Unconditional Teaching start

Tag: Analysis

Podcast: Learning is social

In this episode we talk to Sophie Gigl and Benjamin Stuhr, who are students at Bielefeld university, about how online teaching has made meaningful learning much harder for them and what this tells us about teaching and learning in general.

8. August 2021 | Tags: Podcasts, Teaching practices, Analysis, Online teaching, Distance teaching, Distance learning, Asynchronous teaching

Teaching into the void: Musings on online teaching during a pandemic [Update]

Working from home has its perks but teaching can become quite a frustrating, lonely experience when asynchronous teaching is involved. After two semesters of online teaching and going into the third, I want to describe in this article the hurdles I perceive, how I overcame some of them, and what I still find challenging about online teaching.

17. Mai 2021 | 1 Kommentar | Tags: Essays, Analysis, Online teaching, Corona crisis, Distance teaching, Distance learning

Teaching about plagiarism (or not)

As teachers, we need to frame plagiarism as a technical problem, not a moral one. Learning how to avoid plagiarism is an integral part of learning what academic writing is about. In fact, once students understand how and why to write as scholars, plagiarism will become a non-issue.

22. Juni 2020 | 2 Kommentare | Tags: Essays, Analysis, Teaching practices, Teaching writing, Plagiarism, Accountability, Positionality, Ownership

Killing curiosity: why exams harm scholarship and education

Teaching is about establishing and sustaining connection between curious minds to create and to share ideas and knowledge. Exams are about generating distance and social barriers to safeguard privilege. They are harmful to students and harmful to scholarship.

21. April 2020 | Tags: Essays, Analysis, Institutional education, Testing, Grading, Intrinsic motivation, Power, Gate-keeping, Privilege, Mastery

Podcast: The Ph.D. as traumatic experience

In this episode of the Unconditional Teaching Podcast, Tyll and I talk to Jessica about her experience of writing and defending her Ph.D. thesis and the severe strain it put on her mental health.

25. März 2020 | 1 Kommentar | Tags: Podcasts, Mental health, Analysis, PhD, Trauma, Academic career path, Exams

Learning with the freedom to make mistakes

In higher education, mistakes are seen as something that needs to be punished. This article argues that ‘making mistakes’ is a vital part of learning and that learning needs the freedom to make mistakes to be healthy.

3. März 2020 | Tags: Essays, Analysis, Teaching practices, Making mistakes, Healthy learning, High-stakes learning, Grades

The discourse of wasted potential – a critique

The discourse of wasted potential is omnipresent but it may be a harmful way of speaking about ourselves, relating to others, and thinking about our or others' accomplishments.

14. Januar 2020 | 3 Kommentare | Tags: Essays, Analysis, Mental health, Communication, Student-teacher relationship

The poisonous perfectionist vs the constructive critic

Perfectionism is a fear-based attitude towards failure that inhibits learning and encourages self-sabotage. We can fight it by strengthening the inner constructive critic to focus on processes of revision and improvement.

27. Oktober 2019 | Tags: Essays, Analysis, Teaching writing, Perfectionism, Self-doubt