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Learning Through Osmosis
[social-bio] By Carolyn Hoessler The phrase “learning by osmosis” conjures ideas of sleeping with a textbook or sitting near the smart students. What about in the classroom? Lecturing while students passively listen is like letting the difference in osmotic pressure between the students’ brain and the instructor’s brain (or the classroom air) be the driving force to promote transport or diffusion of knowledge. This statement is paraphrased from a recent conversation with a faculty member about how faculty are expected to learn about the culture of their departments (another post, perhaps) and students are expected to learn when sitting listening in a classroom. As I learned in the conversation,…
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To Be, or Not to Be (an Academic)
[social-bio] Now that I am (finally) nearing the end of my MA in Philosophy, I face the student’s dilemma: What now – work or more school? Work is certainly an appealing option, since being a broke student sucks. However, meaningful work is hard to find. Pursuing a PhD is worth it intrinsically, and can (actually) open doors to meaningful work. Either way, the future is uncertain, and uncertainty is anxiety inducing. I blogged last year about the value of acquiring ‘professional skills’ while studying, since current grad students face either fierce competition in a shrinking academic job market or a world outside the academy that might not understand what a…
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Craving Creating Time
[social-bio] By Carolyn Hoessler To what extent are our tasks and our days predictable, or our decisions clear-cut? The days of police, firefighters or emergency medical personnel are unpredictable, but so is anyone who has their door, phone or email open to their colleagues, students and the rest of campus. As we manage meetings, queries and emails the way a station handles trains, we often crave blocks of time. We seek the moments of immersion in planning, thinking or creating where ideas can flow or at least be worked through without interruption. Why might these full mornings focused on a project matter? Paul Graham suggests programmers and other “makers”…
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Marginal Revolution University Joins the Online Education Arena
[social-bio] Marginal Revolution University (MRU) is named after a successful blog called ‘Marginal Revolution’ that is updated daily by George Mason University development economics professors Tyler Cowen and Alex Tabarrok. Cowen and Tabarrok founded MRU. The blog’s title should give most readers a pretty good idea about what sort of commitments Cowen and Tabarrok bring with them to the courses they offer for free online. During the late 19th century, a ‘marginal revolution’ in economics brought an end to the prevailing labour theory of value, which was supplanted by the use of mathematical calculations of marginal cost and utility to explain economic phenomena. Setting the author’s commitments aside is not…