“Your objectives are harshing my mellow, man.” I talk to a lot of people. People who knew me in high school would be surprised by this. I barely uttered a sentence throughout high school, never participated in any social events. I would speak with my teachers, but my peers – not so much. But, I…
I need to state this at the onset of this post, otherwise I may be accused of being a supporter of “running education like a business,” but I am not supporting the notion of running any educational system as a business. But. We, and by we I mean those of us in education, cannot on…
I have a student appealing a grade in my Fall 2013 geography course. The course is 100% online. All homework is submitted via the university learning management system (LMS). The LMS reports no grades for the student for any assigned work, though time-date stamps exist to indicate the assignments were at least accessed. The student…
I’m probably wrong, but bear with me as out outline all of my errors for you. Over the last two decades I’ve seen student performance noticeably decline. Students fear math. Not calculus, but merely simple multiplication and division. Ask any student to calculate a percentage, i.e. “The population of the United States is 310,000,000 people.…
One of the most valuable comments I’ve received about EconTalk’s “Salty Snacks” podcast was from a recent Business Administration major. “I learned more about the business and economic choices faced by companies in this one podcast than I have learned in two semesters of business classes.” While that is a nice side-benefit of being exposed…
MOOC. To some, the acronym is a dirty word, like “larvae,” or “spider,” or “A-Rod.” People spit the word out like they are trying to remove a stray hair from their mouth. I can understand their distaste for MOOCs. Change is hard. Massively open online courses are a natural evolutionary stage in the use of…
I’m sharing my recent ‘Student Evaluation of Instruction” with the world. My intent is to highlight a couple of examples of the problems associated with using ‘student evaluations’ in course evaluation. I have copied these comments verbatim from the form I received in the mail last week. The evaluation document also includes a color-coded chart indicating…
The greater portion of the following collection of musings came on the very first day of the Education Conference. My current position covers a diverse number of disciplines, roles, and responsibilities. My office is on the top floor of a 5-story building, on the perimeter of our office space. And I am a Team of…
My 2nd ESRI conference was the last ESRI conference held in Palm Springs, California. We flew from Nashville, to Atlanta, then to LAX. From LAX we boarded an 18 passenger puddle-jumper, stopping first at Orange County Airport, then finally Palm Springs. I highly recommend that special flight leg. The flight is rough as the route…
During the fall of 2012, I taught a “Weather and Climate” course. A new course preparation for me, and a new course for my college, I was counseled to keep the course light on chemistry, physics, and math. The students simply wouldn’t be ready to deal with any such material. The students needed the course…
Constant Geography 
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