Archive for the ‘Teaching’ Category

April 10th, 2010

For my sins, I guess, I’m a member of the Berkeley faculty Committee on Courses of Instruction. Things are looking up for this gig, though, because there’s growing interest on campus and at the university level in online instruction, and the committee is starting to seriously deliberate this very interesting issue.  Not surprisingly, I guess, [...]

December 18th, 2009

Kevin Carey says that college educators are failing to teach students much of anything and concealing the information that would prove it. He’s basically right. But he might be surprised to how supportive college professors might be of efforts to do somethign about it.

August 27th, 2009

Pay cuts are better than layoffs.
In the situation faced by UC faculty, calling them “furloughs” is better than calling them pay cuts.
So I don’t see any moral imperative to act out the idea of a furlough by teaching less.

September 18th, 2008

The Royal Society sacks its education adviser for talking sense about creationism in schools

June 23rd, 2008

Not the kind that treats all arguments, and therefore all conclusions, as equally plausible.

April 17th, 2008

The Pope supports academic freedom, as long as professors are careful not to reach the wrong conclusions.

August 6th, 2007

Two of your genial hosts have been having a self-referential episode that readers might enjoy, if only as a Gallagher and Shean routine. I sent out to some colleagues my approximately annual update of a longish memo for students about writing, and Mark suggested I post it. OK, here it is, with some free samples: [...]

June 1st, 2007

Bob Frank exhibits the factor most highly correlated with student evaluations of teaching, which is manifest enthusiasm for his subject matter. Like many of us, especially those of us who teach and preach more technical content, he’s perplexed by the failure of so many students (and, I bet, cocktail party interlocutors) to see how great [...]

March 12th, 2007

Does “paralysis by analysis” have a moral analogue?

March 1st, 2007

Is it dishonest to award “honors” to 80% of a graduating class? Harvard does.