Since September, though, her school has been mostly synchronous, which means that she has been tied to set seat times. She’s enjoying that a lot less.
Huh... well... it's not like some of us haven't been saying this for well over a year or anything...
Office hours matter. Use them wisely...
They do indeed, but the idea that they have to be tied to offices and in-person contact is both hopelessly outdated and terribly counterproductive. Some of my best experiences, both as student and as instructor, happened outside of designated hours, almost never in a physical office, sometimes off campus, and frequently via methods other than face-to-face conversations.
I have to wonder if we lost something when we made the shift.
We absolutely have. Just like with online video platforms, the ability to browse and wonder while picking up, reading, and putting down to move on to the next title is all but gone. It's replaced with suggestions based on prior history, what other people have liked, and a preprogrammed auto-playing queue over which there is little control, and over which most people exert no control.
After uncomfortably long times perusing stuff online, I often settle for something that is familiar and (often) stale. This is never the case when I go to a bookstore in person or peruse the shelves of a comic book shop or thumb through the LPs at a local used music store.
Online course catalogs are the worst offenders, often poorly programmed to only show the next open section of a pre-programmed list of options.
different moral priorities
Is this where the disconnect lies? Because if the constraint on whether we can consider ourselves moral authorities is because of the differences in moral priorities, then I fail to see how that doesn't also preclude us from being artistic authorities--because as with morality and priorities, there are different artistic priorities to contend with. This leaves us in the same predicament: How can we call ourselves artistic authorities, since we can only speak in limited capacities of artistic authority based upon the groups of artistic beliefs of which we are members.
If we can be artistic authorities in spite of differences in opinions about artistic merit, then the same holds true with respect to morality.
Literary study is either an education in works of art or an education in morality. There are no other options, and the options are not compatible.
This does not follow and there is no evidence here presented that necessarily even suggests there is any merit to this statement.
The idea was that, say, the dean of STEM would introduce the biology department, and students with an interest in biology would be given the details for how to have a follow-up discussion next week with faculty from the biology department.
I've said it before and I'll say it again: for gen-ed areas where everyone will go through and take a few courses, this isn't really the point of the academic department's presence in an Open House. Talking with English majors at the English table is great, but the point of open house, at least from where I sat as the faculty rep for years, is to engage those who are NOT English majors.
It's like college recruiters at a college fair: the point isn't for the college recruiter to talk to people who have already committed to the college, but to capture other students and talk about why they might consider the college.
its own distinct flavor. The brochures don’t give you much sense of that
Ours are no exception.
their diplomas do not lead to employment with salaries that provide for at least a minimal standard of living
What would be the timeline for something like this? These kinds of big ideas make waves because to people who think they're smart the ideas sound smart. The devil, as always, is in the details. My undergraduate diploma had nothing to do with my first employment, insofar as area of study to job-matching is concerned. Would I be seen as a failure for the institution such that they'd be held accountable? What a bunch of nonsense.
Later on, the higher education job market was in the crapper in 2009 when I finished my grad degree. It wasn't until 2014 that I got a full time position. That five year gap was through no fault of the institution. Should they have been held accountable for that?
The lack of on-the-ground, implementation based thinking, means these pie in the sky ideas are meaningless and absurd.
It’s time to strengthen those aspects of the public -- whether it’s electricity grid management, higher education, or whatever else -- that make private prosperity possible in the first place.
I agree with this, insofar as electricity has a personal cost to it (private citizens pay to hook up to the grid and consume electricity). The movement to complete gov't funding of higher education merely shifts the problems of public schooling (of which there are many) for another 2 to 4 years.
Sweden
Also a terrible comparison because more than 35% is from nuclear power generation. Hydroelectric accounts for 45% of Sweden's power. Wind accounts for about 10% of Sweden's power generation. Solar accounts for less than 1%.
Norway
Not a good comparison to Texas - 95% of production is hydroelectric, most of it created by subsurface wave generation.
In large meetings, the “raise hand” function has proven remarkably useful in streamlining responses, so it makes sense that it would work that way in a large class as well. And the chat function allows the “wait, what was that?” question to be asked without disturbing anybody.
It also allows for a stunningly large display of controlling conversations, in both a good and a bad way. Most egregious, it can be near dictatorial, especially coupled with muting mics, to force compliance and "listening" while paying lip service to the idea of collaborative dialogue. While it may be disruptive to sigh loudly or shout from the back row, at least your voice can be used without waiting for permission to speak.
College classrooms aren't the military.
This page makes it seem a lot more complex than it is with its jargony nonsense about fingerprints.