Higher Education Observer

I come down on the side of keeping one's mouth shut.   https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2017/12/14/should-professors-talk-about-now-notable-former-students?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=3d4ea1e011-DNU20171214&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-3d4ea1e011-198482621&mc_cid=3d4ea1e011&mc_eid=ab27a3f05f

Good synopsis of the nudging concept--will definitely read the book.  It sounds very similar to Festinger's cognitive dissonance, Cialdini's "click-whirrs," and Vygotsky's range of proximal development.  https://www.eab.com/blogs/student-success-insights/2017/12/nudging?elq_cid=1732171&x_id=003C000001ocYBxIAM&WT.mc_id=%7CSSCC%7CBalert%7CBlog%7CEmail%20Marketing%7C2017Dec18%7CStudentRetentionandSuccess%7CALL%7CNudging&&elqTrackId=be23713539c44a7eb406b8e1d44223c1&elq=1314ca5da20d4c18bcb50c655e84d8ed&elqaid=73415&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=34635#10;?elqTrackId=ac6fea7c46c946c7a52b0a22f170d586

First, to reflect is NOT to communicate.  Reflection is metacognition, not communication.  When we ask students to write a reflection paper, we are asking them to communicate, not reflect.  They are two separate things. Yes, writing can be and is usually an excellent reflective device (not for everyone), but we don't really grade them on the reflection, but on how they write it up.  If they use writing to reflect, the product will not be in a form that necessarily follows rhetorical forms and makes sense to a reader.  If the reflector is too concerned about making sense to another, he/she will miss out on the depth and truthfulness of the reflection. Reflection must first examine the experience fully, then do something with it.  In reflection papers we really want students to evaluate, not reflect, so they are skipping the real steps of reflection. When we think of reflection, we should think of a mirror.  How many of us have looked at every pore...

One more voice in a reputable publication calling for educating young people for technical careers rather than liberal arts education.  If that's all that college is about--getting a job--then it's foolish to send everyone to college.  Trust me, they aren't getting it and are wasting their time.   https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/01/whats-college-good-for/546590/

https://www.insidehighered.com/views/2017/12/05/need-theory-learning-opinion?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=df16c5da25-DNU20171205&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-df16c5da25-198482621&mc_cid=df16c5da25&mc_eid=ab27a3f05f and https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/just-visiting/lecture-attention-recall-its-complicated My takeaways: 1.  Learning is individual in many ways, so an instructor should use more than one method for a "unit" or "lesson" or "concept."  2.  Students must be empowered in their first years and continually with understanding the learning process for themselves and using it, and this is must more than their "learning style" (which is not supported by research anyway). 3.  Less is more.  In a world of growing research and knowledge explosion, we have to cull our disciplines down to the most essentials and perhaps restructure the curriculum or process of our fields. 4.  If one works in f...

I have written elsewhere on student evaluations.  This is the first day of final exams for my institution, so I had to remind my students this morning that it is also the last day for them to complete the online evaluations. I could write a volume on this process, and perhaps one day I will, because I plan to write a book entitled Inspirational Teaching in an Age of Assessment.  Student evals have their place.  They can be of value in quality improvement for the individual teacher if the instrument is good and comments are looked at more than numbers.  They also alert administrators (like me) to patterns of problems.  If one student says the professor is a jerk (as has happened to me), I don't care.  If ten do in a year, that means something. There are many things wrong with student evals.  They commodify education, the opinions of 18-year-olds are given too much weight, and they should never be used as the primary method of assessment of an ins...