Gradebook show a table listing letter grades, including an A-, a B, and an A.

Your Gradebook Is Not Your Friend

BY JONATHAN REES I am old enough to have used a physical gradebook when I started teaching. It looked like it was filled with graph paper, but there was definitely an extra-large space on the left for the students’ names and room to do some calculating all the way on the other side. I abandoned…

man teaching online before large computer monitor holds up and points to diagram in spiral-bound booklet; whiteboard with traction curve diagram appears beside him to

Online Education Doesn’t Have to Be This Way

BY JONATHAN PORITZ AND JONATHAN REES When we wrote about “Academic Freedom in Online Education” for the winter 2021 Academe released this month, we tried hard not to focus too much on the pandemic. While many faculty members have only come to online education because COVID-19 has made it unsafe to teach in any physical…

There Be Dragons

BY JONATHAN REES I’ve been reading a lot of books about the history of maps and mapmaking lately. Apparently, one of the great myths of cartography is that medieval maps would label sections of unexplored territory “There be dragons” in order to discourage people from going to those places. Of course, even had this actually…

Against monoculture.

BY JONATHAN REES Last week, the learning management system (LMS) at the University of California – Davis went down right before finals week. It didn’t take too long for the vendor to restore it, but this kind of message from the administration there, quoted by Phil Hill at the blog e-Literate, probably didn’t inspire very…