March Movies
The Assistant ☆☆☆☆ I wasn't quite sure what to expect from this movie. It was a quiet exploration of one day in the life of a young woman who is…
A Short Story About Expertise and COVID 19
There's a meme going around FB and Twitter about supposed media overreactions in the last 20 years. I won't post it so as not to amplify its message. Most of…
An Example of the Scholarship of Integration
The Promotion, Tenure, and Evaluation (PT&E) Advisory Group is continuing to develop a workshop about the Boyer Model of Scholarship. I wrote last month about our first two readings in…
February Movies
Jo Jo Rabbit ☆☆☆☆☆ I had heard that this movie is about a boy who has Adolf Hitler as an imaginary friend. I didn't know what to expect from a…
Scholarship Reconsidered and Assessed: The Boyer Model
I'm serving as Chair of the Promotion, Tenure, and Evaluation Advisory Group. One of the tasks we have been charged with is to investigate best practices for promotion, tenure, and…
Making Meaning in Gen Ed via Thematic Pathways
We are continuing to work on The Four Tools of Clusters at Plymouth State University. Thematic pathways in the General Education program is the tool that is the most challenging…
January Movies
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker ☆☆☆☆ I enjoyed this movie a lot. It's not particularly nuanced but the resolution of the various story lines opened up in the previous…
End of Year Report
The end of the calendar year marks the end of our first year (of three) of funding from the Davis Educational Foundation. Our project, called Implementing Cluster Pedagogy in the…
New OER for Creating Games
I just created a new OER called Creating Games. I have been teaching a course called Creating Games since 2008. It fulfills a Creative Thought requirement in our General Education program and…
December Movies
A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood☆☆☆☆☆ I was a bit skeptical as this movie started because it's about the journalist's awakening and I wasn't sure I was going to like…
Adventures in Ungrading
I have been moving away from traditional grading schemes for a while. In teaching the INCAP course in Spring 2019 and Tackling a Wicked Problem in Fall 2019, I have…
Evolution of the End of Semester Showcase of Student Engagement
One of the main goals of the Integrated Cluster Learning Model is to provide students with opportunity to practice talking about their work and their learning with authentic audiences. For…
November Movies
Fleabag ☆☆☆☆☆ Broadcast of a National Theater Live event (so a movie of a live play). I liked the television series that is based on this one woman show. But…
Climate Change Class Web Site Debut
Students in my section of Tackling a Wicked Problem have been doing research about climate change claims. We have begun to publish their research on our class web site as…
October Movies
The Current War My goal is always to see one movie a week. I often don't meet that goal. In October, I saw only one movie for the entire month.…
Spring 2020 Cluster Experiences
Plymouth State University will continue to offer students the opportunity to participate in cluster experiences in the Spring 2020 semester. Recall that cluster learning is what happens when faculty members…
September Movies
Peanut Butter Falcon ☆☆☆☆ I liked this movie more than I expected to. From the previews, I thought it might be overly sappy. It wasn't. Until the end. The only…
Understanding the Habits of Mind
A major goal of our Tackling a Wicked Problem class is to introduce students to our General Education program's Habits of Mind, which are the learning outcomes of the program. Understanding…
Climate Change Projects
My students in Tackling a Wicked Problem engaged in their first project on Friday of last week when they participated in the Climate Strike. They decided that instead of coming…
Climate Change One Pager Assignment
My section of the Tackling a Wicked Problem course is focused on climate change. I gave the students the following list of phrases and challenged them to explain the ways…
