AAPT Members American Association of Philosophy Teachers

TΦ101 has been spending a bit of time exploring the websites of the various teaching center websites at universities around the country.  We've done another update of our page of favorite websites, and added some terrific new ones. So even if you visited our page recently, you might want to check in again.

TΦ101 is delighted to feature a remarkably versatile grade calculator, developed by precocious history graduate student Daniel Immerwahr.  In fact, Daniel is already making pedagogical contributions in his field of American history.  Perhaps some day we'll see www.teachhistory101.org.  The similarity between Daniel's last name and the name of TΦ101 staffer, John Immerwahr, is not in the least bit coincidental.

We are always on the lookout for new books about teaching. This week, we added a new one: Peter Filene's The Joy of Teaching: a Practical Guide for New College Instructors.  It gives a brief but beautifully written tour of the challenges new instructors face, with some great suggestions for how to deal with them. 

Most pedagogy mavens say that a lot of students lose their attention during a straight 50 minute lecture, so the usual recommendation is to break up the lecture with different activities every 15 or 20 minutes.  Barbara Millis has some valuable suggestions for how to do this, including telling the students NOT to take notes for a short period and then asking them to confer with each other about what was covered.

Mark Twain remarked about the weather that everyone talks about it but no one does anything about it. But when it comes to college grades, everyone does it but no one talks much about what they are doing or why.  TΦ101 has developed a thought piece -- in the form of a final examination -- that raises what we think are some of the more perplexing questions about grading.

TΦ101 just updated its discussion of  podcasts with some links to some new podcasts we have just discovered, including the semi serious "Partially Examined Life" blog and podcasts. Today, two of the best sources for on-line philosophical content are iTunes University (for podcasts) and YouTube for videos.  We haven't found a systematic way to search what is available on either of these sites, but just typing in terms or the names of philosophers in the search boxes brings up a remarkable variety of materials.  

Teaching Committe of the American Philosophical Association has recently updated its own Online Resources Page, with many useful links.  Of course, there is also a lot of duplication between what the APA lists and what you can find here on TΦ101; this is probably because the webmaster for the new APA site is some fellow named John Immerwahr, who also occasionally contributes to TΦ101.

Mark Twain aruged that everyone talks about the weather but no one does anything about it.  With grading it is the opposite, we call do it but we don't talk much about it.  Daryl Close, of Heidelberg University, has a new article that presents a theory of grading and that draws out the implications of that theory for many of the practical question that face the typical professor. TΦ101 is hoping to get a copy of the article itself, but for now readers can get it from Teaching Philosophy.

Many universities have faculty development or teaching excellence centers, which offer resources to faculty and graduate assistants.  Several of them also have useful websites, with lots of resources. TΦ101 has just added a new page with links to some of our favorites.

Just in time for final examinations TΦ101 has added some material on final examinations, including links to further discussions and tips.

People who specialize in adult education sometimes distinguish between pedagogy (the teaching of children) and andragogy (the teaching of adults). TΦ101 thinks that this distinction is really a good way to understand the goals of higher education, to help our students move from being child-learners to adult learners.  Our new entry on this provides some links to useful sources.