Tag Archives: education

Badge-ifying the University, or why commodifying the esoteric could be a good thing

Posted on September 21, 2011 by Ryan Hoover

This post has been inspired by a handful of sources. The barrage of op-ed pieces of late attacking higher ed as flawed and/or irrelevant (e.g., here and here). Alex Reid’s posts on “reputation badges.” And a recent discussion group at … Continue reading →

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Iffy Science

Posted on August 21, 2010 by Ryan Hoover

Hauser, a prominent psychologist at Harvard recently has gotten himself in some hot water. He is/was a leading researcher in human and animal cognition. But Harvard has just released the results of an inquiry into his research. Apparently many of … Continue reading →

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Certify this!

Posted on May 22, 2010 by Ryan Hoover

Technical communicators, you can now be certified! This past week, STC just announced a new certification for technical communicators. And for those in the field (and for those who teach those in the field), this really is big news. We … Continue reading →

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Teaching the Rhetoric of Commercials

Posted on May 17, 2010 by Ryan Hoover

I’ve been putting together the readings for a course I’m teaching this fall: Text & Discourse. It’s an intro to rhetoric styled course where you’re exposing sophomores to the idea that language has a persuasive aspect. There’s a special emphasis … Continue reading →

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Forget the numbers?

Posted on May 2, 2010 by Ryan Hoover

Yet another post on what has become a near obsession of mine: how do experts communicate numbers to the public? I’m still working my way through the Intro to Psych class from MIT that motivated the last post. But this … Continue reading →

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The methodology of the humanities (or lack thereof)

Posted on April 17, 2010 by Ryan Hoover

Right now I’m in the middle of drafting an article to submit to a non-disclosed, science-oriented journal. And, in good researcher fashion, I did a little background research to try and determine how articles are typically structured in this journal. … Continue reading →

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Teaching Multi-taskers – new research

Posted on April 15, 2010 by Ryan Hoover

Scientific American posted an article discussing the physiology of multitasking today (04.15.2010). Turns out the brain really can do two different tasks at exactly the same time – by delegating the different tasks to different hemispheres of the brain. I … Continue reading →

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Climategate debunked, finally?

Posted on April 14, 2010 by Ryan Hoover

There was the whole “climategate” debacle a few months back where emails were stolen from a leading climate research lab that supposedly showed fraudulent activity. Rhetoric of Science people almost assuredly remember that. Earlier today a second UK panel investigating … Continue reading →

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Teaching Multi-Taskers

Posted on April 13, 2010 by Ryan Hoover

An issue I’ve been playing with reared its ugly head yesterday in class. How do you teach muti-taskers? Or, more accurately, how do you teach students who really are capable of maintaining their Facebooking/text messaging while also accomplishing a great … Continue reading →

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Millennials and Attention Spans

Posted on April 12, 2010 by Ryan Hoover

An interesting perspective hit me the other day when I was thinking about the millennial generation and their perceived short attention span. At least in my experience, baby boomers tend to think of the millennial generation as being very impatient … Continue reading →

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