Category Archives: teaching

Draft Booklist for a Last-Minute First-Year Writing Course

Posted on January 11, 2011 by jbj

As I’ve whined on Twitter, my digital humanities class this semester was canceled*, and has been replaced with a section of first-year writing.  Since classes begin on the 24th,  I need a book order immediately, and a syllabus soon after. My … Continue reading →

Posted in books, CCSU, teaching | 3 Comments

Professor-funny

Posted on July 18, 2009 by jbj

In his mailbag yesterday, ESPN’s Bill Simmons offers up a taxonomy of the different ways athletes can be–or, painfully, not be–funny.  For example: 5.0 — Learned Funny Humorless people who learn how to be adequately sports-funny in the right situations … Continue reading →

Posted in academe, higher education, humor, teaching | 1 Comment

Graff & curricular mixed messages in English depts

Posted on April 13, 2009 by jbj

Mark Bauerlein posted over the weekend about Gerald Graff’s presidential address (some scrolling required) to the MLA.  The argument will be familiar to anyone who’s read Graff’s Clueless in Academe: The default attitude of many professors is a kind of … Continue reading →

Posted in academe, English major, higher education, teaching | 2 Comments

Learning from our public schools: What matters in evaluations

Posted on March 29, 2009 by jbj

So, this weekend we received a document with two forms: the teacher of the year nomination and a parent survey, largely about satisfaction with the school.  We’re pretty happy with the school, and very happy with the teacher, so no … Continue reading →

Posted in academe, assessment, higher education, new britain, public schools, silliness, teaching, things that should stop | Comments Off on Learning from our public schools: What matters in evaluations

Deploying the iPod Touch in a classroom

Posted on March 26, 2009 by jbj

Put the case that you were piloting the widespread deployment of iPod Touches in a classroom.  You can assume the following: Two sections of the same class will be taught in a 5-week period.  For the sake of argument–let’s call … Continue reading →

Posted in academe, higher education, iPod Touch, teaching | 17 Comments

Changing attitudes among students and faculty

Posted on March 23, 2009 by jbj

Earlier this month, UCLA reported on their triennial survey of faculty attitudes and values, “The American College Teacher.”  (Here’s the study; here’s the InsideHigherEd.com writeup.  Quotations below are from the latter.)  The above-the-fold news from the study was that faculty … Continue reading →

Posted in academe, higher education, teaching | Comments Off on Changing attitudes among students and faculty

A small proposal for (esp. junior) faculty

Posted on March 17, 2009 by jbj

Everyone in graduate school gets drilled into their head that they should be good to the department secretaries.  Department secretaries can accomplish all sorts of excellent things–they can expedite your travel paperwork, teach you the funky new copier, make sure … Continue reading →

Posted in higher education, teaching | 1 Comment

Satisficing & grading

Posted on March 16, 2009 by jbj

I’m slow with the grading.  Some of it is garden-variety procrastination; some of it is bad planning (assignments for different classes coming in at the same time); some of it is overcommitments elsewhere; some of it is figuring out the … Continue reading →

Posted in higher education, teaching | 4 Comments

Online quizzes for lit classes

Posted on March 10, 2009 by jbj

A couple of years ago, I began requiring online reading quizzes in my 200-level lit classes (Brit Lit II, plus topics-based courses for nonmajors).  This year, I’ve extended it to any class where there’s assigned reading.  As usual, there are … Continue reading →

Posted in higher education, teaching | 8 Comments

About online grading

Posted on March 4, 2009 by jbj

Katy asked for a post about grading with the computer, and I always try to honor requests, so here goes: Online grading doesn’t save me any time, although that’s probably because I do it badly.  The main benefits I get … Continue reading →

Posted in higher education, teaching | 9 Comments