Fall 2015 my university commissioned one of our on-campus engineers to design and build not one but two Lightboards. If you aren’t familiar with what a Lightboard is you’ve come to the proper blog. On Tuesday, March 1st, I gave a mess of lecture about the size and shape of the Earth, and double-down on…
I’ve examined a number of faculty posts over the last few years, tweets and Facebook updates, blogs and essays, relating how poorly students communicate with faculty. I’ve had conversation with faculty, my peers, who have various policies for handling questionable emails. I’ve tried to examine my own email styles along the way. As our global…
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…
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…
From my earliest memories I’ve never been able to tolerate information, comments, instructions, or any other discourse which has little logic attached. Ask my parents. Not having a suitable answer for my “Why does _____?” line of questioning usually resulted in some form of tantrum. Perhaps I should have been a lawyer rather than a…
Students are fickle. They want an online course experience, the ability to work at their own pace, in their own environment, wherever that environment is, home, work, school, beach house, neighbor’s house, or Starbuck’s. In all course evaluations, online students report how they want more contact with faculty, how they don’t get email replies back…
One of the best ways to teach, I have discovered, is to be wrong. Say something wrong, show something wrong, do something wrong – such as have some errors in a hand-out, and savvy students will call you out. “Hey, I’m confused. This map is wrong, I think.” Years ago I made some maps with…
At times, I think my Announcements for my classes take on the tone of a blog post. My online students do not have the luxury of the 5-10 minutes I spend each class period harping on attitude, perseverance, discipline, and poor defense and shot-blocking in mid-major NCAA basketball conferences. I have to make up for…
I’ve taken flack for proselytizing too much on my syllabi. Over the decade-and-a-half or so of being in the classroom, I have taken to being more vocal about the problems I see in students attitudes toward their commitment towards their education. I want things to be congruent. If someone says “my grade is very important…
The notion “reading is studying” needs to be removed from everyone’s brain. Reading alone is not “studying.” Reading is part of the Process of Learning and Study. When a student tells me “I read the chapter” I say, “that’s a good start. Now go back and re-read it 2 more times, and this time, pay…
Constant Geography 
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