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Author: Nathan Loewen

About Nathan Loewen
Nathan Loewen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Studies and Faculty Technology Liaison for the College of Arts & Sciences.

Posts by Nathan Loewen

“Lecture Me.” Really?

by Nathan Loewen, Department of Religious Studies In “Lecture Me. Really,” an opinion piece in The New York Times Sunday Review, Molly Worthen argues, “Listening continuously and taking notes for an hour is an unusual cognitive experience for most young people,” and “the vogue of learning” is pedagogically blinding to the value of ancient learning methods. She writes that lectures are not passive experiences because, through them, students develop the essential skill of note-taking, where, according to John Henry Newman, they […]

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All-Access Teaching

The ubiquity of digital media and telecommunications leads to claims that “the world is flat” and that everybody has access to almost all services and information. Tom Friedman rather ominously says that this ubiquity of access establishes an “iron rule”: “whatever can be done, will be done. And if you are not doing it, it will be done to you.”Is this actually the case? Is everyone subject to this iron rule? Does everyone have an all-access pass?

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Is “Learning Management System” a Misnomer?

by Nathan Loewen, Department of Religious Studies Is there a difference between “course delivery” and “teaching,” or are these equivocal terms? What does it mean to deliver verses to teach? Think about this for a moment in pedagogical terms. Do the following make pedagogical sense? Delivering a learning objective. Delivering a formative assessment. Delivering the ability to compare differing perspectives. Delivering critical thinking. I am not at all convinced that pedagogy is deliverable. Here are examples of what is deliverable in a learning […]

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My Students are Not Missing the (Power) Point

by Nathan Loewen, Department of Religious Studies I met Ollie Dreon at The Teaching Professor Technology Conference last week, thanks to a travel grant from CCS. His recent blog post, “Hating on PowerPoint: My Take,” confirms that I am doing the right thing this term. My 153-student REL 100 course makes no use of that now-ubiquitous program. I used to be a power-pointy power user. But in 2010 I first started thinking about how students miss the point, when General Stanley McChrystal banned PowerPoint briefings because the platform […]

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These Aren’t the Grades You’re Looking For

by Nathan Loewen, Department of Religious Studies Today is the final day for the entry of mid-term grades for lower-level courses. As a new faculty member at UA, I had already noted the provost’s blog entry on entering these grades. I teach a 100-level course, so I have until midnight tonight to do so. According to the FAQ posted by the University Registrar, this is a hard deadline. Don’t miss it! I have already gone about the business of entering the marks, and I want to […]

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Lurkers, Surfers, and Free-riders: Is Under-Participation a Problem?

by Nathan Loewen, Department of Religious Studies The group project regularly begets under-participation. No student situation in college teaching better illustrates the free-rider phenomenon. Perhaps Homer Simpson demonstrates the free-rider phenomenon best. Individuals who receive collective benefits without contributing are common in group work. One or more students in a group project can easily slack off while only one student fulfills the assignment requirements. The online discussion forum, like the group assignment, begets under-participation, too. In most cases, it takes the form of lurking, where students observe […]

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How to Get Away with Murder, or How to Kill Student Participation

by Nathan Loewen, Department of Religious Studies There is a television show on ABC where a professor takes five students under the wing. The teacher is charismatic, unconventional and named Professor Keating. The plot quickly differs from that of the earlier Professor John Keating in Dead Poets Society, except for one thing: both of them get away with murder. Their command of the classroom kills student participation. The show portrays Professor Annalise Keating teaching in a large-enrollment classroom, where she typically strides into the room exactly […]

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Mistakes Were Made. What Next?

by Nathan Loewen, Department of Religious Studies I felt a little bit like John Lindsay this morning. I put a quiz on Blackboard, and, as he said in one of his 1969 campaign ads, “some mistakes were made.” When the student emails started trickling in, I started to have a Lindsay moment. In reality, this is my first term teaching at UA, and I needed to re-familiarize myself with the process of creating quizzes and tests inside Blackboard Learn. I used […]

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Hey! You! Get Onto My Cloud.

by Nathan Loewen, Department of Religious Studies Much has changed since 1967 — getting on or off someone’s cloud, for example. A lot of companies want you to be on their cloud. Since the beginning of the fall 2015 term, several folks have approached me with questions about which cloud to get onto. Some faculty want it to hold files for their research, where others are looking for ways to collaborate with students or other researchers. When it involves international co-writing, I […]

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Thinking about Teaching Inside the UA+Box

by Nathan Loewen, Department of Religious Studies “How do I easily and quickly share files with my students in a seminar setting?” As the faculty technology liaison for Arts and Sciences, this is the most common question put to me over the first few weeks of the fall 2015 semester. There a a lot of possible answers to this question, but the one people are most attracted to is UA+Box. UA+Box is a really flexible tool that you can put to use […]

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