wishing to study here, when compared with those from developing countries. More...
Let’s ban PowerPoint in lectures – it makes students more stupid and professors more boring
Zombie Jesus and the Running Person
By Eboo Patel. Some thoughts on language, gender identity and religion.
It took me less than a nanosecond to get comfortable with gender fluid pronouns. Perhaps counterintuitively, there’s a religion story behind this. More...
Should Woke People Watch Dave Chappelle?
By Eboo Patel. If diversity progressives believe that speech is violence, and that language that hypersexualizes women and stereotypes minority men as violent is pernicious, why are they (we) such avid consumers of cultural forms that unabashedly do both. More...
Knewton Is Gone. The Larger Threat Remains
By John Warner. The digital "snake oil" didn't sell. Will we ever see an end of personalized learning hype?
Knewton, once hailed as a “mind-reading robo tutor in the sky,” is no more, having been sold for parts to publisher John Wiley & Sons. More...
A Moving Read About the Adjunct Underclass
By John Warner. Normally the only contingent faculty career that could bring me to tears was my own, but the latter stages of The Adjunct Underclass: How America’s Colleges Betrayed Their Faculty, Their Students, and Their Mission by Herb Childress had my eyes filling sometimes with sadness, sometimes tinged with anger. More...
Responsive Teaching
By Joshua Kim. On building flexibility into your course preparation.
It’s been 10 semesters since I took over as the instructor of record in my first college class. During that time, I’ve made quite a few changes to my teaching, rethinking how I approach assessment and responses to student work, integrating “humanities lab” elements in my courses, and streamlining my grading. More...