There are major changes going on in education lately. I’m hearing it from all corners of the spectrum: students, professors, administrators and the internet at large. The issue is the concept of ownership. In particular is the issue of ownership of ideas. I’ve titled this post “Ownership and The Syllabus” because I was recently reminded of this issue when another instructor made a comment about some of the initiatives happening at many universities. The issue at hand was the syllabus and its status as a public/open rather than private/restricted-access document. Housed within this comment are some overarching principles and frustrations … Continue reading →

The things you don’t know can be dangerous. I’ve often commented about he importance of the syllabus for this very reason. When I was teaching a course that had testing online I frequently had students “forget” to take their midterm and/or final exams. This particular course had those exams open for well over a week, twenty-four hours a day. How could they forget? They didn’t look at the syllabus, they didn’t pay attention in class, and it was the thing they didn’t know. The thing they didn’t know was dangerous — very dangerous indeed. I’m not immune to these dangers … Continue reading →

This is going to be a post about teaching and about sharing. It’s a post about sharing because sharing is giving and giving makes sense. If you think about teachers and education you’ll realize that education itself is based on the idea of sharing. I’ve talked about apprenticeship before and that is based on the same thing: sharing. Sharing happens to be the only way we have for teaching and learning. Someone has to share that knowledge with you. Since human beings are not telepathic we don’t have the ability to steal other people’s thoughts in any direct way. We’re … Continue reading →