Rich Russell

By Rich Russell The season for reading is here, friends! I feel guilty about how little progress I've made on the stack of books nesting on my bedside table: a veritable, vertical library that teeters like some structurally unsound tower…

By Rich Russell As an adjunct professor, I don't always have the "privilege" of being able to choose my own textbook. If one is assigned for a course — whether that's by me or by the college — I feel obligated to use it as much as…

By P.D. Lesko When I taught, there was always the inevitable end of the year scramble to see who would get summer teaching work. It was brutal. Feelings were always bruised, and the course assignments rarely covered everyone who wanted…

By Rich Russell Now that I have time to catch up on a few articles that have been languishing in my inbox since spring break, I realize that I failed to recognize (having just had a chance to read) Steve Kolowich's article "Built for…

By Rich Russell In a recent column for The Chronicle of Higher Ed, Rob Jenkins highlights what we need to consider in our zealous pursuit of online education ("the third-rail in American higher education politics"), where retention…

By Rich Russell (This post for for my fellow AN blogger Kat. Kat, I hope at least some of this is helpful.) The best advice I received when I first started teaching was, of course, from my mom, who taught high school herself for ten…

By Rich Russell I was setting up small group workshops in my online Creative Writing I class last week. Blackboard makes it so easy to do this: In the "Teach" tab, go to "Create Groups" and then "Create Multiple Groups" and "Randomly…

By Rich Russell "Cannot you see, cannot all you lecturers see, that it is we that are dying, and that down here the only thing that really lives is the Machine? It has robbed us of the sense of space and of the sense of touch, it has…

By Rich Russell PART I: The Machine Never Stops My mom said to me recently, “In twenty-five years, none of this will exist.” We were sitting in her office at the place where she has taught for twenty-five years now; where I have…

By Rich Russell PART I: The Machine Never Stops My mom said to me recently, “In twenty-five years, none of this will exist.” We were sitting in her office at the place where she has taught for twenty-five years now; where I have…