Tl;dr: record in segments of 5-10 minutes. Never record a full class’ worth of material in a single take. That’s the short version, but there’s a bit more to it than that. — Slightly longer summary: Plan your class as you would normally (making whatever adjustments you make for it being online). Using the plan, …
Category Archives: Academe
Recording Your Lectures 1: the one thing your can do to improve your students’ listening experience
Tl;dr:Hang a blanket, quilt, or something else that’s absorbent behind you while you make your lecture recordings. That’s it. — A whole lot of people are going to be audio recording their university lectures in the fall, or delivering lectures live over Zoom. This series of tutorials will give you some easy steps to make …
Multiple Choice Exam Theory: Remote Teaching Edition
(This is a revised edition of a 2012 blog post I did for the Chronicle of Higher Education‘s ProfHacker column, which is now in 404 Error Heaven.) Edit: I did a talk about this for the Faculty of Arts. A pdf of the slide deck is here. The “live” 10 minute presentation is here and …
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Instant thoughts on moving instruction online for the fall
I was very happy to read that McGill is taking instruction online in the fall. There are still some ambiguous words in the provost’s email about the student experience, on-campus seminars and learning experiences, etc.* But this is so much better than pretending everything will be the same when we know it can’t be. And …
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Work update: a new deadline and a note on endless apologies
The reviews for Diminished Faculties came back at the end of February. The reviewers were positive and had some good suggestions. I wrote my reply, Duke University Press’ board met, and yesterday I signed the contract. That’s some happy news. I found it actually helpful to publicly announce a deadline, as I did in the …
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Academic advice from cancer for the COVID-19 epidemic: let it go
Compared to the massive life and death issues people are facing, this is a tiny thing, for a tiny segment of the world. But with that caveat, it is still worth saying. In 2009, I was diagnosed with a very aggressive version of papillary thyroid cancer. I had to bail on my courses, and lost …
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Health update / McGill Bullshits on Divestment
Health update: I went back to the oncologist today. My tumour marker is back down, which means last time was a blip, or variance, or measurement error. Which is what I expected. The BP drugs are still not working so we are trying yet another one. Which is good because I’m getting monster headaches from …
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