Tag: teaching

  • Backfiring Facts

    There’s a new format of student excuse that I’m getting these days that relies on credibility but really doesn’t do a great job of audience adaptation. It’s worth talking about because I have been seeing it so often and it is an outcome of a facts-only reasoning epistemology, where the only reasons one can give…

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  • Terms of Service at the University

    During the election , any election we are treated to numerous “persona on the street” interviews where people announce they are “ready for change.” Supporting change is like supporting our troops, willfully dodging the more difficult and concerning act of supporting what kind of change or what activities our troops are sent off to do.…

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  • How Do Students Evaluate Class Activities?

    I got a new GoPro so what better way to break it in than to walk and talk through something on my mind about teaching. I think what explains the lack of student motivation best is that they have only one measure to evaluate things in this world: entertainment. Is it entertaining? If not, they…

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  • Free to Teach

    Is asking someone to consider the broader impact of supporting a policy out of place? Disrespectful? Is it hostile? Is it inconsiderate? The Governor of Louisiana thinks so. An LSU Law professor asked students that if they felt comfortable voting for Donald Trump because of his policy agenda, they should consider how that makes people…

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  • Opportune Weekend

    Been pretty down and out about teaching, my work, my job, etc. But this week things look to turn around. I have two pretty good opportunities that are coming together this week so I just have to figure out what I’d like to be doin. As a friend said, it’s time to take a look…

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  • Responding to the Recent U.S. Election

    The responses have been poor, to understate it. I see little action plan and a lot of reaction to something that was apparently “hard to imagine” – most of the population voting against foreigners and for America first. I’m not sure who finds that hard to imagine, but it shouldn’t be rhetoricians. But here we…

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  • Is Debate about Serving Your Arguments, or Serving the Ends of Debate Itself?

    Debate’s structure makes structural demands on speakers. When entering a debate, one enters carrying the immense ideological weight of what you think a debate should look like. All the debates you’ve seen, all that you have thought debate is and should be, every debate you’ve hated and enjoyed – we all walk into the debate…

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  • An Argument

    The most valuable things for me in college were reading books and discussing them (or listening to the professor talk about them). The other valuable thing was being in clubs, meeting people and making relationships. I don’t think either of these are possible any longer. Students are on campus a minimal amount of time due…

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  • Bad Teacher

    I’ve become a very bad teacher recently and I’d like to figure out why. Reflecting on what a bad teacher is, I’ve come up with the following ideas All of these things are elements of bad teaching and being bad at teaching, but perhaps the bad teacher is someone who just disregards these and doesn’t…

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  • Bad Teaching is Debate Coaching

    Still thinking about what makes bad teaching/good teaching. I found this atrocious lecture from “debate coaches” supposedly teaching the best and brightest young debaters at an exclusive “forum” for debate at Emory University. The Barkley Forum doesn’t seem to have any quality control standards. We get a route lecture that is thin, vapid, and incorrect…

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