I have been teaching Data Analytics modules in various forms for the past five years. I started teaching class using R, because it was what I knew and what I used in my work. But over the years, I have spent a lot of time thinking about what software to teach. I have given thought to replacing R with Stata, Python, Julia or SPSS.

Take Great Notes is a very short book from the Sage Super Quick Skills series written by Mal Leicester and Denise Taylor. It is aimed at undergraduates who wonder how they can improve their note taking. The book is also relevant for primary and secondary school students. I picked it up as I am designing material to help MSc students learn.

Flashcards are a well known studying technique and are widely used in language learning and medicine to help memorise large amount of information. They are less widely used in social sciences, which raises the question: is this because they are less useful here or because we are collectively missing a trick? So, what are flashcards good for? Can they be used effectively in contexts where memorisation is not central to learning?

Summary The Craft of College Teaching is primarily a guide for college teachers reviewing various aspects of college teaching and going over best practices in each of these aspects. I first became aware of the book while reading Ultralearning (my review), which I was reading more for personal enjoyment than as part of an effort of reflection on my teaching practice.

This is the second installment in my learning to learn series; the first explored four tips to study better (on this blog). When, as teachers, we assign group work, we often hear you grumble ¹ . Group work often gets a bad rap. And there are (some) good reasons for it. But there are also significant benefits arising from group work. So, why do we assign you to work in groups?

This is a review of the book Ultralearning by Scott H. Young. Summary The premise of the book is that one can learn vast amounts, and master subjects reputed difficult through intense practice. The book presents some of the principles, tools and techniques to achieve this. It is written in an accessible style and is well-paced. While the book might first appear as a charge against higher education, this is not the case.

Remembering what you learn is essential if your learning effort is to amount to anything. Ideally, you want to build both short-term and long-term retention in order to pass the class but also be able to use the knowledge in the future whenever required. We know that a lot of what feels like studying is inefficient in helping us retain information long term.

I recently finished teaching three MSc classes online. Here is what I learned. First, online can be as good as in person, and better in some cases. Second, getting there is challenging and it is to be expected that one does not achieve full proficiency on one’s first try. One of the main criticisms of online learning I have heard is the fact that students prefer in-person classes, and so do faculty.

This article was first published on LinkedIn on 15th June 2020. Last Saturday (06/06/2020), the Guardian published an interview with Bruno Latour. This article was of great interest to me as Latour’s work on science has had a significant impact on many researchers. Laboratory Life (publisher’s website) was a real eye opener when I read it as a graduate student. The book contributed to my becoming an open-minded positivist.

I read Helen Sword’s Stylish Academic Writing (Sword, 2012) on a recent flight. The book surveys major style quirks plaguing academic writing. It is both entertaining and concerning: some of the examples are hilarious, but a look at one’s own writing yields many sentences as wonky as the examples in the book.

In the November issue of the Strategic Management Journal , the editors write about a new initiative, which aims to increase the availability of management data (Ethiraj, Gambardella, & Helfat, 2017) ¹ . As part of this initiative, the editors will contact authors of impactful papers in SMJ to suggest they contribute the data.