[September’s Teaching Carnival–and the beginning of year five of the TC–is from Tonya Howe, Assistant Professor of English at Marymount University. Tonya blogs at Cerosia and can be reached at thowe [at] Marymount [dot] edu or @howet on Twitter. ProfHacker has become the permanent home of the Teaching Carnival, so each month you can return for a snapshot of the most recent thoughts on teaching in college and university classrooms. You can find previous carnivals on Teaching Carnival’s home page. –@billiehara]
As a new academic year unfolds, we’re taking stock of our syllabi and classroom philosophies, and giving students some helpful advice for success. Library Babel Fish weighs in on the bloated syllabus as academic Terms of Service contracts, and ProfHacker surveys some creative approaches to the paper beasts. Mary Beth Hertz at Edutopia warns us not to try for superhero status, and Billie Hara 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. ProfHacker 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. Ellen Bremen, blogging as The Chatty Professor, gives advice to students about speaking out in class and, for both faculty and students, a mini communication lesson on not “shoulding” on other people.
The Huffington Post reports on the growing rate of student loan delinquencies, and 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. Meanwhile, 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,” and The Chatty Professor provides practical advice to help students control their success in online courses–before fall term even begins.
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. Lee Elaine Skallerup at College-Ready Writing considers the pleasures and the challenges of crowdsourced classrooms, while Cathy Davidson rethinks digital thinking and collaborative learning–noting the persistence of 20th-century grading structures. 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.
Social media and privacy issues stimulated debate among students and educators–Ira Socol explores the dark side of Google+, and Life Hacker shares a guide to Google+ privacy and information control. While Hack College gives students some great tips about privacy and befriending professors via social media, Audrey Watters at Hack Education asks, “Why Would a Teacher Want to “Friend” a Student on Facebook?”. ProfHacker keeps us updated on Facebook’s new privacy settings,
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 