Aug 31, 2020

The parallel universe does exist: Education after the pandemic

›
The current pandemic is not that interesting on its own; history knows a plenty of similar tragedies. What is interesting is that for the fi...
Aug 6, 2020

Tool fetishism in online teaching

›
Anxiety about online teaching skills often manifests in an interesting way: instructors are drawn to the vast array of digital tools, platfo...
Jul 27, 2020

Wait and see

›
Imagination is normally an administrator’s friend. What we do is anticipate problems, plan, and prepare; all of these rely on the ability to...
Jul 11, 2020

All public sculptures should go

›
I never understood public sculpture of leaders, never liked them. In any city I visited, they are an eye sore: all these marshals, generals,...
Jul 5, 2020

Is teacher preparation in California racist?

›
OK, let’s get serious, even if we have to get a little controversial. We know that any artificial barrier will disproportionately affect peo...
Jun 28, 2020

The quarantine and the relational self

›
Today I stumbled across a fascinating 2002 paper, The Relational Self: An Interpersonal Social–Cognitive Theory , by Andersen and Chen. The...
Jun 22, 2020

Regulatory Paroxysms or How to Control the Uncontrollable

›
Universities have largely been successful in transitioning to the online environment, much more than almost any other industry. Victims of t...
Jun 15, 2020

Racism, the Old Deluder

›
One can slice racism in several ways, but at a minimum, it has the overt and the covert parts. The former includes explicitly racist polici...
Jun 1, 2020

Manufacturing racism

›
28 years ago, I was watching the Rodney King riots in LA, in a living room of a Notre Dame dorm. I was in this country for about 8 months, a...
May 26, 2020

Wisdom of the crowd, and the expert bias

›
Scientists working on several vaccines against the virus do not really need wisdom of the crowd . The public at large knows nothing about vi...
May 17, 2020

Is there an administrative bloat in higher ed? A history of one glitch

›
In theory, the glitch could have been preventable, but the probability of something like that happening is very high, because it is a one-t...
May 10, 2020

How do you know your online or hybrid course is good-enough?

›
It looks like at least some of us will be teaching online or hybrid in the Fall. This semester was in the salvaging mode; not utterly failin...
May 2, 2020

Adjacent markets: How universities can get out of the financial death spiral

›
Michael Poliakoff of Forbes wants universities to cut “the fluff” like excessive gened offerings, “to stare down intransigent faculty and ...
Apr 23, 2020

The convertible course or How to prepare for the unknown

›
Like many universities, we cannot make a call yet about the modality of the Fall semester. New science findings come up every day, and most...
Apr 19, 2020

The double hybrid

›
The great reopening has overnight become a political issue. It is sad in general, but for higher ed also adds more uncertainty. Like agricu...
Apr 14, 2020

Phased reopening and the split classroom model

›
The two main governors have spoken, and both are talking about phased reopening. In other words, we are not going back to normal normal, we...
Apr 11, 2020

Teaching online: Week four tips

›
If this is your first time, by now you did the heavy lift. Congratulations. Next week, all the frustrating limitations and inefficiencies o...
Apr 6, 2020

The COVID denial land and failures of imagination

›
In retrospect, American reaction to the COVID-19 pandemic looks excruciatingly slow . WHO declared the public health emergency on January 3...
Mar 30, 2020

Walking the dog in the dark

›
Pandora, Jem Radio, not NPR tonight: I had enough of talk, enough already. And Stitcher doesn't stitch. И врут календари. Let’s change ...
Mar 22, 2020

The probabilistic ethics of solidarity

›
My colleagues demonstrated an incredible outpour of solidarity during the last week. I do not know most of things, but do know for sure tha...
Mar 18, 2020

Final exams in an online course

›
Many instructors use performance-based summative assessments: essays, papers, projects, etc. For them transitioning their assessments onlin...
Mar 15, 2020

How to run a university during a crisis

›
It is amazing how things that looked very important just a few days ago, are now deemed non-essential. And things we were taking for grante...
Mar 10, 2020

Transitioning your course online

›
Let’s assume some weird virus hits, and you were asked to transition your courses online really fast, like right now. What do you do? First...
1 comment: