BY AARON BARLOW We’re learning a lot about distance education right now. As a group, that is, as faculty. Few of us have ever bothered with using digital tools, much less considered teaching solely online or even in a hybrid situation. We’ve assumed, correctly, that distance education is a pale approximation of learning without electronic…
BY AARON BARLOW Listen to our students. That’s the best way for us teachers to craft a successful end to a disrupted semester in a nation in crisis. After Kent State in 1970, we students at Utica College (like our contemporaries all over the country) shut our campus down. Under the leadership of faculty, however,…
BY AARON BARLOW The emails can be overwhelming. Hundreds of them from well-meaning colleagues, campus IT departments, our chairs, deans, provosts… everyone who can is chipping in to help us make hurried conversions to online instruction. In a way, it’s wonderful to see this response (though a little frustrating: many of us were advocating planning…
BY AARON BARLOW When I told my students on Wednesday that we would indeed be moving all of our activities online for the rest of the semester, they groaned. I was a little surprised. I thought they would like the idea that they could finish their classes from home. I believed that they would imagine…
BY AARON BARLOW When I was in Peace Corps in West Africa, I could always tell where the butcher’s stand was by the vultures circling overhead. Today, I am seeing similar carrion feeders, ones hoping to snatch up the offal from the COVID-19 situation… The COVID-19 college closures are being seized upon by the EdTech…
BY AARON BARLOW “All of my professors are talking about this,” commented the student, “but we’ve heard nothing from the administration.” Across the country, classroom teachers are hearing similar words as they prepare with their students for possible shut-downs sparked by COVID-19 (coronavirus) fears. We’re all doing what we can—which is a lot—with the limited…
BY AARON BARLOW Dr. Bruce Gilley, are you trying to pick a fight? You are a professor of Political Science at Portland State University and have penned a disturbing piece, “Was It Good Fortune to be Enslaved by the British Empire?” that appeared on September 30, 2019 on the website of the National Association of…
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BY AARON BARLOW Oh, the fear of losing relevance! Responding to a Chronicle Review collection of essays on the demise of traditional studies in English called Endgame, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, in “The Academic Apocalypse: The crisis of English departments is also a crisis of faith” (01/11/20), expresses the worries of some: [O]ur…
BY AARON BARLOW At the “OEB Global, incorporating Learning Technologies” (once Online Educa Berlin) conference in Berlin today, Audrey Watters, one of the most perceptive thinkers on education that I know of, spoke on “Ed-Tech Agitprop.” Though her primary purpose was to debunk some of the bits of received “wisdom” about the future, ones we…