Teaching

When Non-Philosophers Teach “Critical Thinking”

“Critical thinking” means a very particular sort of thing to philosophers (mostly identifying, reconstructing, and evaluating arguments), but in the desperate struggle to stay relevant, other academic disciplines have started to appropriate the term “critical thinking” to describe what they do. I have read blog posts and articles by historians and literature profess..

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..

Warning: This Post Is About Trigger Warnings

Kate Manne (Cornell) has an opinion piece in today’s New York Times about professors’ use of “trigger warnings,” by which she means “notice in their syllabuses, or before certain reading assignments” that the course material may discuss or depict “common causes of trauma.” Such warnings have been criticized (here, for example) as a sign of the end times of higher ed..

The Unsung Hero of Your Undergraduate Philosophy Education

There are some philosophers we hear a lot about—not just those in the canon, but also the “superstars” of today. These philosophers can often be inspirations on the page, motivating students to take up philosophy as a major course of study. But just as important—probably more so—are those undergraduate professors who inspired or motivated you to take philosoph..

Two Philosophers’ Views on the Point of College

This week, two philosophers—Kwame Anthony Appiah (NYU) in the New York Times Magazine and Gary Gutting (Notre Dame) in The Chronicle of Higher Education—have discussed the point of a college education.

Appiah observes that there are “two distinct visions of higher education contend throughout our classrooms and campuses.”

One is “Utility University,” which..

A Case for Philosophy in High Schools (updated)

Back in 1982, Frank Breslin, a New Jersey high school teacher, wrote an article arguing that philosophy should be taught in high school. Huffington Post just reprinted a version of that piece, and it’s worth taking a look at. One of it’s main ideas is that philosophy is a natural fit for teen rebelliousness:

Adolescents are a skeptical lot. Anything and everythin..

Substantive Philosophical Mistakes In Public Discourse

Public debate is rife with poor reasoning, with certain confused or erroneous claims popping up again and again to affect opinions and policies. Some of these are owed to an inability to understand statistics, some are owed to a lack of scientific understanding, and some are philosophical mistakes. Logic and critical thinking courses already take up formal errors in..

Last Minute Course Prep Exchange

The fall term has begun at several schools and is about to begin at others, and for at least some professors that means putting the finishing touches on syllabi. Need readings suggested on Subject S? Need a piece which argues for Position P? Need a complement to Canonical Character C? Need a you get the idea and didn’t really require all of those Examples E? Fine. P..

Philosophy of Sex and Gender Course Suggestions

Jessica Wolfendale (West Virginia) writes in:

I am putting together a course proposal for an introductory Philosophy of Sex & Gender course, and I would appreciate any suggestions regarding how best to structure the course and what content to include, as well as advice about what did/didn’t work in similar courses.

Readers?

Philosophical Education and Constructive Imagination

As we’ve discussed before, most of our students are not heading off to become philosophers. Increasingly, students already have jobs and are saddled with time-consuming responsibilities, and are coming from a broader range of socio-economic backgrounds. What good is a philosophical education for them? Jennifer Morton (City College of New York) takes up the question ..

Student Plagiarism in Philosophy Classes

Do you use Turnitin or SafeAssign in your courses to help deter and catch plagiarism? It turns out such software is not very good, reports Inside Higher Ed. Here are the results of a recent test conducted by Susan E. Schorn, a writing coordinator at the University of Texas at Austin:

Out of a total of 37 sources, the software fully identified 15, partially identi..

Using Comedy Clips in Philosophy Class

I sometimes use excerpts from comedy routines or shows in my teaching. For example, when I teach Frankfurt’s On Bullshit in my contemporary moral problems course, I regularly use this segment from the Colbert Report:

The Colbert Report
Colbert Report Episode Guide, More Colbert Report Videos, Comedy Central Full Episodes

And in my philosophy and ..

The Research about Student Evaluations of Teachers

We’ve discussed student evaluations of teachers here before, focusing on the various problems associated with them. Yet the picture may be more complicated. Elizabeth Barre, assistant director of Rice University’s Center for Teaching Excellence, recently posted about her “deep dive” into the voluminous research about student evaluations—research which is typically..

Philosophy Syllabi Study Needs Volunteers

Jennifer Saul (Sheffield) says: “Procrastinate and help women in philosophy!” She elaborates:

Have you been meaning to get around to making your undergraduate syllabus less male, but not got around to it yet? I have a study I’d like to do on gender differences in student attitudes toward philosophy, and I need to compare the attitudes of those in classes with ver..

