Nobody planned for an abrupt mass migration of traditional college courses to the internet. But because of coronavirus, that’s where we are. Hundreds of thousands of students have been told to clear out their belongings and head home, many through the end of the semester. In nearly every case, colleges have said that instruction will […] … learn more→
Author Archives: Kevin
Everybody Ready for the Big Migration to Online College? Actually, No
Teaching intelligence: how to take your classes online
When the novel coronavirus first hit Singapore in January, universities were two to three weeks into a new semester. As the number of cases climbed, university administrators grappled with challenging questions of protocol and pedagogy. Today Covid-19 knocks on doors worldwide, and universities everywhere face unprecedented challenges. One of the strategies embraced by many universities […] … learn more→
Lecturers need to stop trying to micromanage their students’ lives
The professor started the seminar with an instruction. If students wanted to succeed, they’d have to learn to think like her. She distributed a copy of a sonnet she had annotated: students would be required to annotate their sonnets in her way and turn them in throughout the course for credit. In the second week, […] … learn more→
The new coronavirus is hitting colleges and universities hard, but donors can help
Amid concerns about the deadly coronavirus pandemic, a rapidly growing number of colleges and universities are closing their classroom doors, forcing faculty to teach students online instead of in person. The risks posed by COVID-19, the disease caused by the new coronavirus, are both dramatic and abstract. Without a vaccine, scientists can’t say how long it will last […] … learn more→
Critics who say online gaming is ‘just a game’ completely miss the point
Now more than ever before, the stakes are getting higher in professional gaming. E-sports should be taken seriously as both an occupation and a form of leisure. Riot Games, the developers of desktop juggernaut League of Legends, is even taking the game into Monday Night Football territory with its own weekday broadcast of the game’s major tournament. Sixteen years […] … learn more→
8 tips on what to tell your kids about coronavirus
As the number of new cases of coronavirus infection continue to rise the impact is now being felt in schools in Australia. At least four closed due to students and a staff member testing positive for the virus. Most international travel by Queensland students is also banned. It’s therefore important for parents to be there for their children […] … learn more→
Pirate universities have stolen lecturers’ performers’ rights
As the latest wave of strikes at UK universities has unfolded over the past four weeks, the question has once again been raised of whether the impact on students – and, hence, the efficacy of the industrial action – could be minimised by simply showing them recordings of absent academics’ lectures from previous years. That […] … learn more→
Why do students lose the desire to learn as they grow
Yes, it is a proven fact that students vary markedly in their academic performance and they do so over time. The reasons for these differences depend on several factors: The socio-cultural context of the students, highlighting the socioeconomic and cultural level of the family and the opportunities offered by the social context. The school factors, being the coexistence […] … learn more→
Who is blind to the horror of N-words?
“The horror! The horror!” Rarely have so few words done so much for so many academics. Uttered by the dying ivory trader Kurtz in Joseph Conrad’s 1899 novella, Heart of Darkness, interpretations range from the political to the psychological, metaphysical and autobiographical. The hermeneutic jungle is as dense as the one the story’s narrator, Marlow, […] … learn more→
Mandatory e-learning is a problem in Ontario high schools
Mandatory high school e-learning has become a point of contention in Ontario. The provincial government currently says it will implement two mandatory high school e-learning courses — down from an initial proposal to make it compulsory that students take four out of 30 high school courses online. This change happened after the government faced strong resistance from teachers, and negative […] … learn more→
