Pedagogy – Phill 365

Day 363: Understanding tools vs. talent

January 22, 2018 phillArmchair phillosophy

It’s the time in the winter term where final projects are coming in, and with that comes the time for me to repeat a normal refrain: when creating new media, there’s a difference between showing[…]

Day 357: Game Playtesting/developing new coursework

January 16, 2018 phillgames

I’ve been working on the technical aspects of a new class (well, new to me and to our program, anyway) on game usability and UX. Today I built two student assignments that will be play[…]

Day 353: Maybe we’re doing it wrong

January 12, 2018 phillArmchair phillosophy

Today I had the opportunity to sit on a small panel to discuss interdisciplinary work with one of my colleague’s classes. I enjoy such opportunities, and I’m glad I was able to stop in. I[…]

Day 337: Answering someone’s Quora question

December 27, 2017 phillconfessional into a dashboard

Someone asked this today: Are PhD students who get faculty job offers usually the most popular and well-socialized PhD students? Let me start by saying I think this probably varies by field. I’ve only been part[…]

Day 317: Why do people take a class with the word “writing” in the title when they don’t want to write?

December 7, 2017 phillArmchair phillosophy

A story, one that happens all too often. Actually, more like a dialogue. Mine has changed. New version after the old version. “So what do you do?” “Me? I’m a professor.”* “What do you teach?”[…]

Day 280: Listen

October 29, 2017 phillArmchair phillosophy

Today I want to return to an old rant of mine. I’ve told people before about the cultural oddity that I experience in academia being Cherokee. As a people– a proud people :P– we don’t[…]

Day 268: Not taking it personally

October 18, 2017 phillPedagogy

Today I had to give one of my student project leaders some bad news about a project we’re working on. At mid-term, it looks as if only a fairly major miracle will save that project[…]

Day 263: A funny moment and what it means as an indicator of the status of education in America in 2017

October 13, 2017 phillArmchair phillosophy

I want to start this post by saying that I adore most of my students. I have the honor of teaching on a campus where we have some of the best and brightest, and the[…]

Day 255: The Rope

October 5, 2017 phillmemoir

I’ve been tinkering with my way of explaining my philosophy of teaching lately. I think the easiest way to explain the most “different” from the norm part of it is with a metaphor, a trite[…]

Day 249: The Lecture I have to give

September 29, 2017 phillgames

Part of my establishing a new identity as a scholar is shoring up the explanation of what I do. One of those things, for me, is teaching writing for games. Writing is a complicated thing[…]