Just going to leave this here… www.insidehighered.com/news/tech-in...

MIT AI Report Calls for Alternative Grading, Social Learning

Artificial intelligence is upending the MIT education, a committee has found. Students, instructors and administrators will need to revisit nearly every part of that experience to respond to it.

insidehighered.com

Are you ready to align your grading practices with your values? Join us December 17–18 for the Alternative Grading Institute (online), which will bring together faculty from across higher education for a two-day, hands-on experience in standards-based, specifications, and collaborative grading.

For your amusement.

Dean by day, cruciverbalist by night. Dr. Mark MacLachlan discusses the science behind the art of his hobby as a crossword creator for @nytimes.com and more.

This scientist’s side hustle is creating crosswords for The New York Times - UBC News

Dean by day, cruciverbalist by night, Dr. Mark MacLachlan discusses the science behind the art of his hobby as a crossword creator for The New York Times and more.

news.ubc.ca

Shaking my fist at @dccmath.bsky.social because his syllabus structure is so good that it is making me want to completely redesign my other syllabus.

Everyone loves a good #ChartCrime, especially if it’s by OpenAI! Enjoy ! www.theverge.com/news/756444/... Also - “vibe graphing” 😂😂😂

OpenAI gets caught vibe graphing

An OpenAI staffer apologized for the “unintentional chart crime.”

theverge.com

AFAIK, the only major missing feature for instructors using JupyterBook (and the @jupyter.org) is a robust way to present notebooks slides. Here, @quarto.org really has clean and tight workflow! 🎉 So I’ll be working on building a Jupyterbook with Quarto Live slides… r-wasm.github.io/quarto-live/

I am in dire need of case studies from higher ed instructors using flipped learning in the humanities, fine arts, social sciences, or business for the 2nd edition of my book. If this is you, or you know someone or can reach someone like this, @ me and I'll send details. 🙏

Congratulations to Serene (my first grad student) for defending her masters thesis today 🥳🤩 ! Thesis: Instructor Perspectives on Alternative Grading at UBC ☂️!

hey lovelies, I finally got around to publicly sharing my compilation of big tech energy and emissions data. I'll be using it in articles, posts etc but it's yours too, free to use (w/ attribution is nice) ketanjoshi.co/2025/05/23/d...

Alternative graders! I'm working on a blog post about "rookie mistakes" -- the things that new alt. graders most commonly do that cause them trouble. My list so far: - Unlimited reassessments - Too many standards - Super-duper complex system What would you add?

2025. #DEI. "findings could help promote equity in STEM by ensuring greater focus on the fields in which women and girls are most underrepresented and negatively stereotyped." www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...

Divergence in children’s gender stereotypes and motivation across STEM fields | PNAS

STEM disciplines are traditionally stereotyped as being for men and boys. However, in two preregistered studies of Grades 1 to 12 students in the U...

pnas.org

I am happy to announce the publication of the first part of a 2-part @jcmsjournal.bsky.social Teaching Media dossier on #ungrading that @lisawj.bsky.social and I co-edited. Please check out "Part I: Critical Reflections on Ungrading" here: quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jcms/teach... Part two coming soon!

Charts are back…✨

Justin McElroy 🇨🇦@jmcelroy.bsky.social · last yr.

Southbound crossings at the busiest border crossing in Western Canada are stable for USA license plates, but substantially down for B.C. ones, particular when it comes to one-off trips. Today’s charts.

As the (brand new!) head of the department that is doing the hiring, I can confirm that this position is available... please share and apply! Tagging #AcademicSky 🧪 for reach!

Carol Chen@carolchen.bsky.social · last yr.

My alma mater, the University of British Columbia, Dept of Medical Genetics, is hiring for a tenure track junior faculty position specializing in chromatin regulation / gene regulatory mechanisms. Beautiful city and vibrant epigenetics research. Please share! medgen.med.ubc.ca/assistant-pr...

Looking forward to being back in Vancouver for Digital Pedagogy Lab next week. I’m co-teaching about alternative assessment with the inimitable Martha Burtis. bccampus.ca/event/digita...

Digital Pedagogy Lab 2025 (2025-02-18)

Are you ready to push the boundaries of teaching with technology?   The Digital Pedagogy Lab is more than just another educational conference. It’s a dynamic, cohort-based community of practi...

bccampus.ca

In other news, if you’re looking for a speaker on engaging all students, teaching STEM, teaching large classes, or need someone to offer mentor training or coaching, HMU!

2i2c has officially become part of the mybinder.org federation, introducing a new, cost-effective, and faster approach. We hope to make it easier for more people to join the federation by contributing a single-node BinderHub at 2i2c.mybinder.org. More in our blog: https://2i2c.org/blog/2025/binde…

🤯

Alex Usher@alexusherhesa.bsky.social · 2y ago

Ontario post-secondary institutes (colleges + universities) operating income by source, 2001-02 to 2028-29 (projected). This is kind of wild.

Just saw 4 more articles that used final & final exam grades as statistical measures of improvement. Please - for the love of all research everywhere - STOP using grades as a measure of anything. Grades can’t be combined statistically b/c they have too many embedded factors - some defined some not

💯 this… I’m right at the threshold, teetering on the brink, one way and then another.

Matt Macauley@visualalgebra.bsky.social · 2y ago

I think there's an age threshold where if you're below it, your primary emotion upon learning about a solid LaTeX rival like @typst.app is excitement, whereas if you're above it, that emotion is anxiety.

An insane story of an intern working at ByteDance (TikTok), deliberately sabotaging models to redirect compute resources. And then winning Best Paper at the prestigious NeurIPS ML conference. To be fair, the work was evaluated “blindly” but it wasn’t revoked after 🤔 www.wired.com/story/byteda...

Former ByteDance Intern Accused of Sabotage Among Winners of Prestigious AI Award

Keyu Tian and his coauthors won the Best Paper Award at the annual NeurIPS machine-learning conference for their work on a new technique for generating images. Some have objected to the decision.

wired.com

Who is for abolishing grad app letters of rec at the point of application? Would it be so bad if letters were requested AFTER candidates were shortlisted? If we do this at UCSD who will join us?

Nice! Thanks to some great instructions, changed my handle from @firasm.bsky.social to @firas.moosvi.com 🎉. Also I survived the term - congrats to everyone who also did! Onwards... bsky.social/about/blog/4...

How to verify your Bluesky account - Bluesky

Here's how to verify your Bluesky account by setting your website as your username.

bsky.social

Fully realizing that all of these folks are up to way more than puzzling about more humane, just, and effective assessment, here is our attempt at a @growbeyondgrades.org starter pack! Who’s missing? go.bsky.app/8EEJ1Tw

😂🤣 #ungrading

Bryan Doppel@bryandoppel.bsky.social · 2y ago

Optimist: the cup is half full Pessimist: the cup is half empty Educational developers: Is “having a full cup” one of your course learning objectives? But how will you assess the fullness of the cup? Could your assessment be more authentic? And have you considered ungrading?

Well said - 100% agree with this post! Great principles and I plan to follow them. Let’s not get burned again…but if we do, we’ll be more prepared.

Chris Holdgraf@choldgraf.com · 2y ago

It's based on one of my favorite posts from the last few years called "Don't build castles in other people's kingdoms". howtomarketagame.com/2021/11/01/d...

My feed is looking and sounding close to what I had on the dead bird site - missed you all so much! Welcome back everyone 💖❤️! *sigh of contentment*

"We love interdisciplinary work! But..."

Wanted to create a starter pack for Teaching and Learning in Higher Ed. It took me 5 hours on this app to be connected to this motley crew! go.bsky.app/J71phoP