CTL's Weblogs

Promotion & Tenure and the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning

This one's not online (yet), but a great read in the current Change magazine (March/April, 2006) is Howard N. Shapiro's "Promotion and Tenure and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning." He draws two illustrative cases that make clear how conflicted we remain about the seriousness of our commitment to excellent teaching and student learning. The reason I post this here is that Shapiro's discussion reflects the current situation at research universities. I wonder how different the cases--and the decisions--really are at our own state universities, "teaching institutions" all.

Civility and Personal Electronics

Inside Higher Ed: Campuses of Ids

Inside Higher Ed offers an evergreen topic today, student civility. In the promo for the piece, they used a quick label to convey the problem, pegging "today's" students as "the South Park generation." It's an article guaranteed to get your dander up, and it's followed by the always-interesting Inside Higher Ed reader comments. But I think David Jaffee got closer to the mark in a POD Network post several years ago (1999) with his essay, I Am Not a TV . Makes great food for thought in creating your own syllabus paragraph or first-lecture remarks on expectations. Although I'd update it now to, "I am not an IPod." I.e., I am not entertainment. I am not dialable...

Obstacles on the Route From High School to College

What are the obstacles that make it difficult for a smooth transition from high school to college? What kind of reforms could potentially smooth the transition? Read the opinion of Chester E. Finn Jr, a senior fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, in the Chronicle of Higher Education (issue dated March 10, 2006) at http://chronicle.com/free/v52/i27/27b04001.htm

Class in the Classroom

Class is an often invisible form of difference. Yet it is there all the time, affecting how and what students learn at every turn. It pervades the values and the purposes of colleges and universities. It contributes to determining the courses offered and the books read and discussed. Still, it is a diversity issue rarely acknowledged. Lee Warren from Harvard University offers much food for thought in her article found at: http://www.teaching2.nmsu.edu/Resources/newsletters/TeachingExc/V10/v10n2.htm

Adjuncts at the Party

Inside Higher Ed :: Moving to 'Conversion'

A report that at last week's AFT/NEA conference, adjunct faculty were discussed with more than the usual sense of grudging acknowledgement.