Some exciting news to share: This fall, after 15 years as a faculty member at @GVSU and almost 30 years of classroom teaching, I will start a new chapter in my career, as Executive Director of the Center For Teaching Excellence at Texas A&M University @TAMU. I'm thankful for my time at GV and looking forward to making a big impact with the elite team of passionate professionals at the CTE starting in August. Stay tuned!

One of the most tedious genres of the past 1,000 years is the professor angry about how shitty/stupid/banal/lazy their students are.

Umberto Eco on reading

Today at Grading For Growth: Tai Munro writes about grading contracts and how they can be used to spur growth. gradingforgrowth.com/p/start…

In the era of #ArtificialIntelligence, when human dignity is threatened by new forms of dehumanization, ours is the pressing duty to remain profoundly human. We must lovingly safeguard the grandeur of humanity bestowed upon us and revealed in its fullness in Christ, the splendor of which no machine can ever replace. #MagnificaHumanitas vatican.va/content/leo-xiv/e…

Need the Pope to release an encyclical against Teams calls

This passage from Leo's Encyclical is perfect. Perfect.

Student evals have to go, man. At least, anonymous ones do. Students should not be allowed to lie with impunity.

Very interesting. The response to this by mathematicians seems to be pretty skeptical. openai.com/index/model-dispr…

Augustine’s Confessions

"98.7% academic researchers don't read what they cited." Adam Smith (1776)

Will be reading this as soon as it's available.

I'm speaking to a group at the University of Michigan on Thursday about alternative grading and, since U-M plays an outsized role in the history of grading, I thought I'd add a few U-M specific tidbits to the talk. One of these, is the following quote from President Erastus Haven in 1866: "[U-M students are] competent and inclined to perform their duties without an appeal to the puerile ambition engendered by rank in classes and prizes and medals… It is doubtful whether these even promote good scholarship… and it is certain that they engender strife and envy, if not hatred… The proper stimulants to study are not medals, or position in class, or prizes, but the gratification produced by an enlarged acquaintance with truth, and by the greater influence for good thereby produced.” U-M would remain gradeless except for the overall marks of "pass", "fail", and "conditional" until 1912, when the establishment of a Phi Beta Kappa chapter drove the adoption of an institution-wide letter grade system. Remember: Grades are not some ancient artifact of the very DNA of higher education. In fact the historical precedent is to have no grades. Grades are relatively new and we can all do something different than traditional systems if we want. Source: This incredible short article on grading at U-M. michigantoday.umich.edu/2011…

I'm speaking to a group at @UMich on Thursday about alternative grading and, since U-M plays an outsized role in the history of grading, I thought I'd add a few U-M specific tidbits to the talk. One of these, is the following quote from President Erastus Haven in 1866: "[U-M students are] competent and inclined to perform their duties without an appeal to the puerile ambition engendered by rank in classes and prizes and medals… It is doubtful whether these even promote good scholarship… and it is certain that they engender strife and envy, if not hatred… The proper stimulants to study are not medals, or position in class, or prizes, but the gratification produced by an enlarged acquaintance with truth, and by the greater influence for good thereby produced.” U-M would remain gradeless except for the overall marks of "pass", "fail", and "conditional" until 1912, when the establishment of a Phi Beta Kappa chapter drove the adoption of an institution-wide letter grade system. Remember: Grades are not some ancient artifact of the very DNA of higher education. In fact the historical precedent in higher ed is to have no grades. Grades are relatively new and we can all do something different than traditional systems if we want. Source: This incredible short article on grading at U-M. michigantoday.umich.edu/2011…

Excellence is not hustle culture bullshit:

Come ON, X. Putting the solution to the Wordle right there in the summary, alongside clues? Bad look.

Sometimes you have one of those days where it's full of stuff that you existentially do not want to do but have to do it anyway because it's existential. The only way I know how to do that is 1 hour at a time.

Breaking news: Canvas hackers gave up the site after receiving million student requests to raise their grades.