Professors may be experts, but we’re certainly not perfect. Being vague about criteria for course success, refusing to give As, wearing funky or distractingly nerdy clothing, and spitting on students while talking are just a few of the things professors do that irritate students. After writing, 12 Ways to Tick Off Your Professor, I thought I … [Read more...]
10 Tips for Conferencing Like a Pro
Are we there yet? I'm ready for my first visit to New Orleans later this week for National College Media Convention. ACP/CMA's annual conference is my favorite because of all of the friends I've made in the organization and how much I learn through the annual event. I’m also quite a conference nerd. I love networking and learning from … [Read more...]
Why Can’t We Be Friends?
It's a social media issue that comes up at least once an academic year: Should students and their professors be friends on Facebook? There are varying schools of thought on the issue. Some professors and administrators think it's fine to befriend students, while others avoid it. Some students think it's creepy, while others request professors' … [Read more...]
7 Apps to Keep Students Well Informed
Apparently news quizzes are difficult. I wasn't really aware of this until this semester when I began giving weekly current events quizzes in one of my courses. Some students are doing quite well on the quizzes, while others are really struggling. I had heard other faculty members grumble about students' ignorance of news, but I naively … [Read more...]
Social Media in Education: How Close is Too Close?
We're all moving into summer mode, but before we completely abandon the academic year, I wanted to share some interesting outcomes from my students' final ethics papers. As you probably remember, I asked my students a weekly question and they were to write a position paper, supporting their views with one of the ethical theories we discussed in … [Read more...]
11 tips for better meetings
Academia is meeting hell. I am not joking when I write that I have attended meetings to talk about meeting. Administrators want to meet with everyone. Faculty want to meet to complain about meetings with administrators. Students want to meet to get information you already gave them. I even have difficulty getting to meetings because people … [Read more...]
The method to my madness
It happens about once a semester. A student comes into class or into the newsroom and proclaims there is “nothing to write about” on campus. My head spins around Exorcist style after which I inform the student that: “There is always something to write about. It’s a lazy reporter who doesn’t find it.” This usually is followed by a little … [Read more...]