I started college in 2005, just at the cusp of learning management systems; things like Blackboard were in use, but most courses still had physical syllabi passed out on day one, and most assignments were still printed out on paper and handed in physically. In the same way, online journals were increasingly popular at theContinue reading “Perceiving Academic Journals”
Category Archives: Technology
Paper Vs. LMS: Tech Tradeoffs
A few years ago, I abandoned paper in my classroom almost entirely. First I stopped taking major assignments in paper form, but a while after that I also started encouraging my students to bring their phones, laptops, and tablets to class to participate in class activities via a Google Doc instead of collecting class activitiesContinue reading “Paper Vs. LMS: Tech Tradeoffs”
Fall 2021 Postmortem + New Semester’s Resolutions Spring 2021
As I’ve said before, I actually don’t consider the Covid semesters my “worst semester ever”; that honor is forever reserved for Fall 2019. However, although Spring 2020 was actually ok (all things considered), I will start by saying that Fall 2020 went badly for reasons that I probably could have prevented, and it is myContinue reading “Fall 2021 Postmortem + New Semester’s Resolutions Spring 2021”
Genre, Learning, and Why Your Students Are So Tired
It’s a bit of a cliche right now, due to the pandemic, that we have to “relearn” how to do things that were normal. But it’s also, like many cliches, not wrong. And as teachers struggle to find a mode of instruction that meets ever-changing guidelines and protects themselves and their students but still preservesContinue reading “Genre, Learning, and Why Your Students Are So Tired”
Asynchronous Accommodations
At the beginning of the semester, it’s routine for me to receive several letters from our office of disability services requesting accommodations for students. These letters are form letters where they just drop in a list of accommodations from a fairly standard list of options, such as time and a half on exams and quizzes,Continue reading “Asynchronous Accommodations”
You Don’t Need To Watch Your Students
A lot of us are teaching online for the fall. Not as many of us as should be teaching online in the fall, of course, but a lot of us (and as I’ve mentioned before, if you’re not, plan to teach online anyway, because it’s a definite possibility). And I know I’ve said it beforeContinue reading “You Don’t Need To Watch Your Students”
Content, Process, Skill: Heuristics for Evaluating Educational Foundations
One of the biggest misconceptions underlying problems in education is that education is, at its core, simply the accumulation of content: memorizing facts and formulae somehow makes an education. Blame standardized testing if you like, since it’s much more cost-effective to test for content than for processes or skills. For the present argument, where theContinue reading “Content, Process, Skill: Heuristics for Evaluating Educational Foundations”
Stairs in Stair Quest Ranked
Stair Quest is a parody game that pays homage to all those memorable climbs in old Sierra games. It’s by No More For Today and if you haven’t played it, I really do recommend that you do. If you have any memory of Sierra games, you probably also have memory of at least one staircaseContinue reading “Stairs in Stair Quest Ranked”
About Those Staggered Due Dates…
Previously I wrote about my scheme this semester to stagger due dates by having students sign up for a date during a “due week,” and reported that it was doing pretty well. I wrote too soon. As you may have surmised, time simply has no meaning anymore. Even self-selected due dates became meaningless when myContinue reading “About Those Staggered Due Dates…”
Redundancy Is Good Praxis
I just got done setting up the second online module for my formerly face-to-face classes. When we all were preparing to go online, I knew I had some advantages: I’ve done this before (in fact, I’ve been plundering some of my previous online classes’ resources to help the shift), and I know from experience thatContinue reading “Redundancy Is Good Praxis”
Dr. Cox's Desk 