Robert Talbert

@roberttalbert.bsky.social

1585 Followers 26 Following

Mathematician, professor, writer, speaker, dad, bassist, wannabe data scientist. My views != my employer's. http://rtalbert.org Music: http://bandmix.com/rtbass https://www.instagram.com/rtgrooves/

Educational technology exists because of the urge to solve learning problems.

The close relationship between constructivism and the pedagogical concept of flipped learning is expressed primarily in the fact that the latter creates an optimal structure for the effective application of active learning methods, making learning based on constructivist principles possible. However, flipped learning does not exclude traditional ways of acquiring knowledge. In terms of its structure, a flipped lesson consists of two components, the first of which is individual and involves independent learning with the help of computer technology, which includes a lecture component. As a result, the two opposing approaches to cognition within the framework of flipped learning are not mutually exclusive but complement each other, allowing for a comprehensive, multifaceted approach to the cognition of complex objects and phenomena in educational reality.

According to dancer Martha Graham (1998), practice involves “times of complete frustration ... daily small deaths”

The Law of the Whole Person

Each individual is made up of uncountable essential components that cannot be separated into discrete parts.

Not “work life balance”
Presumption of separability is dehumanizing
Each person has a right to preserve coherence
Each person has the responsibility to do so

Isn’t it interesting that a simple thing like failure carries such huge emotional significance? We feel bad about ourselves, we get discouraged, and we quit. What if failure (and feeling bad about ourselves) was simply a part of the growth process? Not a big deal, but something to learn from? How would you approach it then?

Eight sweet basses

I have now been teaching at Duke University for 20 years. I have been through all kinds of teaching fads—active learning, team-based learning, alternative grading, service learning, etc. You might assume that I have become a better teacher over these many years. Yet I am noticing a curious trend in my course evaluations: Some of my students like me and my courses less and less.

As a teaching faculty member, this matters greatly to my own career trajectory, and so I’ve wondered and worried about what to do. Why am I struggling to teach well and why are my students struggling to learn?

"Emerging world of online and hybrid courses"

Reference to Skype

Cover of book "Foundations of Hyperbolic Manifolds" by John G Ratcliffe

"Your career goal is to explore topics outside of work as an Undecided"

Testing in school isn’t one and done. Students get a chance to do better on the next test. And nothing keeps students from learning what they didn’t know on a test, you can always look at your results and figure out where you went wrong.

Cannot you see, cannot all you lecturers see, that it is we that are dying, and that down here the only thing that really lives is the Machine? We created the Machine, to do our will, but we cannot make it do our will now. It has robbed us of the sense of space and of the sense of touch, it has blurred every human relation and narrowed down love to a carnal act, it has paralysed our bodies and our wills, and now it compels us to worship it. The Machine develops — but not on our lines. The Machine proceeds — but not to our goal. We only exist as the blood corpuscles that course through its arteries, and if it could work without us, it would let us die. Oh, I have no remedy —or, at least, only one — to tell men again and again that I have seen the hills ofWessex as Ælfrid saw them when he overthrew the Danes.

Honeyburst Lakland 44-64 PJ bass

Checklist for reporting academic honesty. Items are: Impose additional course requirements.
Require the student to redo the work in question.
Reduce the student’s grade on the work in question.
Impose a failing grade for the assignment, quiz, or examination.
Impose a failing grade for the entire course
Other (Please specify below.)

An empty classroom

Blue fretless Fender Precision bass

When asked why he doesn’t teach elsewhere, McKeown said, “I refuse to stop teaching. Teaching my students is my absolute passion. UCLA is a top university for physics.”

Click the down arrow next to the send button

Blue fretless bass

So traditional SETs don't measure what they claim to measure; they discriminate against people who aren't white, male, English-speaking, and straight; in a best-case scenario they provide feedback that cannot be acted upon until it's too late to do any good; they're too long and complicated to be used in any other way; and they don't really even qualify as actual evaluations because they are being written by untrained students with presumably zero knowledge of professional quality standards for teaching. Other than that, they're just fine.

Screenshot showing how Blackboard inserts a bunch of useless text into an otherwise simple column heading

The fundamental message I have for higher ed is that with all the stuff happening, we are not fully blameless. Some of it we have brought on ourselves by our shift in focus away from students and service. The public sees us as an arrogant ivory tower and it's not without justification. We need to own up to it, take steps to reconcile that relationship, and do what we can. And people **really** don't like that message around here.

in this house, we believe in: clear content standards, helpful feedback, marks that indicate progress, reattempts without penalty, learning through feedback loops, every student's ability to learn

The set of all natural numbers that are part of the punchline to the joke "Why was 6 afraid of 7?"