Category Archives: Teaching

Appreciative students

Posted on 15th February 2016 by NomadWarMachine

I had a lovely chat with some of my students last week. It was a usual level 1 philosophy seminar and I’d put them into groups of 2-3 to go through some Rousseau quotes together and decide what to make … Continue reading →

Posted in Learning, Philosophy, Teaching, University | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

When the student is ready …

Posted on 12th February 2016 by NomadWarMachine

There’s a saying that is (apparently) falsely attributed to Buddha, which says that: I was reminded of that during the latest #MoocMooc chat when Mark said that: @Jessifer@jasoncummings1@NomadWarMachine@yishaym@slamteacher Much f2f is about control / design online to lose control #moocmooc … Continue reading →

Posted in #MoocMooc, Learning, Online learning, Teaching | Tagged , , , | 8 Comments

In defence of the VLE

Posted on 8th February 2016 by NomadWarMachine

It’s easy to bash the VLE (Virtual Learning Environment). I’m not going to pretend that it is a universal panacea for online or blended learning, but it is not as bad as some folk make out.  I think it’s easy to forget just … Continue reading →

Posted in #MoocMooc, Learning, Online learning, Teaching, Technology | Tagged , , , | 3 Comments

Creating an alternative CV

Posted on 28th October 2015 by NomadWarMachine

This November I’m going to be co-facilitating Digital Writing Month (#DigiWriMo) with Maha Bali and Kevin Hodgson. We thought that a fun way to lead into this would be to suggest that folk create an alternative CV. As a way … Continue reading →

Posted in #DigiWriMo, knitting, Learning, MOOC, Music, Online learning, Teaching, Technology | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Making an ass out of you and me

Posted on 17th October 2015 by NomadWarMachine

In his History of Animals, Aristotle asserts that: Males have more teeth than females in the case of men, sheep, goats, and swine. History of Animals 2, 3 One wonders why he did not conduct an empirical study before making this … Continue reading →

Posted in Learning, Philosophy, Teaching, Twisted Pair, University | Tagged , , , | 4 Comments

Gonnay no dae that

Posted on 6th October 2015 by NomadWarMachine

I’m keeping half an eye on Chrissi Neranzi’s Creativity for Learning in HE, which started for real this week. The first activity for this week is to: Select a few objects from home/your office you would normally never use in your teaching. … Continue reading →

Posted in Learning, Teaching, University | Tagged , , | 2 Comments

Fools march in (a #twistedpair post)

Posted on 3rd October 2015 by NomadWarMachine

For Fools rush in where Angels fear to tread Alexander Pope, An Essay on Criticism We all know them, don’t we? Those enthusiastic colleagues who launch into everything they do with fervent enthusiasm without a thought for the consequences. Remember Roobarb? … Continue reading →

Posted in Learning, Teaching, Technology, Twisted Pair, University | Tagged , , , | 24 Comments

What’s the point of feedback?

Posted on 3rd September 2015 by NomadWarMachine

I recently had a conversation with some other academics about the whole marking, assessment and feedback parade that we go through in HE, and the NSS student survey results, which always score lower for feedback than for other areas. We … Continue reading →

Posted in Learning, Online learning, Teaching, Technology, University | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Vicarious learning

Posted on 24th August 2015 by NomadWarMachine

If we think that tutorials and seminars are an important part of the campus based learning experience, then how to we replace these when we are designing and delivering online courses? One way might be to use virtual classroom software … Continue reading →

Posted in Learning, Online learning, Peer interaction, Teaching, Technology, University | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

WYSIWYG

Posted on 17th August 2015 by NomadWarMachine

There’s a new challenge going around – watch a short video and write a bog post tying what you have seen into something about education. So Whitney sent me this one about the Landfill Harmonic, who make musical instruments out … Continue reading →

Posted in Learning, Teaching, University | Tagged , , , | 5 Comments