Should "serious academics" make time for social media? At least two recent commentators (I'm guessing there are more out there, but it may be hasty to speak of a silent majority) think not. Many -- naturally including a slew of "twitterstorians" and academic bloggers -- have responded, detailing the ways social media facilitates their work and lampooning their … Continue reading Social Media and the Serious Academic
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Flipping the Course Evaluation
Student course evaluations have taken a well-deserved beating recently, most notably thanks to studies showing their endemic gender bias, but also for their broader unreliability as measures of teaching and learning. These findings add significant empirical weight to an older set of somewhat more anecdotal, philosophical or speculative criticisms: Were the teachers who taught you best the ones you liked … Continue reading Flipping the Course Evaluation
Back to School: Teaching, Research, and Regret
Our academic year begins in a couple of weeks, which means that this is the time for finishing, revising or at the very least updating course syllabi with the relevant dates. My teaching load is on the light side: two courses per semester, plus a moderate number of graduate and honours supervisions. (For the sake of comparison, a large, … Continue reading Back to School: Teaching, Research, and Regret
Whose Jargon? Or, All of us Creating Teamwork Inventing Opportunities Now
Earlier this month NPR ran a piece decrying academic "jargonitis." (What is "jargonitis", you ask? Well....) That in itself is hardly news. The jeremiad against academic language (jargon, theory, "academic writing" altogether) is a familiar extension of the ivory tower vs. real world dichotomy (sorry: idea that two things are different) that shapes so much media coverage of higher … Continue reading Whose Jargon? Or, All of us Creating Teamwork Inventing Opportunities Now
Not that kind of doctor: questions about the history PhD from near-ground level
One reason that I feel free to try my hand at blogging all of a sudden after all these years on Earth is that a great weight is about to be lifted from my shoulders: the weight of being my department’s graduate program director. When I agreed to take on the job just over three years … Continue reading Not that kind of doctor: questions about the history PhD from near-ground level
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