University of Venus

I sat on a pedagogy round-table at the International Studies Association in March, and one of the speakers referred to...

I’ll be honest with you. I read Mona Eltahawy’s piece, “Why Do They Hate Us?” with quite a bit of aggravation. I am tired. I am tired and resentful of being put in the position of constantly having to bring nuance to a discussion like this. I am tired, as a Pakistani and an academic, of taking one step forward, two steps back. Of constantly having to tell people that gross generalizations, sweeping statements, and titillating pictures, don’t make the argument any more solid or acceptable, even when used by a “native”or “local” person.

Since it started last fall, I’ve heard the 36-week experimental #change11 course referred to – half tongue-in-cheek – as “the Mother of All MOOCs.” Back when the course started in September, it seemed like a reasonable description. #change11 was designed and run by Massive Open Online Course pioneers George Siemens, Stephen Downes, and Dave Cormier, and had 36 separate facilitators lined up to cover everything from soup to nuts in the grand scheme of instructional technologies and 21st century learning.

We're getting close to the tail end of the 36-week-long experiment called #change11, or “the mother of all MOOCs.”

What’s New at UVenus: Sarah Emily Duff at UVenus at the Guardian with Dispatches From South Africa: Making the Case...

Young women scientists leave academia in far greater numbers than men for three reasons. During their time as Ph.D. candidates, large numbers of women conclude that (i) the characteristics of academic careers are unappealing, (ii) the impediments they will encounter are disproportionate, and (iii) the sacrifices they will have to make are great.

Why does she have to hit my keys so hard and so fast? It’s as if her brain is running to break the Olympic record in Academic Writing, or as if she would forget her next thought if she waited one more second to write the last one (to be honest from the way she looks so blankly at my screen from time to time, I sometimes think this is the case; she forgets what she’s going to write because obviously her brain is faster than her fingers).

During the ritual of Strategic Planning that my University holds every time a new President is put in place, a new “goal” was announced: we were going to become a research University. Accordingly, a flurry of new programs were created to support publication-driven research projects, particularly targeting ISI-listed journals and reputable publication houses abroad.