It's the April 2025 exam system and it's clear to me that the Student ID system here at YorkU is completely broken. I've previously written about how silly it was to rely on cell phones as ID cards. And, in parallel to this, the administration at YorkU has also permitted the use of just about […]
I asked my students in 1st year engineering what kind of video software they used to record and edit videos for homework and projects. Here's the summary: Of these, iMovie, YouTube, OBS, Clip Champ (another link) and DaVinci Resolve are the favourites. I've found that there are other suggestions, including some on Reddit. Students may […]
Got an iPad or a Surface laptop that includes a stylus? Then consider getting a "pen loop" like the ones found in paper notebooks by Leuchtturm or Moleskine. It has an adhesive surface, making it easy to glue on to the back side of your device. It'll help keep your stylus firmly attached to your […]
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 […]
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 in 2020, 21 and 22. The basics remain the same: Laptops are useful tools Macs are fine for most ("Air" not "Pro") […]
One of my teaching assistants uploaded my instructional material to Course Hero without my permission. It didn't take me long to figure out who it was. I only had a handful of TAs and the TA used their university user ID as their Course Hero login. When I confronted the TA about it, the TA […]
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). This is an update to earlier posts in 2021 and 2020. I'm writing this from the perspective of a professor that teaches first year and second year programming […]
I enabled "completion tracking" on my eClass (Moodle) class pages. It's a great way for students to see how much work they have completed and how much work still needs to be done. Instructors can also use it to see how students are doing and to send messages as appropriate. I describe the "how-to" for […]