learning online

Being a professor during this pandemic has led me to several Wile E. Coyote moments. Looney Tunes character, Wile E. Coyote makes elaborate plans and employs complicated methods to achieve a singular goal—catching the Road Runner. One running gag involves the coyote falling from a high cliff; the coyote ...

What simple gestures and accommodations at the end of a semester can lighten the load without compromising teaching and learning? Educators expect waning energy as a semester and academic year conclude. Students are overwhelmed trying to finish overdue assignments, final projects, and exams. Faculty are at the breaking point with ...

On October 22, 1939, six weeks after World War II had broken out, C. S. Lewis preached to a large crowd of Oxford University students, who were wondering what the point of the academic life might be at that time of international emergency. His address was titled, “Learning in War-Time.” My meditation ...

I was flailing. I was trying to show my students the different features of the videoconferencing tool Zoom that we’d be using synchronously for the rest of the semester, but I didn’t know how to share my computer screen in such a way that would show Zoom itself. ...

Like many parents of small children, I responded to the COVID-19 crisis by subscribing to Disney+. One of my first dives into animated nostalgia was with the Pixar short Presto, which initially preceded showings of the 2008 masterpiece WALL-E. I watched with bemused horror as the magician, resolute on performing for ...