I’ve began working seriously on the syllabus and activities for my adult education for the fall. This is the first time in eight years that I’m getting back to my roots in adult learning, and preparing for the course is exhilarating and overwhelming at the same time. There’s lots of new literature to try to…
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Which User’s Life Have You Changed Today?
Creating Passionate Users: Which user’s life have you changed today? Back in my former life as a career counselor, one of my favorite articles was social psychologist Albert Bandura’s “The Psychology of Chance Encounters and Life Paths”, a journal article that highlighted how often the intentional career planning advocated in college career centers was subverted…
What Will Happen to My Ratings?
What Will Happen to My Ratings? This piece from the Teaching Professor has some excellent tips for dealing with faculty fears that using new techniques or teaching methods might lower their teaching ratings. Methods that that put greater responsibility on students and that move the teacher off center stage often don’t map well to traditional…
Freshman Don’t Do Optional
NCAT: Learning MarketSpace April 2006 The latest newsletter from the National Center for Academic Transformation shares some key lessons learned from their ongoing program in course redesign. The Center has supported the redesign of 50 courses to increase learning while reducing organizational costs. (The Center is headed by distinguished William and Mary alumna Carol Twigg–another…
Keeping Up Can Make You Dumber
Creating Passionate Users: The myth of “keeping up” Kathy Sierra, who blogs at Creating Passionate Users, has written a nice reminder of the dangers of the “myth of keeping up.” As Gardner points out in a recent comment, you know you’re engaged in an exercise in futility when your “books I have to get list”…
Inside Higher Ed: Duke’s Ever-Evolving iPod Initiative
Inside Higher Ed :: Duke’s Ever-Evolving iPod Initiative Duke continues to expand its use of iPods in teaching with over 100 faculty developing materials for use in courses. (Faculty members using the devices in class get there’s free from the university). After making news by giving iPods to all incoming students a couple of years…
Balancing Blogs With Getting Things Done
I spent some time at the end of last week at the Association of Collegiate Computing Services (ACCS) meeting in Charlottesville, where I gave the Thursday morning keynote and sat in on a few sessions including an excellent overview of the Sakai and iTunes University by James Hilton, soon-to-be CIO at UVA. (You can hear…
I Passed College
Link to: Philadelphia Inquirer | 03/28/2006 | Colleges pushed to prove worth Some time ago, Gardner proudly announced that he had passed 8th grade math. Soon, students at the nation’s 3000 universities may be able to display a little logo on their facebook or myspace accounts proudly documenting that they had passed their grade 16…
Queen Anne Lace: Getting Rid of Cursive Writing?
Link to: Queen Anne Lace: Getting Rid of Cursive Writing? This was the first time it dawned on me that many students no longer can read cursive writing. (Other than their names!) Many teachers have stated to me that they no longer teach it because it is not tested on Virginia Standards of Learning. Their…
Second in the Swem Sessions
Here is the second “Swem Sessions” podcast where Troy Davis, Director of the Swem Media Center, Sharon Zuber, Associate Professor of English and I discuss the future of “visual literacy” at William and Mary. (Troy produced this session. ) Some of it is above the oxygen layer and pretty theoretical, but that’s what happens when…
