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Archive for the ‘Teaching’ Category

Student expectations

Posted in Academic life, Teaching on March 28, 2010 | Comments Off

Some days it’s a bit odd being on the other side of the lectern; there are many ways in which I am still very familiar with the plight of the average student, and often adjust my assignments accordingly.  However I’ve been hearing a couple of themes lately that concern me. The first theme is that [...]

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Offering Extra Credit

Posted in Being a scholar, Teaching on October 22, 2009 | 1 Comment »

One thing a new teacher often faces is the question of extra credit.  This semester it has been requested by several students in both classes.  I assume their rationale is as follows: even if I don’t ace it I’ll get a few points extra credit assignments are always easy stuff, like go to this lecture [...]

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Perspective: Useful thing that…

Posted in Academic life, Dissertation, Graduate school, Productivity, Psychology, Stress, Teaching on October 4, 2009 | Comments Off

Often we are told to take a step back from things to gain some perspective.  It’s very hard when you are in the thick of things, particularly all-consuming things like a dissertation. This week, however, I got some perspective.  In order to enhance my qualifications for the classes I’m already teaching, I signed up for [...]

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Laser-sharp focus reduces stress

Posted in Academic life, Productivity, Stress, Teaching on September 27, 2009 | Comments Off

We live in a world with a wealth of things to distract us: The internet and all the amazing information it brings to our door RSS feeds Facebook and social networking sites YouTube Wikipedia A new TV season starting up Books and/or magazines on every possible topic Free education via things like Open Courseware or [...]

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Summer break?

Posted in Academic life, Graduate school, Productivity, Psychology, Teaching on August 1, 2009 | Comments Off

Ah, the good old days as an undergrad when you got your summers off.  I wish.  Summer for a graduate student is often as hectic as the rest of the year, and if some things (teaching) are reduced that merely means that other things (research) are expected to step in and make up the difference. [...]

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Interesting student quotes…

Posted in Humor, Teaching on February 9, 2009 | Comments Off

I graded 15 tests, 30 homeworks and 60 labs (including 1-2 paragraph narratives) this weekend.  I stumbled across a couple of interesting phrases… the average mean is…. more than half the class was above the 70th percentile And one REALLY clever joke.  One of the labs deals with a character called “Bloody Mary” whose statistics [...]

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Teaching; 2nd class

Posted in Academic life, Teaching on January 24, 2009 | Comments Off

Thankfully the 2nd class went far better than the first. The computer was on the network so that I could get logged in and show my slides. I remembered white-board markers (although I forgot an eraser) I managed to get at least a couple of chuckles Now I need to figure out how to get [...]

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Off to a rocky start…

Posted in Teaching on January 21, 2009 | Comments Off

Is it a bad sign when you would drop your own class? New class room, computerized, instructor terminal was not attached to the network, so I couldn’t log in or display my slides.New class room, no white board markers, means I couldn’t even write on the board instead. I ended up writing in pen on [...]

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New Semesters, New Deadlines

Posted in Academic life, Education policy, Organization, Productivity, Teaching, Writing on January 19, 2009 | Comments Off

Tomorrow the new semester begins, and I had today off from work so I spent some time thinking about what I needed to do and how I would get it done.  Key things about this semester: Working full time at day job, who has laid off half the company in the last 3 months so [...]

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Things I’ve learned about teaching so far….

Posted in Academic life, Jobs, Teaching on January 12, 2009 | Comments Off

This semester is my second time teaching Intro Stats at the local community college, and I am finding as I prepare that I actually did learn things from the first attempt.  Things I learned: Too much powerpoint is bad – you don’t have to show every step of every problem on the slides – use [...]

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