A report highlighted by Times Ideas suggests that highlighting information as a form of learning has little real impact over simply reading the material. Yet, the evidence (and my own experience) is that this a very popular way to aid ‘learning’. The truth is that we do many things because we believe them to be …
I have revisited The Random Thoughts of Louis Schmier and in particular his post on the Teacher’s Oath. Louis has been writing his random thoughts for decades, and he has been active in the OB Teaching Society (and probably many other things) for way longer than I’ve been teaching. So, I’m a little bit surprised …
There has been a little bump in traffic, so I’ve kicked off AW Stats process to workout what/who/etc is happening. Tick. Tock. Tick. Tock. Tick. Ding. Okay, it looks like some of my current students have rumbled that this blog exists. That’s a bit later in the course than usual, but not unexpected. Most are using …
Our BUSINESS 101 course (aka Business and Enterprise) is based on Team-based learning and has an element of peer evaluation.This is based on the Michaelson (percentage) method. We’ve just completed a practice run through and the results are quite interesting (but not unexpected). Approximately half the class completed the practice team review. The distribution looks …
One of the students in BUSINESS 101 noticed that in a reference such as (Oram, 2007; 2011) I was using colons, instead of commas. They said it should be (Oram, 2007, 2011). I was away from the office (without a copy of the Publication manual of the APA to hand), and I said it might …
There is an interesting article over at McKinsey on information overload. But it also talked about the consequences of multitasking. There is a lot of popular writing about the current generation doing a lot of multitasking. But I wonder where is the evidence that they are any better at it than any other generation. My …
I’ve talked elsewhere about the economics of textbooks and my surprise at how much of the mark-up goes to the various parties. Anyway, on Boing Boing there is an interesting article that discusses the issue further (and provides some interesting links). The article says: 5. Student behavior a. Students basically function as a captive consumer audience, …
The paragraph is a continuing source of mystery to me. What makes a really good paragraph? Is it as formulaic as suggested by Thomas Basbøll? Actually, I’m doing a Thomas a great disservice when I caste his writing on paragraphs as being formulaic. He, has written at length in a very nuanced manner about the …
This semester I’m teaching BUSINESS 101 aka Business and enterprise 1, here at school. We’ve a discussion forum that is used within the course–but it may not work for no UoA people. Anyway, there is a section for introductions, and, having seen the first half-dozen entries, such as: Woo 1st 1 to reply and find out …
Yale college has some of the best resources on writing that I’ve come across. One of the challenges teachers face is to what extent should they draw on others material, as opposed to writing their own “guides”. For example, the Yale material doesn’t quite fit in some areas. Should I: Refer students to their resource …
I think it was Stephen Turner (2007) who lamented that much sociological theory is uninformed by our contemporary understanding of neuroscience. David Rock, in series of articles (2006, 2009) looks at leadership and management from the perspective of neuroscience. One particular section caught my eye, in which he writes about teams; the Relating to relatedness …
Andrea James has been talking about the economics of textbooks, and how the money is distributed. He reports that: Five conglomerates control 80% of textbook production. They sell their product to distributors/retailers, who in turn sell them to bookstores (on and off campus, including internet). Four wholesalers dominate textbook distribution, especially used books. These four wholesalers …