Blogs

Why my job is to get my students to do peer review.

In a meeting this week, a frustrated professor described politics as “trying to get one group of rich guys to convince another group of rich guys to do the right thing.” I thought he nailed it.

Digital privacy has emerged as the coin of the realm in our Faustian pact with social media.

In 1900, the mathematician David Hilbert listed 100 mathematical problems that he felt would be good problems to address in the next century. Many of these have been solved, but some still wait for solutions. I found myself thinking of this recently as I realized that the season of Lent had begun. While this is traditionally a season of fasting and repentance, many today also approach this season as an opportunity to find ways to bring about a more just world. I found myself thinking of the Hilbert problems because it occurred to me that those of us in higher education could bring our collective minds together to address several issues that, like the Hilbert questions of years ago, seem to need addressing.

When I first spoke with representatives from Harrison College (HC), they emphasized a "sense of place" with their KnowU learning platform. The platform went live last month with 164 online students who were slated to use KnowU.

Should different economic classes have different colleges? And should those colleges have different missions? I’m not talking about the elite-of-the-elite letting in a few scholarship students, as welcome as that is. I’m thinking more of art history and philosophy at community colleges.

My partner, Ted Hardin, and I will be in New Orleans on Thursday for the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AACU) meeting on general education and assessment. (We’re just missing Mardi Gras, darn it!) We are helping to deliver the keynote speech with biologist James P. Collins on “Learning and Discovery in an Era of Change.” We’ll be focusing on environmental issues and how interdisciplinary practices affect new forms of teaching and student learning.

Research can be one of the great levelers, since different people throughout the institution have different knowledge and ideas about how the institution or school is perceived externally, based on who they interact with and how long they’ve been part of the organization.