Blogs

Degreed, a startup that promises to “jailbreak the transcript” launched into beta this week. Degreed asks users to list what formal and informal education they’ve pursued — what college did you attend, what major were you, what badges have you earned — and calculates an equivalency score in certain topics. That means that even if you never completed your bachelor’s or associate’s degree, Degreed will vouch for both your credit hours (ish) and your mastery skills (ish).

A new correspondent writes: "My boss, the director of [campus office], told me in February that I was going to be promoted. A month later, the vp told me I was getting a raise. A month later, my boss asked me what I thought about being assistant director and told me to name my price. The next week, he and the vp told me I was going to be re-classified. The president has called two private meetings with me to thank me for my hard work and tell me they are looking for a place for me. The paperwork for re-classification has been slow. I turned in my final portion last week and my boss still hasn't acknowledged it. It's been 7 months."

In putting together my dossier, I am forced to revisit my past teaching evaluations, and my student comments. For the most part, I receive a great deal of positive feedback, but of course, every once in a while you have that student who hates you with a ferocity that is only matched by his or her immaturity and insensitivity. I’ve blogged about that before, but now I want to do the thing you know we all want to do: answer them.

It's somewhat of a core tenet amongst our edtech crowd that we should be platform agnostic. Mac, Windows, Linux - our e-learning materials will work as long as you can fire up a browser.

Sometimes the only appropriate way to respond to ridiculousness is with more ridiculousness that is actually insightful.

My brother and I have always dealt with relaxation in very different ways. We're both graduate students, him in his second year, and me in my fifth year. When we visited my parents for breaks like Thanksgiving and the Winter holidays during undergrad, we had extremely different reactions to the free time. He read books, had extended lounging sessions on the couch, and would watch entire seasons of popular tv shows. I filled my time with friends, got back into my exercise routine, and was continually out and about. These methods had been fairly successful for us, even though they were different.

I was talking to an administrative director at Greenback recently. He's a pretty good guy, and he wants to help the U out with the "whole sustainability thing", but to his mind a large portion of that boils down to "recycle more". What I really wanted to say was "no, recycle less! Recycling more is the least good of the non-bad options!" It would just have confused (and probably irritated him), so I held back.

Incivility has no place within college communities. It sucks the joy out of academic departments, provides an awful example for our students, and impedes honest face-to-face discussion of real issues. We should call incivility what it is – at the minimum, a breach of community, and at its worst, bullying.