Latest from Inside Higher Ed

A couple of good ones:

• New Honor Codes for a New Generation By Donald L. McCabe and Gary Pavela. Can making students promise not to cheat make a difference in how often they actually do? It seems that it just might.
  
• The Lecturer's Tale By Scott McLemee. Is the academic lecture dead? Recent wisdom suggests that active learning techniques and a more open and less static classroom are good things, but is there still a place for those long-winded, formal, boring lectures? Maybe so, this article suggests. From our own experience, we can all remember profs whose lectures were electrifying as well as those who were spiritually deadening. Most, of course, were average: neither terminially dull nor unbelievably facinating. Is there a real answer to this question, or does each situation/personality/subject need to find there own solution. Personally, I'm not convinced either way. My favourite (somewhat cruel) line from the article: "The abolition of lecturing is not simply a matter of meeting the expectation of students for whom the talk-show host is the embodiment of discursive authority." It goes on to explain that life is easier on the profs too if lectures don't need preparing.