ProfHacker surveys some creative approaches to bloated syllabi, and Mary Beth Hertz warns us not to try for superhero status in the new academic year. At Inside Higher Ed, Library Babel Fish weighs in on the bloated syllabus as academic Terms of Service contracts. Billie Hara at ProfHacker inaugurates a new beginning-of-term ritual: “prepare to handle disruptions.” Larry Ferlazzo at Education Week gives us five questions that will improve our teaching.
Billie Hara suggests the value of failure in education, with reference to helicopter parents and micromanaged classrooms, and over at The Chronicle, James C. Garland discusses critical thinking and the value of humility.
Lee Elaine Skallerup at College-Ready Writing considers the pleasures and the challenges of crowdsourced classrooms, and Cathy Davidson rethinks digital thinking and collaborative learning–with reference to the persistence of 20th-century grading structures.
The Pew Research Center report on digital trends in higher education includes sharp differences between public and (university) presidential perspectives on the value of online learning, and Tenured Radical ponders the Bs (and the As, but very few Cs) distributed at elite institutions to explain “Why a Selective School Doesn’t Grade Like a Community College.” Meanwhile, The Huffington Post reports on the growing rate of student loan delinquencies, perhaps pointing to an education bubble.
Alma Mater imagines the liberal arts in the 21st century, while Lindsay Thomas posts on the value of the humanities to a liberal democracy, by way of Martha Nussbaum and John Armstrong. At Edutopia, Chris Craft helps us advocate for open source software. The Clutter Museum and Historiann look askance at lecture capture technology, and Patricia Aufderheide debunks seven “Myths About Fair Use” for Inside Higher Ed. Rachel Wiseman at The Chronicle discusses Note-Taker, a student-designed tool that helps visually impaired students access the classroom learning environment, and ProfHacker explores the education of uncoverage.
Katherine D. Harris posts (ecstatically!) on the MLA 2012 Pedagogy and Digital Humanities roundtable, and William Pannapacker covers “Big Tent Digital Humanities” for The Chronicle of Higher Education in Part 1 of a multi-part story.
Ira Socol explores the dark side of Google+; Audrey Watters considers privacy and Google+. While Hack College gives students some great tips about privacy and befriending professors via social media, Audrey Watters at Hack Education asks, “<a title="Why Would a Teacher Want to “Friend” a Student on Facebook?” href=”http://www.hackeducation.com/2011/08/07/why-would-a-teacher-want-to-friend-a-student-on-facebook/” rel=”bookmark”>Why Would a Teacher Want to “Friend” a Student on Facebook?”. ProfHacker keeps us updated on Facebook’s new privacy settings, and Life Hacker shares a guide to Google+ privacy and information control.
Inside Higher Ed reviews The College Writing Toolkit and interviews editors Martha Pennington and Pauline Burton about new approaches to teaching writing. Prof Hacker suggests using a blog in an independent study, its advantages, and some considerations to keep in mind. At Pedablogical, tengrrl shares some ideas for “Teaching Students about Headlines, Titles, and Subject Lines.” Gary Moskowitz ruminates about teaching writing and the new media of online journalism: “I don’t teach IT classes. Or do I?” Cathy Davidson discusses three ways to write in the digital age.
Finally, Janine Utell of University of Venus gives us all some much-needed lessons on academic leadership, gender, and being GenX gleaned from Tina Fey’s Bossypants.
Tonya Howe 