Monthly Archives: January 2012

More or less?

Posted on January 31, 2012 by

It’s the time of year when I’m putting together my notes for the coming semester’s teaching.  As part of that, I’m making all my powerpoint presentations too, so that they can be posted on our virtual learning environment.  This is … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Activities, Simon Usherwood | 2 Comments

Multi-Tasking With Reflection

Posted on January 28, 2012 by

Most of us would agree that reflection is an important part of the learning process. The hard part about reflective exercises is making students think about course content rather than their feelings about it. One of my colleagues in philosophy … Continue reading →

Posted in Activities, Chad Raymond, Exercises, Feedback & Reflection, Getting Them to Read, Uncategorized, Writing | Tagged | 2 Comments

Sources v. the Literature

Posted on January 26, 2012 by

One of the challenges with students is that they often aren’t trained to recognize the difference between sources and the literature.  We may attempt to teach them the difference between primary and secondary, or scholarly and non-scholarly, but even amongst … Continue reading →

Posted in Activities, Amanda Rosen, Exercises, Research Methods, Writing | Leave a comment

“What’s that got to do with anything…?”

Posted on January 24, 2012 by

One of the constant challenges one faces in teaching is one of relevance.  Curricula are designed by committees of academics, who tend to work on the basis of “what does a student need to know in order to understand our … Continue reading →

Posted in Online Classes, Reading, Simon Usherwood, Social Networking/Media | Leave a comment

Incentivizing Active Teaching

Posted on January 22, 2012 by

Although I’m not an economist, I’m quite interested in identifying incentives, and faculty usually have few to no material incentives to experiment pedagogically.  Occasionally someone might receive a stipend or grant to vary one’s teaching methods, but these rewards are … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Soomo’s Supplements

Posted on January 19, 2012 by

Soomo Publishing has some neat online tools that can supplement courses in international relations and American politics.  They have a US Politics textbook, and then for both fields that have a neat set of supplementary exercises that are worth considering … Continue reading →

Posted in Amanda Rosen, Exercises, Getting Them to Read, International Relations, Online Classes | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Externalising knowledge

Posted on January 17, 2012 by

One of the main elements that we tend to stress to students is the process of internalisation, of bringing knowledge and skills inside oneself and of making one’s own.  At the same time, we also stress the ability to externalise, in … Continue reading →

Posted in Activities, European Union, Simon Usherwood | Leave a comment

Buying in buy-in

Posted on January 10, 2012 by

After a very pleasant Christmas and New Year – marred only by over-eating on my part – we’re back in the saddle here, although our students now have four weeks of revision/exams before we start our new semester in February, … Continue reading →

Posted in Feedback & Reflection, Simon Usherwood | Leave a comment

Using Oral Exams in Political Science

Posted on January 4, 2012 by

Happy New Year to all.  I hope our collective breaks have been enjoyable and that we are reinvigorated for the start of spring term!  I know I could use a couple of extra weeks, but instead I’m finishing up a … Continue reading →

Posted in Amanda Rosen, Exercises & Projects, Feedback & Reflection, Small Classes | Tagged , , | 4 Comments