Back in the olden days, I was one of those people whose bedtime was established by end of the Johnny Carson monologue. Carson’s opening act often included an interchange where he would lead with the line “it’s hot/cold/smoggy and the audience would respond “how hot/etc. was it?” to set up the joke. To this day,…
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What Story Does Your Class Tell?
In preparing for a presentation on course planning for Blackboard last week, I came upon a great course design tip sheet at the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning at Harvard. The sheet begins with a couple of general questions and suggests that teachers not think specific content until after they have thought carefully…
All About Time
This is the point in the year when many of us in the academic community begin to think really seriously about time. When “the summer” began last May, there seemed to be plenty of time to complete our projects, however optimistic or unrealistic our expectations. Now with 5 days to go before our faculty orientation…
Course Planning for Emerging Technology
A colleague of mine recently likened the course planning process to what goes on inside a sausage factory: Over a century ago, the German statesman Otto Von Bismarck supposedly said, “If you like laws and sausages, you should never watch either one being made.” Same point can be made about the way I construct course…
The Importance of Finishing the Job
Some time ago I was responsible for a camp in the Ardirondacks with a big dam that controlled our lake. One summer we had some problems and had to bring in an engineering firm to do some work, and one of the engineers was explaining why building dams is so expensive. Generally about 90% of…
How Much Is Enough? Focused Research
One of my students came back to visit me after more than a year working with African refugees. During the time that he was away, he said that one of the things that he dreamed when he got back to US was drinking a tall glass of cold orange juice. When he got back his…
Overcoming Bias: Learning From Your Track Record
Worth a Listen on IT Conversations Overcoming Bias. We live in a world of cognitive biases and polarized opinions. We consider ourselves to be largely rational, yet we are often prone to systematic errors such as overconfidence, wishful thinking, and the attraction of strong opinions. This means decisions are often driven more by personalities and…
Expanding Research Through Open Notebook Science
IT Conversations | Jon Udell’s Interviews with Innovators | Jean-Claude Bradley He believes that scientific research happens better and faster when the entire process is transparently narrated online. New social tools can have a tremendous impact on teaching, learning and research. The emergence of Open Notebook Science has the potential of speeding up the diffusion…
Writing Strategically (Part Two)
This is a quick follow-up to my last post about choosing a writing strategy for your for your blog. In the last post, I talked about treating your blog as an a forum to explore all the interesting things that you learn about through the web, reading, conversations, and all the other sources of information…
Writing Strategically (Part One)
This is a part of a series of posts I’m doing in anticipation of my new role as a member of the community of official bloggers at the College of William and Mary. The goal is to identify some guidelines for blogging that have emerged from my work with students and academic blogging over the…
