Oshkosh News Blog has posted a little note on Lake Winneblogo. I caused that to happen, by posting a link to own comments on Miles' site yesterday.
It is one of the interesting dillemas of blogging. If no one every visits your page, does it exist? Thus, I decided that although it is informative to write for myself, it was not the reason I set up the blog.
Welcome to everyone! If you are on staff at the university, leave a comment or drop me an email (winneblogo at gmail dot com) telling me about how the budget cuts have affected your department. I'll be glad to post them anonymously. As was suggested at the COLS meeting a couple of weeks ago, no one among the faculty has any good idea of the scope of cuts.
Using a blog also provides a non-official space to converse about the issues facing our university and higher education in general.
Feel free to comment and post. We need a real discussion about our university, which has been sadly lacking so far.
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2 comments:
I think its great that a professor is blogging.
Since I was very young I have always wanted to go to college. For one reason or another it was always delayed. So in the meantime, I read and surrounded myself with thoughtful intelligent people. I am in my third year at UW Oshkosh and I am beginning to regret coming here. Now I really do not want to just bitch, because god knows I am not the greatest student in the world, most the time I cant seem to hand things in on time. Well anyway, my point is that no one wants to say anything in class and that really bugs me. The Professors are great at this school and they do a great job at initiating discussion.
Here is a typical scenario, professor asks question and says, “some of you other people say something”. Then no one says anything and the professor gets pissed or keeps lecturing. In most of my classes there is usually myself and one or two other people that seem to be engaged. I’m telling you it gets F*&^%ung boring after a while.
I think Mike Mcgabe from Wisconsin democracy campaign made a good point the other day he stated, “in the last ten years the average income for parents of a college student has doubled”. Low income or working class students- of which I am one- comprises only 18% of the student body. How does this relate, most student are not hungry. There is no hunger in them to delve into the “why” of the world; therefore there is not much response in class to serious questions.
So that’s my beef for today I’m gonna hang in there and finish, maybe this fall will be a little different.
Thanks for this wonderful comment. I don't think I could have said it any better.
As a teacher, I struggle to figure out how to increase participation and engage the students. Not surprisingly, I find the material I teach deeply interesting and try to convey that to my students.
Thanks to the current budget situation, classes are bound to get larger and students are going to be forced to work more in order to cover the tuition increases.
The university seems to be becoming an increasingly anti-intellectual place. I am not sure how we can reverse that trend, but it has to come, at least partially, from student demands. Your passion for education is something admirable and I hope you are spreading this message to your classmates, too!
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