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Testy-test

The latest edition of our weekly, online campus newspaper, FOCUS, contains a story on the three Academic Affairs budget forums that were held in Welch Hall last month. I hope you folks get time to read the piece, and others in this issue. http://www.emich.edu/focus_emu/040610/budgetforum.html

Folks, I hope you find time to take a look at this week’s FOCUS. It features a story on the “Reacting To The Past” teaching method, as practiced by Professor Mark Higbee here at Eastern. You will see why this story was great fun to report and how students become immersed in this method [...]

Apparently, there was a “rave party” at the library at James Madison University on December 6. Here’s a link to a story about it on the blog OnwardState (which is actually a student run blog about stuff going on at Penn State), and here’s a link to some YouTube video of the event:

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Long-time EMUTalk.org commentator “Alum” sent me some crime statistic data a while ago, and I am just now procrastinating long enough from the work I should be doing during finals week finding the time to make this available here. It’s interesting stuff.

Here’s a chart that breaks down the data, comparing EMU to other [...]

More or less in this chronological order, here are some of my favorite posts of 2008 (after the “Read More” break). I have to say that I think that my favorite headline for last year was Does the EMU student center smell like poo? But feel free to take a look through these and the archives and nominate some favs of your own.
Continue reading The year that was 2008 at EMUTalk.org

Now that everyone’s turkey/Emu omlettes have settled:

EMUTalk.org regular Public Crabgrass sent me a link to a provocative story very worthy of sharing here: “Transformation 101,” which was in the Washington Monthly and written by Kevin Carey, who is a researcher at a D.C. education think-tank. I’m not entirely sure I agree with the [...]

EMUTalk.org regular Mark Higbee sent me a link to an interesting article in the most recent Chronicle of Higher Education, “Studies link use of part-time instructors to lower student success.” Here are the opening paragraphs:

At a time when colleges are under increasing financial pressure to rely more on part-time faculty, three new studies suggest that doing so erodes the quality of education many students receive.

Part-timers’ inability or unwillingness to devote more time to students outside the classroom, the research suggests, results in the denial of important support services to many students—including, often, those who need the most help.

And in a finding that breaks new ground, one of the studies concludes that heavy reliance on part-timers can actually hurt the performance of full-time, tenure-track faculty members.

It’s well worth reading; three quick thoughts for now:
Continue reading “Studies link use of part-time instructors to lower student success”