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Vitae's new syllabus database is a very limited tool - it's only searchable by file name, author name, and the disciplinary keywords chosen by the author. Still, it's a good step to see the Chronicle of Higher Ed providing a space for open syllabi. Worth a look as you plan next year's courses, or think about your own online presence!

Some great tips for making sure you can address each student by their name.

As we prepare to welcome new colleagues and students, remember that even the simple gesture of showing that you're working hard to learn a person's preferred name makes a big difference.

I've spoken with faculty who are using Problem-Based Learning effectively in their classrooms but were not aware the practice had a name, nor that it had a substantial body of research literature. Here's a sample that outlines the reasons it is an effective practice, best practices, and practical examples plus a brief discussion of the constructivist principles at work. It comes to us at Kenyon through JSTOR.

Maybe naming where math aversion started can help turn it around.

From the "Poetry Unbound" podcast, a poem which, on its surface, is about the importance of saying our students' names correctly, but also about approaching difficult moments with charity and strength.

A worthwhile interview about the University of Mary Washington program to offer every student and professor their own domain name and a significant amount of control over which web publishing platforms they use. I find the discussions about privacy vs. publicy in a networked society to be the intellectual meat of the piece - the technology issues, while complex, are also just logistics to be solved or worked around.

"When I first taught Intro­duc­tion to the Dig­i­tal Lib­eral Arts, I named it so in order to include projects going on in bio­chem­istry and the per­form­ing arts as well as those that fit the more tra­di­tional pro­file of DH, such as the­matic research col­lec­tions of writ­ers and his­tor­i­cal peri­ods. All of these fields are expe­ri­enc­ing changes due to the inno­v­a­tive use of tech­nol­ogy in both teach­ing and research, and all of them are par­tic­i­pat­ing in a com­mon move­ment that can­not be described as DH, even though the lat­ter is inti­mately con­nected with much of it."

This episode of NPR's Planet Money presents a good case study in applying the 4-factor fair use test. The topic is web sites which present song lyrics. In specific, they look at a site called RapGenius, which makes a "transformative use" case by providing a site where users can annotate and explicate lyrics. (Despite the name, the site includes any genre of music as well as poetry, prose, and news.) RapGenius also has an education program for faculty who want to use it as a classroom tool for close reading exercises.

As the semester rolls through week 11, I start to think about how I might better motivate my students and make teaching my subject more fun for myself. My thoughts usually turn toward flipping lessons, which I still maintain is an old idea, but what is new is the "urgency" to implement the concept more efficiently (for a variety of reasons). These FAQ answers should help ease the implementation. Oh, if you don't like the term "flipped classroom" that is the topic of one of the later FAQs. I'm not a big fan of his preferred alternative term, but it really is the pedagogical concept that you want to buy into -- not the name.