Friday Fragments - July 3rd
"PPE Ambassadors," calculating work hours, a model of risk analysis & 2 free conferences.
What I’m reading/watching this week…
For a sense of what the experience of teaching in person will be like, a team from Emory University put together a webinar (skip right to the teaching/classroom resources around 12:20) that I thought was interesting. Lots of face masks + face shields + plexiglass + “PPE Ambassadors”.
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How much ‘work’ should my online course be for me and my students? Dave Cormier asks us to consider “total work hours” to guide our course design decisions, and breaks it down in very clear, practical terms.
Along the same lines, this post explores two different models for helping students to understand “time on task” expectations.
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For parents - really for all of us, in general - trying to make hard decisions for fall, I found this model of risk analysis by Emily Oster helpful. She proposes that we frame the question: What is the issue at hand, and what is (are) the alternative(s); mitigate risk: What can you do to make a risky situation less risky; evaluate risk: Who is most at risk, and how much risk are we talking about here; evaluate benefits: What will we get out of choice A that we won’t get from choice B; and decide: A or B. (I walked through my thinking process with this model here.)
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Sometimes it’s good to read folks one doesn’t generally agree with - this opinion/book review piece, What Is College Worth? by Jonathan Zimmerman is one of them. He makes some very interesting points about the cost of higher education, critiques the role of faculty in contributing to a flawed system, and ends by interrogating the value of higher education as a public good.
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Two free online conferences next week - signup today if interested!
Wiley's Wicked Summer Camp for Online Teaching, July 7 - 9, 12:00pm - 4:00pm EDT has sessions focused on online teaching in general, with specific sessions for science, math & foreign language teaching.
Colorado College’s Institute on Block Plan and Intensive Teaching & Learning runs July 6-7 4:00-5:30 MDT (6:00-7:30 EDT) and will offer one session each day focused on transitioning from a semester to a block plan, from administrative and pedagogical perspectives.
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Send me your suggestions for topics & resources to highlight - Happy 4th!