online courses
TagSix Ways to Use Tech to Design Flexible, Student-Centered Philosophy Courses (guest post by Paul Blaschko)
As the pandemic continues, there are lots of uncertainties about how universities will function in Fall 2020, but it is likely that many courses will be taught entirely online or have substantial online elements. In this guest post*, Paul Blaschko provides some advice for making those courses go well. (more…)
Concerns About The Sudden Move To Online Teaching
As some schools are now responding to the spread of the coronavirus by cancelling in-person classes and replacing them with online teaching, faculty are beginning to voice concerns. (more…)
Graded Assignments in Philosophy MOOCs
Philosophy professors generally like to assign papers to students. The format of a paper  allows the student to exercise certain skills of careful exposition and argumentation in ways that quizzes and timed exams don’t. Massive open online courses (MOOCs) often do not include graded work—and certainly not graded papers. The massiveness and openness (inexpensivenes..
Why You Should Teach Online Courses
“The more you hate the idea of teaching online, the more that online education needs you.”
That’s historian Joseph Rees (Colorado State – Pueblo), writing at Vitae. He is no fan of online courses, worried about their quality and effectiveness but notes that their increased prevalence is probably unstoppable. Here’s the context for the above quote:
I recently m..
Good Online Philosophy Courses
A couple of weeks ago I put the entertaining promotional video for “Paradox and Infinity,” an online course by AugustÃn Rayo (MIT),  in the Heap of Links. In case you missed it, I’ve put it at the bottom of this post. A few other online courses have been brought to my attention that look particularly good, including: two taught by large teams at the University of Ed..
A Philosophy Department’s Impressive Fight For Survival
Robert Stufflebeam, chair of the Philosophy Department at the University of New Orleans, shares some of the challenges his department faces, and some of the measures they have implemented in order to survive in hostile circumstances. He writes:
I’m the chair of the only remaining Department of Philosophy at a public university in the state of Louisiana. (LSU has ..
College Credit Philosophy Courses for High School Students
The Alexis de Tocqueville Project in Law, Liberty, and Morality at the University of New Orleans has been offering free for-credit college philosophy courses to local high school students. It sounds great. Chris Surprenant, assistant professor of philosophy at UNO and director of the Tocqueville Project, shared some information about the course:
The overarching f..