Sympoze

I spent an hour or so this morning talking to a young colleague who had just made the mistake of reading her teaching evaluations for the semester. She was upset, antagonized, demoralized, and stricken with anxiety. The student criticisms ranged from silly and irrelevant (e.g., comments about the instructor's shoes) to simply mean. No doubt she'll carry all of this into her classes next semester, thereby enabling the all too familiar self-fulfilling downward spiral from mere unpopularity to truly ineffective (because fixated on the evaluations rather than the subject-matter) teaching.

Brief discussion of using small groups in undergrad philosophy classes. I've found this to be a particular challenge: I'm afraid that students aren't equipped to understand topics without direct guidance, yet they always say in their evaluations that the group projects are where they got the most out of the class.

For example, who would have thought that philosophy majors in mid-career would earn more than information technology majors in mid-career? ...

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Jonathan Lavery, of Wilfred Laurer University, has suggested some interesting films for teaching political philosophy.  One is the trial scene in Peter Ustinov's film of Melville's Billy Budd, the other is a seven-minute Tom and Jerry Cartoon, available on YouTube.john.immerwahr@villanova.edu

...Dale Miller asks for advice over at PEA Soup

Sharmila Pixy Ferris (William Patterson University) got a very warm reception for her presentation on teaching and learning with the "net generation," given at the the 2009 Lilly East Conference.  She graciously allowed TP101 access to her slides.john.immerwahr@villanova.edu

This post asks if in teaching modern philosophy to undergrads we should stop focusing on M&E and start focusing on the ethical and socio-political debates because these debates are largely still relevant and more interesting to undergrads. I assume this will agitate some modern philosophers. Bonus: A nice comment is already there to kick things off...

From Jeff Sebo (NYU): "Nick and I are thrilled to announce the launch of PLATO (Philosophy Learning and Teaching Organization), a new outreach organization affiliated with the APA.You can find information about PLATO here: http://plato-apa.org/

Teaching philosophy in prison.