Category Archives: teaching
Professor, Heal thyself! On unprofessionalism and lack of empathy in (complaints about) student emails
A recent op-ed in the Guardian, entitled “I’m not LMAO at ridiculous student emails” lodges a familiar complaint: students don’t know how to communicate with professors in a professional manner, flaunting reasonable social codes and ignoring professors busy lives outside … Continue reading
Four thoughts about Student Evaluations (occasioned by sexism in RateMyProfessor.com)
This post is occasioned by Ben Schmidt’s wonderful tool for exploring gender differences on words used in student evaluations on RateMyProfessor. 1. RateMyProfessor is a huge, but awful data set. Why awful? First, I’d bet that well under 1% of … Continue reading
Student Learning and Labor Policies, follow up
My piece for the Atlantic ran yesterday, on how student learning is not directly connected to exploitative labor policies. I had some interesting conversations, on twitter and over email, so I thought I would share those with my readers. It … Continue reading
Teaching and learning, labor and fairness
It seems a requirement that any conversation about higher education in America must begin and end with costs and economic outcomes. Along the way, our economic analysts nod to the power of knowledge (economic research shows it improves career prospects!), … Continue reading
Posted in education, higherEd, politics, teaching
Tagged econometrics, highered, labor, learning, teaching
4 Comments
My Teaching Philosophy (part 327b)
I’m putting some finishing touches on my syllabi here the night before classes start, and I thought I would share with my blog readers a one-page statement of my teaching philosophy that I put on each of my syllabi. Anyone … Continue reading
Posted in education, higherEd, psychology, teaching
Tagged highered, psychology, syllabus, teaching
Leave a comment
Teacher’s Mind, Beginners Mind
Welcome new readers! One of the themes of this blog is how I apply my perspective as a college professor or a cognitive psychologist to a variety of different circumstances, like kindergarten, or feminism, or googling, or school reform. This … Continue reading
What is a Syllabus?
At the beginning of every college class, I hand out a syllabus. What is the purpose of this document? What is in it? How do I plan it? How do I design it? I thought it might be useful or … Continue reading
