Category Archives: teaching
Just a Marking Machine
The chapter draft is done. I’m pretty impressed with myself. It took less than a week to come up with a chapter of just over five thousand words, most of it dealing with historical parallels far afield of my early … Continue reading
Tutorial Tuning
My tutorials need a tune-up! In my eighty-student Ancient Near East survey this term, I’m having a problem with the tutorials. The task is document analysis and I know they’re good documents – a variety of literary, political and legal … Continue reading
Filed under teaching
Snow Day: A Professor’s Perspective
Woke up before dawn this morning and raced out of the bedroom to rouse my computer from sleep mode as I peered out the living room window to a discouraging scene. Winds roared from the south, racing up our street. … Continue reading
Return of the Term
It’s ba-ack! The term, that is. Run and hide in fear! Actually, this term isn’t half so bad as last term. Half the classes, pretty much, and nearly down by half the enrollments. One class is brand-spanking new: a seminar … Continue reading
Filed under academe, teaching, writing/editing
Ask the Right Question
Last term I instituted a new scheme in my intermediate level courses: require short presentations on pre-assigned discussion questions from every student and recycle those questions as essay fodder for the tests and exams. It’s done a fair bit of … Continue reading
Once More Into the Breach
Classes start on Wednesday. I start teaching again on Thursday morning and I’m sort of, almost!, ready. My Desire2Learn shell is up and running for the second-year survey on the Ancient Near East and the course outline was in our … Continue reading
Filed under teaching
Three Down, One to Go
I’ve submitted marks for three of my classes, now only the last group remains. It’s all down to how quickly I can plow through about seventy final exams. I don’t want to waste time counting them up: the total would … Continue reading
Filed under teaching
Grading Jail
It’s gotten to be that there’s so much end of term marking every December that I can no longer summon the energy to panic. I just mark as best I can, call it a day sometime around eleven at night … Continue reading
You Can’t Alway Teach What You Want
It’s that time of year when we start nailing down next year’s course offerings. As our department has lost a boatload of faculty over the past few years (we’re down five full-time people and not down that many students), it’s … Continue reading
Filed under teaching
Droolworthy Digital Resources
Sharon Howard, at Early Modern Notes has alerted us to a new project in which she’s involved: Manuscripts Online: Written Culture from 1000 to 1500. Colour me excited! She describes it as a kind of Connected Histories for medievalists. That’s … Continue reading
