Those are the Kenyon gates, but the article does not specifically mention Kenyon at all. The lesson to take away from this, though, is very much a Kenyon message.

This site provides a simple template for re-building or re-designing a course that already exists, but it could be used to craft an entirely new course too. Technically this site is all about blended learning, but the steps are not meaningless if one is not blending. Go ahead and apply them to a more traditional pedagogical approach!

This 2008 blog post from a mathematician at Dickinson College is the best summary of my thoughts on curving grades that I have ever come across. Other than the fact that there is more math in here, this is what I think of whenever my students ask me "Do you curve your exams?" Moreover, his discussion on assigning grades includes formulas that can be pasted into either Google Docs or Excel that will generate letter grades based on splits that you can set to your liking. (Note: I have my own blog post about this where I explain these formulas in a bit more detail. Just copy and paste the following link into your browser: https://cip.kenyon.edu/hells-bells-not-question-again-and-formulas-assigning-grades.)

Written for school teachers (as in grade school, middle school, etc.), this article is not 100% relevant to pedagogical discussions in higher ed. However, the article got me thinking about how I still learn; what gets me intellectually excited; and what diverts me away from other activities in the interest of pursuing an idea. Could I turn one of these instances into an example for my students in order to show them my thought processes and how I go about exploring new pedagogical possibilities? Just et al. (2014) (http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0102976) shook the biology/paleobiology world when the discovery of two strange deep-sea species hinted at the possibility of a new phylum. I spent hours reading various accounts of this discovery, including a number of trusted blogs. I compared the article's figures of these enigmatic organisms with other figures in old references I pulled old off my shelves. I referred to dusty old descriptive texts to refresh my memory of basic taxonomic classifications. I drew diagrams. Letting my students see this process could be beneficial. Developing a project that might force them to perform similar procedures and then defend their actions, might be difficult, but it could teach them quite a lot about how learning continues.

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.

I have my students working in groups for lab sessions this term. Admittedly this falls outside the usual scope of what constitutes "group work" (i.e., a larger paper, research paper, project in lieu of an exam, etc.), but I still picked out a few pointers to emphasize when talking to my students about what I expect from them.

This Chronicle blogger concedes that "modularity" will not work at residential colleges -- at least not for all courses. Personally I think this reductionist trend is going too far. Students choose a major discipline. Students (often) choose a sub-discipline. Students choose which courses to take among all the possibilities. Students choose from among professors teaching those courses. The post takes this down to the level of the 10-minute video (or lecture). Really? What can one learn in ten minutes that stands alone so much that ALL the related knowledge can be ignored. Here's an example. A student watches a 10-minute video on coral reefs and learns that reefs are in danger due to rising ocean temperatures. Fine. But what is the reason? Does the threat to coral stem from the fact that they build their skeletons out of calcium carbonate? From the fact that modern corals are aragonitic and not calcitic? Does the symbiotic nature of corals and zooxanthellic algae play a role? Is there something else involved here? A combination of factors? Factoids? Do we really want our future generations making decisions about important matters based on what they remember from a 10-minute lecture or video?

Active Learning is a "buzz word-y" kind of thing, but the concept actually makes perfectly good sense. As with anything in your life: moderation is key. Heck, you may already be employing some of these strategies.

Another article on Active Learning.

This article presents one view on classroom rules. The comments open up the floodgates of counter opinions. Comments in this case break down into snarkiness and vitriol; I'm sure that a face-to-face conversation with colleagues about such policies would be much more productive.

This comes from a publication from my alma mater, but I don't think that makes me any less impartial than I should be. I have been thinking about my courses for next year quite a bit lately, and I had already decided to incorporate some form of regular, low-stakes testing for a variety of reasons. This article is a nice confirmation of that decision.

There are more topics covered here, and these best practices codes are mainly for students learning how to make documentaries and to post online videos. However, there are documents and links in here that would be of use to "regular" professors who simply want to make use of video clips in their courses.

An overview of fair use presented by the Stanford (University) Copyright and Fair Use Center. This link is to the first page of a four page "spread" on fair use that covers: definitions; how to apply the four factors; summaries of significant cases; and a discussion of disagreements over what constitutes fair use and whether one is likely to get sued or not.

This tool by the Copyright Advisory Network of the American Library Association should help you understand and evaluate the "fairness" of a use under the U.S. Copyright Code. The tool will document your efforts to determine fairness of the use and create a time-stamped pdf document for your records. (NOTE: I have not actually officially used this tool, but I plan to do so.)

This is the ARL's document on how to best apply fair use.

This is the VRA's statement on how fair use of still images can be applied in many instances in an educational setting. Such instances include use by teachers in lessons and by students in transforming a work for an assignment (among others).

This blog post is the most recent by Kenneth Crews (as of May 8, 2014) covering the Georgia State University case, which is currently on appeal to the 11th Circuit Court. The decision in this case was a significant "victory" for proponents of academic fair use as the judge sought to clarify the limitations and exceptions that constitute fair use, and she essentially rejected the formerly strictly imposed classroom guidelines as well as the "one-time use" limitation.

A discussion of the meaning and practical interpretation by recent courts of the term "transformative." Folks in the fields of literature, music, and visual arts will find synopses of recent cases covering the specific application of the law with respect to their media. While not necessarily of direct importance to academicians in the classroom, these synopses should be of interest to anyone (faculty and students) who produce outside of the classroom.

After the Georgia State University ruling came down in 2012 Educause offered a live, interactive webinar featuring Kenneth Crews, one of the leading experts in the area of copyright law and educational fair use. Crews is (was) the director of the Copyright Advisory Office of the Columbia University Libraries. This page provides resources from the webinar, including a recording. However, this recording is of poor quality, especially the final 1/3 of the recording.

This is a useful starting point for exploring current news and activity in educational copyright issues and how fair use is being applied. Recent court cases are covered in the blog postings.