Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Planning in Uncertain Times None of us are any good at predicting the future. On one level we are always planning for uncertainty. The level of uncertainty varies though and has been very high for the past year or so, both generally and in relation to your academic work […]
Read More »Teaching: a category in transition
Teaching is a big part of your academic life. However, in reviewing posts in the summer of 2015 I notice that most of what is categorized here is older and may not reflect my current approach.
Posts in this section will be edited and/or recategorized beginning in July 2015.
Starting your academic writing year in mid-summer
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Starting your academic year in mid-summer When do academics celebrate the new year? This is a serious question for those of us who live in the northern hemisphere, where the beginning of the calendar year in January is more like the middle of the academic year. It seems like […]
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Thoughts on wrapping up your teaching for summer
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Thoughts on wrapping up teaching for the summer Academic work is cyclical. There are seasons to the work. You need to account for those cycles when you plan. Summer may feel like the research & writing part of the year. If you value teaching and being a good teacher, […]
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Asynchronous teaching and setting boundaries
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Asynchronous teaching and setting boundaries I’ve noticed in various conversations on Twitter that there are some issues with setting boundaries in the context of pandemic teaching conditions. In this post I address a particular issue with asynchronous teaching. Never in class and never not in class When you taught […]
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Where does teaching preparation fit in your summer plans?
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · Where does teaching preparation fit in your summer plans? In April I wrote about Writing and Research in the Summer of the Pandemic because I know a lot of academics look forward to summer as a time when they can make that their primary focus. My focus there was […]
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On defining learning objectives
Jo VanEvery, Academic Career Guide · On Definining Learning Objectives I am a fan of articulating learning objectives or expected learning outcomes. (They are outcomes once they’ve happened. Expected outcomes or objectives when you start.) Articulating clearly what you expect students to learn as a result of taking your course can benefit students. It makes […]
Read More »How much teaching preparation is enough?
Teaching is an important part of your job. You are committed to doing it well. At the same time, you often resent how much time it takes.You really wish you had more time for research than you do right now. Content expertise vs pedagogy The dominant mode of thinking about teaching in higher education is […]
Read More »The frustrations of being a dedicated teacher
One of the issues that is often ignored in the criticism of post-secondary education, Morrison says, is the democratization of access and that since the Second World War, Canadian universities have seen mass participation from women, new immigrants, and lower-income families. As a result, she says, often in her own classes she deals with students […]
Read More »Breathe
In the spirit of my Learned from Yoga posts, I want to draw your attention to a recent post by Aimée Morrison, Let it breathe. An excerpt gives you a flavour of the problem she addresses: When I began teaching, and for some time after, I used to try to assuage such anxieties by crowding […]
Read More »You were not a typical undergraduate student
You are a good teacher. You work hard to prepare classes that will enable your students to learn. And I bet you are frequently frustrated by those who don’t seem to do their part to benefit from that hard work. They don’t do the readings. They don’t put any effort into that small assignment you created […]
Read More »Discomfort, triggers, and pedagogy
I got into a discussion about trigger warnings on Twitter and realized that I have something to say about this. I have no answer to the question of whether they are a good thing or not in a general sense. This post is also not a commentary on what the proliferation of trigger warnings means […]
Read More »How does teaching make you feel?
Seriously. Do you look forward to it? Or do you dread it? Or something in between? Be honest with yourself, even if that’s hard. You can’t change anything until you look the problem (if there is one) squarely in the face. A lot of people have some kind of anxiety about teaching. It may be […]
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