The other day, a person I like and trust sent me a text: “(So-and-So) is throwing you under the bus
right now.”
“No!” I texted back. “What now?”
Thanks to some fast finger work, I provided the real facts about the current meeting topic and my text partner was able to relay them and defend my honor. The crisis was averted and the benefits of cultivating a guardian-angel network were once again revealed.
But cultivating such a network is hard work. And ensuring that every gathering is populated by at least one person who will have your back is an impossible task. So what are the best ways to manage those people who seem intent
on tearing you down?
We’re at that time of the academic year when the daily details begin to pile up. Teach a class, grade assignments, schedule advisees, and prep for tomorrow. It may not feel like a grind just yet, but it does require lots of focused energy, which makes this a perfect time for a quick reflection on why we teach. For some, teaching is just a job; it’s a paycheck necessity. But for readers of a blog on teaching and learning, I’m pretty sure we’re in it for something more than the bucks, which tend to be pretty modest anyway.
Higher-education transformation, which is essential if colleges and universities are to survive in the 21st century, relies on transformative presidential leadership. Twenty-seven years ago, Judy B. Rosener, now a professor emerita in the business school at the University of California at Irvine, wrote an article in the Harvard Business Review that differentiated between "transactional" leadership and "transformative" leadership. The distinction is just as important today as it was then.
We all know raising children is different from teaching undergraduates. Yet as a father of four children — now all grown — I have learned much from parenting that I have been able to apply to the college classroom.
In particular, raising four teenagers taught me a lot about how to reach, engage, and motivate teenage students. The trick to effective parenting, I’m convinced, is to allow children to exercise their agency — encouraging them to make good choices through a clear system of rewards and punishments, with the emphasis on the former. I believe that’s true in teaching, as
well.
Any college leader considering a curriculum change for his or her institution has a lot of questions to ask and answer. First, what are the specific goals? To increase graduation rates? To increase particular knowledge in certain majors? And what changes in the curriculum would achieve those goals? We’ve gone through multiple curriculum reforms at the City University of New York over the past 15 years, and it’s never an easy process. Some faculty members, as well as administrators, can be sceptical and resistant to change, and resources to carry out the reforms are hard to obtain. One of the most important things we have learned during that time is that relevant, clear data can help you make better decisions about curriculum reform. That means you need to put a premium on data — both collecting it and analyzing it.
A few weeks ago, I had a good experience using a new educational-technology tool. I also had a bad experience using a new educational-technology tool. Actually, they were the same experience and the same tool.
Anybody who has spent any time experimenting with educational-technology knows exactly why that is not a
contradiction in terms.
The tool in question was the online annotating program Hypothes.is. Most historians I’ve heard talk about Hypothes.is seem to use it only as a way for students to annotate primary sources, but I had my students use it as a means to critique each other’s papers. First I asked students to post their research paper prospectus on a blog or on Scalar (another really interesting educational technology that I’ve been using). I set up a common Scalar page to serve as the class syllabus, and put links on it to all the students’ papers. They each had five prospectuses to read and comment on over the course of a single class period.
VANCOUVER, June 29, 2017 /CNW/ - While the majority of parents in Canada contribute towards their child's postsecondary education (76% vs. global average of 87%), students in Canada are the most likely across all markets
surveyed to also help fund their own educational goals (42% vs. global average: 15%).
This, according to a new global study commissioned by HSBC – The Value of Education: Higher and higher – based
on a survey of more than 8,400 parents across 15 countries and territories worldwide.
"The good news is that Canadians take a proactive approach to financing their child's education," said Larry
Tomei, Executive Vice President and Head of Retail Banking and Wealth Management, "Taking advantage of
registered education savings programs, or scholarships and bursaries is key, however, there is still opportunity to do even more."
There has been an increase in the number of universities relying on graduate students to teach undergraduate coursework in recent years. In some universities, such as Purdue and University of South Florida, up to 26 percent of undergraduate courses are taught by graduate instructors (U.S. News and World Report, 2017). According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics
(2018), there were over 135,000 graduate teaching assistants (GTAs) in 2017.
predictable political camps. Gun-rights advocates called for expanded mental-health services, insisting that no law could have stopped an obvious madman like Paddock. Nonsense, gun-control supporters said; whatever Paddock’s mental state, the easy availability of firearms makes violence more likely.
