It must be the season or something. Today, our TA union staged a demonstration outside the front gates in support of their ongoing contract negotiations. McGill teaching assistants are quite underpaid compared to their counterparts at other Canadian universities and “R1” universities in the U.S. It’s a Quebec thing, since they’re better paid than TAs […]
Category Archives: Teaching
Why I Hate Mercury
No, not the planet. It’s cool. Mercury is the name for McGill’s online student course evaluation system. For most of my career as a teacher, there has been a day at the end of the term when students have filled out course evaluation forms, commenting on the instruction, their impressions of the course, and other […]
More on Coverage
There are some excellent comments in the thread for my post on lecturing and retention. The question seems to be: is coverage more important in fields with strong canons, and what’s the alternative? My sense is this: Physics has as strong a “canon” as any humanities field, so the issues of core curriculum seem as […]
How to Read a Book in Less than an Hour
Chris Kelty’s advice. I haven’t tried his method though I have my own “plowing” methods which I may detail at a later date if I decide there’s something original in it. I tend to real slowly and obsessively when I teach. Leaving aside dull and moralistic arguments about how much effort should be expended in […]
Lecturing and Killing the “Coverage” idea
I don’t think I’ve written about this, but I am obsessed with large lecture pedagogy. Although a sizeable number of students in my intro class seem to really like it (although liking isn’t the point necessarily) and I get good ratings, I have always been interested in how to be a better teacher. The thing […]
Some Cran Bread to Tide You Over
My mind is just brimming with ideas for this blog, especially as we roll into our 3rd summer (2nd full) in Montreal. Reflections on my big course this term and the project of mass education that universities have undertaken; reflections on our “settling” here and changing knowledge of the city; a few technological matters in […]
Belated Baudrillard Anecdote to Serve as an Obit
Fall 1995 was the first time I ever got to teach in my area of substantive expertise — it was an intro to communication studies course. I’d cleverly begun with McLuhan (yes, I know I know) and the “Medium is the Message” essay. The course ended with Baudrillard’s “Requiem for the Media” which is essentially […]