Tag Archives: for educators

No plagiarism foul

Posted on October 31, 2017 by Robert Basil

A super-smart student in my Advanced Professional Communications class asked me whether using an app that generates a citation for you in proper APA, MLA, Chicago style was plagiarism. My first thought was “I doubt it,” but in my line … Continue reading →

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The Bad Mess at Evergreen

Posted on June 3, 2017 by Robert Basil

The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington has earned its renown as an experimental – indeed avant-garde – institution; its ‘progressive’ bona-fides have been warranted as well. Back in the day, I explored the possibility of taking a faculty position in … Continue reading →

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News Literacy 2017 – a guide

Posted on March 3, 2017 by Robert Basil

With several of his graduate students NYU Journalism Professor Jay Rosen has just published the second annual “What’s Changing in Journalism” guide, which “depicts trends that are influencing the business now, and are still new enough that even experienced journalists may not … Continue reading →

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Come to Canada

Posted on January 31, 2017 by Robert Basil

In a tart post this morning Atrios notes that he would be shocked if foreign enrollment in [American] colleges and universities wasn’t down 10%+ next year (I completely made up that figure, of course, but you get the idea) even if … Continue reading →

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Where are the experts on *who we are*, in the social sciences, or in the arts, … anywhere?

Posted on November 14, 2016 by Robert Basil

Over at Research as a Second Language: Writing, Representation, and the Crisis of Social Science, Danish writer Thomas Basbøll does not view this question as an academic one. Neither would he give “both” as his answer. In his stirring dissection of the United … Continue reading →

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Elitism in the classroom

Posted on November 9, 2016 by Robert Basil

Professor Mayhew’s recent take on the topic: Teaching is transactional. The instructor is not feeding information to the students, teaching them that information, but interacting with them. A third element is the text in the class. The text is not … Continue reading →

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Hence, teaching manners matters

Posted on November 2, 2016 by Robert Basil

In a blog post this morning called “A Raging Snowflake,” my good friend Clarissa writes: Remember the Oppressed Tiffany, a very special snowflake whose “narrative was erased by the entire field of academia” when a hapless prof asked her to … Continue reading →

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Brainstorming

Posted on July 29, 2016 by Robert Basil

Even when participants are not being paid by the hour, meetings are costly: Notwithstanding smart-phones, no one around the table is really doing something else, at least not with an undivided focus. A poorly planned or run meeting wastes everybody’s time, … Continue reading →

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First Draft News

Posted on April 27, 2016 by Robert Basil

FirstDraftNews.com is a beautiful and wide-ranging resource created for journalists “who source and report stories from social media.” What is the best way to search for eyewitness media when a story breaks? What are the most efficient and effective ways to … Continue reading →

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Taking notes

Posted on April 7, 2016 by Robert Basil

Starting early last year I noticed that students would take photographs of notes I’d written on the board with their smart-phones. What a great idea, I thought – at first. Then I noticed that on some assignments my own on-the-whiteboard language … Continue reading →

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