3/18/13 is a pretty huge day @ Writing Commons thanks to the Duke MOOC!

In past blogs, I’ve chronicled the development of Writing Commons, the Open Education Home for Writers, with hopes that my experiences developing an Open Education Resource (OER) might be of interest to faculty across the disciplines.  I’ve argued that faculty might want to consider contributing to Writing Commons or other OERs that are peer-reviewed, that…

Fish Caught Me Again

I’m getting rather tired of finding myself agreeing with Stanley Fish–but it has happened again. Though I have admired Fish’s intellect and verbal ability for some thirty years now, only recently have I found myself nodding in agreement with things he writes. What bothers me is that I suspect either 1) I wasn’t reading him…

Banning Ag Research at Iowa State

Michael Gartner has an excellent op-ed in the Des Moines Register today about the serious threat to academic freedom posed by Iowa State president Steve Leath, who has banned the Harkin Institute from conducting research on agriculture without getting the approval of another research institute on campus, the Center for Agricultural Research and Development (CARD).…

New AAUP Report on IRB Rules

This is a guest post by Zachary Schrag, a professor of history at George Mason University. He was a member of the subcommittee which released the report discussed below. Professor Schrag also maintains the Institutional Review Blog. A subcommittee of the Association’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure has released a new report, Regulation of Research on…

The Value of Useless Research

The following guest post is by Johann Neem, associate professor of history at Western Washington University: A recent paper by Emory University English professor Mark Bauerlein argues that since many papers in literature are rarely cited, colleges and universities should reallocate their priorities in order to make better use of literature professors’ time. Prof. Bauerlein…