La Trobe University is in talks to discontinue its Hindi program, along with Greek and Indonesian. In the mid-1990s, six Australian universities taught Hindi. If La Trobe ends its program, Australia will be left with just one university (ANU in Canberra) that teaches Hindi. This would be a significant setback for Hindi in Australia. The decision reflects […] … learn more→

Historians are often disappointed when they look closely at the foundational documents of the Humboldt University of Berlin. Many expect to see lengthy treatises on the “unity of research and teaching” from its spiritual founder, Wilhelm von Humboldt, particularly in the short memorandum he wrote in 1809 or 1810 after the institution’s formation in 1809 […] … learn more→

Maths anxiety is the feeling of tension and fear that many people experience when called on to work out a sum. For children, it can lead to behavioural problems in class, as well as physical symptoms such as butterflies in the stomach and a racing heart. Students with high maths anxiety perform worse in standardised maths tests and school […] … learn more→

During the COVID-19 lockdowns, stories have been shared of schools delivering food parcels, phoning struggling families and providing on-site care for the children of key workers. We have seen many schools go much further than their statutory role of educating and safeguarding their pupils, sometimes acting as the most important support institution for whole neighbourhoods. This broader school […] … learn more→

So, 2020 hey? What a trip. I don’t know about you, but concentrating on my work when the world feels like it’s up in flames, literally and figuratively, has been, well – difficult. In order to keep my shit together in front of students and co-workers I’ve been, as a Japanese theme park put it, […] … learn more→

Australia and the UK experience regular annual outrage over vice-chancellors’ pay. This is unsurprising – in Australia their average pay at the 37 public universities topped A$1 million in 2019. Those at prestigious Group of Eight universities were paid more than A$1.2 million on average. Vice-chancellors’ pay has soared over recent decades (although most accepted pay cuts this year […] … learn more→

On 24 November, Twitter exploded with outrage at the announcement that the publisher Springer Nature plans to introduce an open access (OA) option for its Nature research journals, with an article processing charge (APC) of a whopping €9,500 (£8,290 or $11,390). Particular scorn was heaped on a subsidiary pilot scheme called “guided OA”, whereby authors can pay €2,190 in […] … learn more→

About a year ago, a small American company in the medical field, Geisenger , published surprising results on the application of artificial intelligence (AI) to estimate the short-term risk of death of patients with certain heart conditions, based on their electrocardiogram . To do this, they trained a neural network with almost two million electrocardiograms of almost […] … learn more→

There are many who believe that trying to direct academics is like herding cats. As people who have all attempted this feat at various points in our careers, we know that some can certainly be resistant to changing their teaching. But the idea that the research evidence of an entire discipline can be ignored simply […] … learn more→

The murder of the schoolteacher Samuel Paty, beheaded by 18-year-old Abdoullakh Abouyedovich Anzorov in October 2020 after Paty had shown caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad during a civic education lesson, has understandably caused shock and fear among teachers in France. Many teachers were already struggling to manage classroom discussions on sensitive topics such as the […] … learn more→