Teaching with technology: the grim reality

The US has the Ivy League universities (Harvard, Yale, Princeton, etc.), and in the UK it’s the Russell Group (Oxford, Cambridge, LSE, etc.). In Australia we have the yawningly-titled Group of Eight, deemed as the top research universities.

So it was that the medical faculty of one of these esteemed institutions invited my daughter to give a lecture on aspects of her medical specialty, oncology. Continue reading

On the joy of teaching

Charles L. Brewer, Professor of Psychology in Furman University, is a celebrated teacher. So celebrated is he that the American Psychological Foundation offers the annual Charles L. Brewer Distinguished Teaching of Psychology Award. I found recent mention of him while browsing the blog of Ferdinand von Prondzynski. No, he’s not a Russian aristocrat (as far as I know), but is the newish Vice-Chancellor of Robert Gordon University, having spent a decade as President of Dublin City University. Continue reading

Life by e-learning

Now I don’t often write to the newspaper (you know, the whole ‘Angry of Mayfair’ thing), but I couldn’t help myself when I read the opinion piece ‘Death by e-learning’ in the Higher Education section of ‘The Australian’ newspaper. Writtten by one Gerry O. Nolan, ‘an e-learning technical consultant at a university in Sydney’, the article made a number of what I consider to be unsupported claims related to e-learning, universities, distance education and academics. Continue reading