Did I mention that I attended a Software Carpentry (SWC) train-the-trainers event recently (editors note: not so recently anymore…)? And did I mention that they got me to read a fun book called _Teaching what you don’t know_? It had a number of fun-sounding ideas to encourage students to actively engage with material, in a chapter titled “Thinking in Class”, and I tried one out in a guest lecture.

The super-simple idea is this: at some point when students are spacing out from hearing too much talking from me, I paused for questions. When there were none, I said, “now I want you to turn to the person next to you, and spend just two minutes and see where your notes differ from theirs. And figure out what makes sense now but might not when you look back at your notes.”

Then I had a little break for two minutes, and people talked to each other. When I brought them back to me, there were questions and there was renewed attention.

I tried it again about 20 minutes later, and it didn’t have the same magic. Maybe it is a once a class thing.

I read a book called _Teaching what you don’t know_ in preparation for my SWC training, and it had a great chapter on “Teaching who you don’t know” that I’ve been thinking about. It turns out that a lot of students are not like a lot of professors. Basing our understanding of human psychology on the responses of Psych 101 students is risky, and assuming that our students want to learn the way we want to learn is risky, too. https://healthyalgorithms.com/2015/06/09/weird-view-of-human-nature/

I moderated a panel discussion of this recent challenging event, and a recording of it is now online:

On January 20, Inauguration Day, self-described anti-fascist activist Josh Dukes was shot and critically injured at a rally at the University of Washington. Milo Yiannopoulos, a high-profile “alt-right” (white supremacist) speaker, had been invited by the College Republicans to speak at Kane Hall on that evening. Hundreds of people opposed to the speaker and his message had rallied outside Kane Hall, where those attending the talk were queued up to enter the hall. Both the UW and the Seattle police were there in force.

In the aftermath of the shooting, information about the incident and the shooter was scarce, and often contradictory. It was reported that someone had turned himself in, but this person was released. Rumors abounded about whether the shooter was a UW student, about whether police had purposefully corralled people from opposing sides in order to create an incident to facilitate arrests, and about whether the shooters were affiliated with individuals who had placed threatening neo-Nazi-style posters on the campus. No arrests were made, and no explanation for the lack of arrests was given. Police and UW administration declined to comment, citing the ongoing investigation as the reason.