Recommended reads #179
Here’s a big list of ways to convert typical active learning approaches to a physically distanced classroom, asynchronously online, and synchronously online. It looks supremely helpful if you’re thinking, “I want to do more active learning while teaching in the pandemic, but how?”
Ten simple rules for successful remote postdoc
It looks like immunity to COVID isn’t so ephemeral, which is good.
This article about how we could develop effective mentoring for COVID in the US looks like the best pathway forward that is practical and actually possible.
Reopening campuses is a civil rights issue
It turns out that working from home means that we actually are working longer hours.
“Faculty tended to be rated more highly when they were young, male, White, in the Humanities, and held a rank of full professor.”
If you’re not familiar with Paulo Freire and Pedagogy of the Oppressed, this is really good. It’s also really good even if you are familiar.
This explainer of the immune system, and how coronavirus works, is an extraordinary piece of science writing in so many ways.
Rita Colwell (former head of NSF) in a Q&A on sexism in STEM.
The panoption is already here. I thought I understood how China was doing survillance and I learned I was wrong.
The NYT covered the story about how scientist BethAnn McLaughlin created a fictitious character, built this character for several years, and then orchestrated her fictitious death from the complications of COVID. This story couldn’t possibly detail many ways that many people have been harmed by this.
Zadie Smith and the difficulty of quick-response art
Don’t blame colleges for the debacle of teaching during the pandemic. This piece argues that since the United States is essentially a failed state, then having universities doing this in an entire f’ed up manner is a product of the f’ed up circumstances in the whole country. (It’s paywalled in the Chronicle but interesting enough that I’m still linking to it, and odds are if you’re in a higher ed institution, you can access it through logging in through your library, as I think most places subscribe to the Chronicle?)
University reopening plans hit staff the hardest
College biology textbooks aren’t representative of the people who do science.