Israel Proposes Philosophy for Elementary Students

The Education Ministry of Israel has proposed to add philosophy to the country’s elementary school curriculum. The proposal would have students “be taught the works of the prominent philosophers, develop critical thinking and learn how to ask meaningful questions and answer them in a serious manner,” starting in the third grade, according to an article at Israel Hay..

Survey on the Value of Philosophy

Andrew Mills (Otterbein) is conducting a survey about what philosophers think is distinctively valuable about philosophy. I’ve reproduced his note about it, below, and I encourage you to complete the survey. As he says, the survey might help us adjust our teaching “so that we are emphasizing those skills and content that we think are most important for students to k..

Audio of Rawls Lectures Released

The audio of lectures given by John Rawls to students in his course “Philosophy 171: Modern Political Philosophy” are being made available on YouTube by the Harvard Philosophy Department. The lectures were delivered at Harvard in the spring semester of 1984. There were eleven lectures. The first three are already up—one, two, and three. What was the first day of c..

“Learning to Think” — A Virtue Approach

“If earnings are not a good measure of educational value, then what is? Colleges can’t get away with smug silence on that question any longer. Society demands an answer.”

So says Barry Schwartz (Swarthmore) in “What ‘Learning How to Think’ Really Means” in The Chronicle of Higher Education. His answer is that colleges teach people how to think, but he recognizes ..

Diversity Reading List for Philosophy

A new website sponsored by the School of Philosophy, Religion, and History of Science at the University of Leeds offers philosophers a way to find “high-quality texts in philosophy, written by authors from under-represented groups. Its aim is to promote the work of such authors and facilitate finding and using their texts in teaching.” It’s called Diversity Reading ..

Training Graduate Students in Academic Writing

The kind of research and writing experience received up until the moment of candidacy does not train students to a writing practice where months of research lead into months of writing lead into months of revision — where a good, finished, ‘in the bag’ chapter will reasonably take two semesters to complete, if not more. The structure of the system has set us up to ..

Crash Course: Causation

A few weeks ago we started a new series of “crash course” posts here at Daily Nous. The idea is borrowed from Natalia Cecire (Sussex): to come up with a “one-week self education program” for “students who suddenly need to get up to speed in a field, and don’t have time to take a course or immerse themselves in it for a year,” or for professors seeking to learn about..

Strategies for Keeping Warm in the Classroom

It has happened to all of us. It has happened to someone who someone you know heard about from someone else: a perfectly competent professor disciplined for saying something totally innocuous in class after being reported to the administration by oversensitive students.

We talked about this a bit here. In “Professors Running Scared? A less dramatic rendering of p..

Distance Education and PhD Admissions

The University of London’s International Programme (UoLIP) is a distance learning program that’s administered by Birkbeck College that offers a BA in philosophy. How does it work? A student in the program writes:

The philosophy BA comprises twelve modules, one of which is a 7,500 word dissertation. UoLIP students receive materials for the modules they’re working ..

Good Online Philosophy Courses

A couple of weeks ago I put the entertaining promotional video for “Paradox and Infinity,” an online course by Augustín 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..

The Mechanics of Class Participation

In one of the comments on the recent post about attendance, Chris requests a follow-up discussion on the mechanics of class participation. Some relevant questions:

What kinds of class participation do you ask your students for?
How do you encourage a wide range of students to participate?
Does participation count as part of your students’ final grade? If so,..

Attending to Attendance

Related to yesterday’s post about the differences between professors and teachers is a detailed analysis by Michael LaBossiere (Florida A&M) of his students’ attendance in his courses. He has long taken attendance and now makes use of Blackboard analytics for gathering information and “generating a picture of why students fail my classes.” He writes:

Not surpris..

The Difference Between Teachers and Professors

First, I am your professor, not your teacher. There is a difference. Up to now your instruction has been in the hands of teachers, and a teacher’s job is to make sure that you learn… However, things are very different for a university professor. It is no part of my job to make you learn. At university, learning is your job — and yours alone. My job is to lead you..

Crash Course: Environmental Philosophy

Last week saw the creation of a new series of “crash course” posts here at Daily Nous. The brainchild of Natalia Cecire (Sussex), the idea is to come up with a “one-week self education program” for “students who suddenly need to get up to speed in a field, and don’t have time to take a course or immerse themselves in it for a year,” or for professors seeking to lear..