I stumbled across this priceless video this morning and couldn’t resist re-publishing it here:
Thanksgiving on Facebook
Just for fun, a word cloud of Thanksgiving on my Facebook Page (names redacted):… Read more…
Student Survey on Faculty Strike Action
Dear Students,
On 7 November, the California Faculty Association (CFA) announced that it will call for a one-day strike at California State University, Dominguez Hills and California State University, East Bay ten days later. The text of the announcement can be read here. For CSUN faculty, it is not legal for CSUN faculty to strike as well. However, CFA have asked faculty at other CSU campuses to take personal holidays (which is legal) to show support for the strikers at Dominguez Hills. Should I do this, it will mean the cancellation of all classes on 17 November. I have not yet made a decision on whether I will take a personal holiday on that day, and I value student opinion on the matter.
The issues leading up to this strike action are very complex, but here are a few important details. Faculty have been working under an expired contract since at least 2007 (maybe longer–I can no longer remember). CFA negotiated significant gains for a new contract beginning in the 2008-2009 academic year. The major issue was faculty salaries which lagged very significantly behind those of peer institutions. However, a provision in the contract was that the Chancellor could walk away from the negotiated pay settlements in the event of a financial emergency.… Read more…
THATCamp Pedagogy
On October 15-16 I attended THATCamp Pedagogy at Vassar College. THATCamp is an “unconference” designed to bring together Digital Humanists and would-be Digital Humanists in a relatively informal format to discuss Digital Humanities issues, methods, tools, and so on (see the THATCamp web site for a better description). The Vassar meeting was oriented towards pedagogical issues.
THATCamps are divided between normal sessions and “Boot Camps”. The latter are the only pre-prepared presentations or workshops at a THATCamp. The first session was a Boot Camp on Integrating Digital Projects into Undergraduate Courses. Here’s a summary:
Rebecca Frost Davis, Program Officer for the Humanities, National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education (NITLE)
Kathryn Tomasek, Associate Professor of History, Wheaton College, Massachusetts
Digital methods of analysis exert growing influence on the practice of many disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, yet students majoring in non-science disciplines often have little exposure to computational thinking and working with computer code. At the same time, in the curriculum, the Digital Humanities promises significant learning benefits for undergraduates, who need a measure of digital literacy to function well as citizens in the twenty-first century. This bootcamp will present strategies for effectively integrating digital projects into undergraduate courses.… Read more…