The lecture is dead. And, according to Carl Wieman, there should be no Lazarus-style resurrection. Wieman, a Nobel prizewinning advocate of active learning from Stanford University, argued here, just over a year ago, that belief in the value of traditional lecturing was akin to belief in bloodletting in an era of modern, evidence-based medicine. And […] … learn more→
Author Archives: Kevin
A philosophical defence of the traditional lecture
Internet openness pits collaborative history against competitive future
The debate about how open the internet should be to free expression – and how much companies should be able to restrict, or charge for, communication speeds – boils down to a conflict between the internet’s collaborative beginnings and its present commercialized form. The internet originated in the late 1960s in the U.S. Department of Defense’s […] … learn more→
Do teaching qualifications contribute to teaching quality?
As part of the subject-level teaching excellence framework, the Department for Education is consulting on whether to introduce a new measure of teaching intensity. One of the six options presented for consideration as part of the current consultation is a “gross teaching quotient” weighted by qualification/seniority of teacher. This would weigh contact time by qualification/seniority of […] … learn more→
We calculated how much money trees save for your city
Megacities are on the rise. There are currently 47 such areas around the globe, each housing more than 10 million residents. More than half the global population now lives in urban areas, comprising about 3 percent of the Earth. The ecological footprint of this growth is vast and there’s far more that can be done to […] … learn more→
Subversion is at the heart of the academy
“A university,” wrote Robert Maynard Hutchins, “must stand for something, and that must be something other than what a vocal minority, or majority, demand at the moment.” As president of the University of Chicago, Hutchins was pretty sure of what his university should not stand for. A prime example was big-time intercollegiate sports. In axeing […] … learn more→
Spelling mistakes on the resume … more than just mistakes
Spelling, a problem limited to the school sphere? The question of spelling has for a long time remained exclusively a matter of the educational system alone, with the ministry setting objectives to be achieved per cycle and periodically evaluating the level of students. Several studies agree on the regular and consistent decline in the level […] … learn more→
When college tuition goes up, campus diversity goes down
As college tuition continues to rise at a staggering rate, people tend to worry about how much harder it becomes for students and families to pay for college. As researchers who focus on higher education, we found a different reason to worry. We examined tuition hikes at public four-year colleges and universities over a 14-year period. We wanted to see if […] … learn more→
Women in tech suffer because of American myth of meritocracy
The American dream is built on the notion that the U.S. is a meritocracy. Americans believe success in life and business can be earned by anyone willing to put in the hard work necessary to achieve it, or so they say. Thus, Americans commonly believe that those who are successful deserve to be so and those who […] … learn more→
Kids of color get kicked out of school at higher rates – here’s how to stop it
When two black men were arrested at a Philadelphia Starbucks where they had been waiting for a business meeting on April 12, the incident called renewed attention to the bias that racial minorities face in American society. A few days later, a similar incident unfolded at an LA Fitness in New Jersey. While these two incidents involved adults at […] … learn more→
Moocs are a solution in search of a problem
A common question to start-up founders is: “What problem does this solve?” Massive open online courses (Moocs) are a solution in want of a problem. That’s not surprising because they did not emerge from a problem. Instead, they arose from the boredom of Stanford University computer science professors fed up with teaching the same lectures […] … learn more→
