Blogs

In my circles, the answer to this question is fairly obvious. But as I was trying to explain to undergraduates how messed up scholarly publishing is, I realized it's hard to grasp unless you already have been bruised by current practices. When you're just learning how information works and have only gotten as far as "you ought to use scholarly sources," it's very puzzling indeed. So I thought I'd try to break it down.

The smartphone has become a regular part of my daily workflow, and I find myself using it regularly for To Do lists, email, reminders, and keeping up to date on news and such. Recently, I've found a couple of apps that have been particularly helpful in keeping me on track, so I thought I'd share them with you all. There are some similarities in these apps: they all do one thing and one thing only, and they place a premium on doing those things as quickly as possible, so you can spend less time on your phone, and more time doing other things. Also, most of them have reminder systems built in, so you don't forget to use them to do the things you want to do. As a side note: I'm an iPhone user, and I've done my best to find alternative apps for other smartphones. Please use the comment field to add any useful alternatives for other platforms!

Why my job is to get my students to do peer review.

In a meeting this week, a frustrated professor described politics as “trying to get one group of rich guys to convince another group of rich guys to do the right thing.” I thought he nailed it.

Digital privacy has emerged as the coin of the realm in our Faustian pact with social media.

In 1900, the mathematician David Hilbert listed 100 mathematical problems that he felt would be good problems to address in the next century. Many of these have been solved, but some still wait for solutions. I found myself thinking of this recently as I realized that the season of Lent had begun. While this is traditionally a season of fasting and repentance, many today also approach this season as an opportunity to find ways to bring about a more just world. I found myself thinking of the Hilbert problems because it occurred to me that those of us in higher education could bring our collective minds together to address several issues that, like the Hilbert questions of years ago, seem to need addressing.

When I first spoke with representatives from Harrison College (HC), they emphasized a "sense of place" with their KnowU learning platform. The platform went live last month with 164 online students who were slated to use KnowU.

Should different economic classes have different colleges? And should those colleges have different missions? I’m not talking about the elite-of-the-elite letting in a few scholarship students, as welcome as that is. I’m thinking more of art history and philosophy at community colleges.