The York University community is hearing all kinds of messaging about restructuring these days and it's important to provide some context as to what is behind it and examples of other restructurings, like those that were forced on the City of Toronto by Mike Harris and Doug Ford that did not deliver on the promises […]
Piracy of professor-authored teaching material is rampant. I've written about it before. Students and teaching staff have uploaded my material to Course Hero and I'm not happy about it. In spite of requesting that they don't do it, they still do it. I write explicit footnotes in my documents saying not to do it, and […]
Incoming engineering and computer science students often ask "which computer should I get?" when preparing for university life. I tackled this a few years ago on Twitter and in my previous blog posts, each year from 2020 onward. The basics remain the same: Laptops are useful tools Macs are fine for most students Windows may be required […]
Last month I posted about why it's important for my students to be careful when (not if!) they use AI chatbots like Bing / ChatGPT. Today, I turned on Bing and noticed this disclaimer: Frankly, that's good to see. These chatbots are interesting and potentially useful tools, but one must be cautious when using them. […]
On August 4, 2023 the YorkU community was told that just days earlier the whole University, including students, was no longer requiring physical identification cards: "As of July 31, all incoming students to York University will receive their YU-card digitally" By "digitally" we mean having identification information on a cell phone or "smart watch" similar, […]
When we talk about the "leaky pipeline" in STEM we're talking about women leaving or being forced to leave their chosen profession. Here are three versions of an animation that I made up that I hope helps illustrate the concept. Feel free to reuse. Images are free to re-use without attribution in both commercial and […]
Introduction COVID has changed everything about campus life. In order to maximize the safety of students, staff and faculty at York University, we, as a community, need to focus on multiple factors, including: Vaccinations Ventilation (and air filtering) Masking Progressive work / study policies Last week, our university partially caved to pressure from the YorkU […]
The Teaching in Focus (TiF) conference at York was held online in 2021 due to the pandemic. Here's a list of the abstracts. My "Welcome to my Classroom" talk was based on the work I did in EECS 1011, 1021 and 2021: Giving students rapid and accurate feedback is vital. We can do so with […]
[updated 2021 & 2022] We don't hire enough women in Engineering and Computer Science faculties. It's a peer-reviewed fact. And, yet, hiring committees continue to refuse to use the same rigour and critical thinking in finding a new colleague that they demand in their every-day research. Where's the evidence that your ad-hoc, "mmmm.... feels good" […]
To new students (and their parents) who are looking to get a computer for the upcoming university school year, here are some tips (via my Twitter thread) Update (Nov 2020) Thinking of getting a new Mac in 2020 or 2021? Think again. Details below. How much? Get what you can afford. Most people will spend […]