Blogs

Friends, it's time for a serious conversation. We need to talk about your coffee. Bad coffee is a common affliction. With our busy lives we tend to seek out the things that are easy to use.

The cheating scandal at Harvard which could involve as many as 125 students in a single class has gotten extensive publicity. And the impression given is that this is an unusual event. For example, as quoted in the New York Times, Harvard’s dean of undergraduate education noted that this cheating incident at Harvard “is unprecedented in its scope and magnitude.” This may be correct, given that it involves almost half of the class, but cheating and academic dishonesty are not unusual events and the “scope and magnitude” of what happens nationwide is certainly disturbing.

As I have described here before, a life-threatening illness and scary diagnosis several years ago transformed my relationships with myself, my loved ones, and my work in a number of ways. One of the resolutions I made during that horrible time was that, if I survived, I would never again refrain from pursuing a goal or passion simply from fear.

Why do we insist on teaching developmental classes as if they carried credit?

It's the most arduous time of the year--academic job market season. If you're a grad student actively seeking academic employment now, you will need to secure those ever-important letters of recommendation in the next few weeks. For some folks, this is a terrifying prospect. It often feels like an imposition, a distraction or a drag on the time of a very busy, very important person.

Let’s say that you have spent almost 20 years of your life learning and reading and writing and now it is about time to finally be on your own, outside the university gates. Your parents are proud of you, your neighbors and friends are envious of your achievements, even though you might have no idea what you want to say in your Ph.D. paper and know even less about how the Ph.D. graduate succeeds at buying his or her clothing and daily food. On various occasions, I am asked what the medical domain is that I am covering as long as I am a doctor. Then, I should answer embarrassed that I am not ‘that kind of doctor’ and that my doctoral knowledge won’t save any life at all.

Does it seem to you that every edtech vendor and educational software provider is pitching some new social tool? Yes, learning is social. We get it. But does your educational platform really need to be social as well?

What do Mary-Kate Olsen (Ashley too), Albert Einstein, Socrates, Abraham Lincoln and I have in common? We're all introverts as classified by the Myers Briggs personality type indicator (MBTI). According to the MBTI, introversion is a psychological preference that focuses on how an individual both expends and recharges their energy. Often mislabeled as being related to "shyness or reclusiveness," introversion doesn't necessarily dictate social behavior. There are shy extroverts and uber-social introverts. The major difference between extroverts and introverts is that extroverts tend to recharge during social situations while introverts do not. Introverts generally recharge by themselves and tend to be seen as being "reflective or reserved."