Schreyer Honors College, Penn State

As I sit with my cuppa tea this morning and read the Chronicle of Higher Ed and Inside Higher Ed a few stories caught my eye.

• Sartorial Study Suggests Professors Should Wear What They Want (subscriber link, this is a free link for 5 days)- A psychology instructor at North Hennipin Community College came to this conclusion after a brief study with four sections of a class. The study clearly has its limits and as the scholar points out, context is everything. When I first started teaching as an assistant professor I was all of 28 and I always wore a tie, even though in New Orleans most male faculty did not. I certainly think first impressions are important and I have never felt that wearing “formal” clothes (somehow I don’t think she meant a tux or evening gown) kept students from feeling that I was accessible. Granted, we don’t wear academic gowns to classes anymore (but they do at the University of the South!) but I think dressing well for the classroom sets the tone.

“I work at a college where professors wear a variety of things,” she says, “Some wear suits and ties and others wear shorts, so regardless of which class I was dressing for, I didn’t really stand out.”

That would not be true at every institution, Ms. Konheim-Kalkstein observes. “My husband is going to start teaching at West Point,” she says. “If he showed up in sneakers, I think he would have a much stronger reaction there from his students.”

• The Evidence on Online Education - A new meta-analysis by the Department of Education suggests that online learning has distinct advantages over face-face instruction. Its findings were inconclusive for elementary and secondary ed, they said, but consistently positive in higher ed.

Notably, the report attributes much of the success in learning online (blended or entirely) not to technology but to time. “Studies in which learners in the online condition spent more time on task than students in the face-to-face condition found a greater benefit for online learning,” the report says.

The note above in the IHE summary pointed to something that I have been wrestling with in terms of online education. The question has come up as to whether or not an honors course could be offered online. My instinct is to say “no” but I am not so sure. One of the key elements to an honors seminar is discussion and I have often found in my online courses (I have taught Intro to Hebrew Bible online many times) that because students are required to post to the online discussion board where they have to compose a message the discussion is often more thoughtful and everyone has a chance to be heard. Still mulling on this….

Finally, the Chronicle has “What They’re Reading on College Campuses.” No real surprises here. I had thought about #2 for our college’s summer reading project: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies by Jane Austen and Seth Grahame-Smith