Monthly Archives: April 2016

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Studying at the Library of Congress Main Reading Room

I was in Washington, DC for a conference this week and had a little free time in the afternoon.  I had some writing to get done as it is always hard to keep up when you’re traveling.  After thinking of a few neat places to write in the city, I decided to head down to the Library of Congress to study in the Main Reading Room.  I strongly encourage anyone in town for an academic conference to take a few hours for studying at the Library of Congress Main Reading Room.

My little spot in the foreground in the Main Reading Room

Some spaces are just conducive to writing and the Main Reading Room is one of them.

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Campus leaders can support institutional diversity

With the causes and challenges related to increased homogenization likely to continue influencing higher education, institutional diversity will likely continue to decline, which will threaten historical institutional missions. In today’s post, I want to share an excerpt from my monograph, Understanding Institutional Diversity in American Higher Education, with recommendations and future research to show campus leaders can support institutional diversity.

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Houston, we have a problem teaching activity

In the popular movie, Apollo 13, the astronauts are trapped with their oxygen running out.  In a classic scene, all of the NASA engineers gather in a room with all of the stuff in the spacecraft and have to figure out how to make a square air filter fit a hole made for a round filter.  Literally, the engineers have to make a square peg fit in a round hole. In today’s post, I want to share an IDEA from my book Teaching for Learning on how you can use this as the basis for a class activity.

In the Houston We Have a Problem IDEA, students are given a collection of items or information that they must use to solve a problem presented by the instructor.

The game is designed to encourage class participation, creativity, and problem solving.