I’ve been thinking about this debate following a recent suicide on my own campus, the University of Pennsylvania, where at least 14 students have taken their lives since February 2013. Whenever a suicide happens, the spotlight turns to mental-health services. Do students know whom to call in times of crisis? And are there enough services for
everyone who needs them?
Most of the time, instructors use activities as a way for students to demonstrate their mastery. But activities can be used differently — to spark curiosity and get students thinking, before they know much of anything about a particular topic. That was the premise of “The Power of the ‘Naïve Task,’” one of the most interesting sessions I attended at the Designing Effective
Teaching conference in Bethesda, Md., last week.
“Wanted: former academic. Must have PhD in the humanities and at least two years of must be conversant in Chicago Manual ofStyle. Familiarity with plagiarism policies and competence in Blackboard a plus.”
1) Strengthening our Canadian fabric
• How many newcomers should we welcome to Canada in 2017 and beyond?
• How can we best support newcomers to ensure they become successful members of our communities?
• Do we have the balance right among the immigration programs or streams? If not, what priorities should form the foundation of Canada's immigration planning?
MONTREAL -- It’s not whether to talk to students about sensitive current events like the white supremacist violence in Charlottesville, Va., but how. That was the upshot of a panel called “Teaching in Our Contemporary Moment” here Monday at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association.
“You have to talk about those things in your class,” said Tanya Golash-Boza, a professor of sociology at the University of California, Merced, who specializes in race and immigration. “Whatever you think of sociologists, they’re more socially aware than the biologists and the computer scientists … You have to remember that sociology is a place where students come to talk about what happened yesterday, what happened last week.”
The classroom is a non-stop hub of feedback: test grades, assignment scores, paper comments, peer review, individual conferences, nonverbal cues, and more. Feedback is essential for student learning.
Still, students’ ability to process and use feedback varies widely. We have some students who eagerly accept feedback or carefully apply rough draft comments, while many others dread or dismiss their professors’ notes or reject exam grades as “unfair.” Although feedback is integral to our classrooms and work spaces, we often forget to teach students how to manage it.
The rapid turnover of technology and ever expanding network of data and information which underpin the knowledge economy have led to a reevaluation of the importance of knowledge to the economic process. Economists now conclude that human capital - the ideas, skills, and expertise of people - is a fundamental driver of economic growth. Demand for employees that possess a mix of both “hard” and “soft” skills is rising as companies respond to intensified global economic competition.
What does it mean to be a great teacher? Of course credentials, knowledge, critical thinking, and all other faculties of intelligence are important. However, a great teacher should be much more than credentials, experience and intelligence
Suggestions that universities are hotbeds of radicalism, leading to stifling "political correctness" or "leftist authoritarianism" have been notable in recent media commentaries.
This view is a misleading caricature.
Universities work hard to provide a welcoming environment for students in an increasingly diverse and multicultural Canada. The push for inclusiveness is clearly "liberal" (in the way today's conservatives use the term) insofar as it attempts to respect cultural differences and overcome inequalities and oppressions of the past.
Art is one of the most underutilized resources in today’s ELA classroom. The Roman poet Horace claimed, “A picture is a poem
without words” meaning art and written word are different mediums of expression. Art offers students a break from written words while continuing to develop the same skill set needed to be successful readers through challenging students to think both critically and analytically.
Higher ed is an industry built on relationships. This is no more so than on a traditional residential campus.
Much of the work of moving projects and initiatives forward happens in conversation. There is a reason that a shared joke across higher ed is that nobody can get any work done during the day - as everybody is too busy in meetings.
On most campuses, these conversations are face-to-face. They involve going to each other’s offices, finding a meeting room, and sometimes grabbing a coffee. (My preferred one-on-one meeting venue is a walking meeting).
A face-to-face meeting culture accomplishes many important goals. There is a ritual to the face-to-face discussion, one that involves norms of social connections. Meetings are places to do work - but they are also places to learn about and make connections with our colleagues.
Faculty development has become a priority at many academic institutions as a way to improve the quality of academic programs and to respond to emerging faculty, student, program, and industry needs.
To create effective faculty development programs, it’s important to get the faculty members’ perspectives on what is actually needed. Without this input and the opportunity for faculty to collaborate and engage in growth and dialogue around common topics of interest, the essence of faculty development is lost.