All departments at the University of Oregon are being called upon to create metrics for evaluating our “scholarship quality.” We’re not unique; there’s a trend at universities to create quantitative metrics. I think this is neither necessary nor good — in brief, quality is better assessed by informed, narrative assessments of activity and accomplishments, and … Continue reading Cite this post! (On publication metrics)
In my last post I wrote about student course evaluations, with the suggestion that we’d glean more useful information from them if they occurred well after a course ended. With a delay, students could reflect on whether the course impacted their views of the world or provided skills that proved to be useful. Responses might … Continue reading Addendum on student teaching evaluations
A long post with some thoughts on student evaluations of teaching, and a guest essay on similar themes. Part 1: I suggest that such evaluations should be done a year after a course, rather than immediately at its end. Part 2: (Guest post) On the difference between “good” and “effective” teaching, and our failure to differentiate … Continue reading On Teaching Evaluations (with a bonus guest essay…)
The Fall term here will start next week, and I’m once again teaching Physics of Energy and the Environment, a course for non-science-majors, that I’ve written about a few times before. Here, I’ll describe two experiments related to teaching this course, with the hope that the descriptions will be useful to others. One experiment was … Continue reading Writing about writing about a class
Last week we had another successful run of our Physics & Human Physiology “SAIL” outreach day camp for high school students. I just realized that this is the 10th year I’ve co-run a SAIL camp, which means I should probably offer some grand assessment of it. Instead, I’ll just jot a few notes, post a … Continue reading SAIL Recap 2017
The problem This term I’m teaching The Physics of Energy and the Environment. A few weeks ago, I flew to France for a 3-day meeting. Obviously, there is a tension between these statements. How can I reconcile them, not only to counter the (ostensible) hypocrisy of caring about climate change while contributing more to it … Continue reading Climate change, travel, and teaching
The University of Oregon (UO) recently announced that it will increase undergraduate tuition by about $1000 per year, from $10,762 to $11,707 for in state students and $33,442 to $34,387 for out-of-state students. This isn’t an aberration: as is the case that most US universities, tuition has skyrocketed over the last decade or two. Here’s … Continue reading How I learned to stop worrying and love tuition increases. (Not really.)
This past term I again taught “The Physics of Life,” my biophysics-for-non-science-majors course. It went fairly well, but I was less happy with it than I’ve been in the past. Why? And what can I do about this in the future, especially this coming term, when I’m again teaching a (different) general-education class for non-science … Continue reading Five graphs about the past term’s teaching
(A follow-up to my election day post.) Tuesday’s surprising presidential election has been on everyone’s mind for the past week, and has stirred up lots of emotion. I thought it worth acknowledging this event at the start of class on Thursday. My aims were that this would be very brief, that I wouldn’t expresses displeasure … Continue reading Post-election-day biophysics
(A short election day post!) I always start off my “biophysics for non-science majors” class with an interesting picture. Today, since it’s election day, I tried to think of something that links politics and science and came up with these photos that I took at the Library of Congress this past summer, where there’s a … Continue reading Election day biophysics
The Eighteenth Elephant 