In my classes, there is a reaction from my students that I have learned to wait for. It isn’t flashy. No hand shoots into the air. No triumphant “I got it!” echoes across the room. It’s much simpler and nuanced and yet more precise: a
“Focus on what you can control” is hardly groundbreaking advice. Yet when I read David Gooblar’s version of it this August in One Classroom at a Time: How Better Teaching Can Make College More Equitable (Harvard UP, 2025), it felt newly persuasive: “[Professors] cannot control
AI can assist in nearly any teaching task, saving educators many hours of work while improving instruction via features such as personalized tutoring and interactive learning material. A teacher can use a general-purpose AI platform like ChatGPT, Google Gemini, or MS Copilot to create much
For many, Richard Feynman (1918–1988), the Nobel Prize–winning physicist turned cultural icon, is the prototype of a creative genius (Gleick, 1992). Beyond physics, he became renowned for his impish personality, boundless curiosity, and adventurous spirit (Feynman, 1985). He was an avid proponent and communicator of
Teaching in fast-moving fields with real cases presents three persistent problems. First, the news cycle moves more rapidly than any course can adapt. Second, such as in cybersecurity, real incidents involve confidential details, ongoing litigation, or charged political contexts that derail objective analysis. When you
Every semester, we conclude our courses with grades, reflections, and the quiet hope that, somehow, what we have taught will show up later in our students’ lives, when they actually need the information, when it will actually count. In teacher education, that’s not wishful thinking.
Can you work when you’re being watched? In the 1920s, workers at the Hawthorne Works plant in Cicero, Illinois, took part in a novel study of productivity. To change habits in the workplace, researchers decided to give them more light. Researchers changed the light bulbs
A few semesters ago, I found myself caught in what I now call a fairness trap. Teaching qualitative research methods to over 150 undergraduates (equivalent to three sections), I tried to recreate the close mentoring I’d experienced during my doctoral training. I began meeting more
Not that long ago, if you wanted to find a flight, you needed to call each airline and talk to a representative about the options. Then the internet came along, and sites like Expedia provided a one-stop shop to find all the flights between designated
Here are some selected highlights from my long history of using educational technology:
