https://blog.rkempe.ca/tags/teaching/ Recent content in Teaching on rkempe’s blog Hugo en-ca &copy; Copyright 2026 Rebecca Kempe Fri, 17 Oct 2025 23:38:36 -0400 https://blog.rkempe.ca/posts/2025/10/what-makes-a-graduate-level-course-different-from-a-senior-undergraduate-course/ Fri, 17 Oct 2025 23:38:36 -0400 https://blog.rkempe.ca/posts/2025/10/what-makes-a-graduate-level-course-different-from-a-senior-undergraduate-course/ About a year ago, while I was only a few weeks into the first graduate-level course I ever took, I tried asking a bunch of grad students what the difference between taking courses at the graduate level and the undergraduate level is. Being researchers in training (researchers are, in my experience, <strong>terrible</strong> at explaining themselves), they gave me delightful non-answers such as “it’s not that different” (this is a lie) and “your professors treat you like adults” (whatever that means). https://blog.rkempe.ca/posts/2025/06/getting-to-the-end-of-the-thought-or-why-write-in-the-age-of-ai/ Fri, 06 Jun 2025 00:14:25 -0400 https://blog.rkempe.ca/posts/2025/06/getting-to-the-end-of-the-thought-or-why-write-in-the-age-of-ai/ I’ve been thinking a lot about the value of writing recently, especially in regard to how it’s been influenced by the advent of generative AI. In the past few months, I’ve had a lot of conversations in which people claimed that generative AI is just as good at writing as humans now, or better, in many cases. While I agree that AI generation tools are, at this point, better at the mechanics of writing than the average person, I have always found their outputs to be shallow and devoid of interesting surprises. https://blog.rkempe.ca/posts/2024/12/some-thoughts-on-academic-training/ Sat, 28 Dec 2024 10:36:42 -0500 https://blog.rkempe.ca/posts/2024/12/some-thoughts-on-academic-training/ <p>I’ve long said that university education starts to make a lot more sense if you look at it as a precursor to academic training. Historically, there have really been two major types of undergraduate university training, in my opinion: there was the liberal arts type of education, which was meant to turn rich people into cultured members of society (several of whom then went on to pursue academic training and scholarly activities, because they were rich and could afford to do so), and the more specialized type, which is meant to make the student literate enough in the major foundational ideas of the field to pursue additional training at the graduate level. If I remember correctly, universities functioning more like businesses is relatively new, the idea of university being a place for vocational training is relatively new, and the idea that most adults should get a university degree to be employable is also relatively new. (Also of interest: see “<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Educational_inflation">credential inflation</a>.”)</p> https://blog.rkempe.ca/posts/2024/02/learning-textbooks-vs-reference-textbooks/ Sat, 10 Feb 2024 00:00:00 -0400 https://blog.rkempe.ca/posts/2024/02/learning-textbooks-vs-reference-textbooks/ <p>One of the things I’ve been thinking a lot about lately is the fact that there are two main types of textbooks. There are reference textbooks, which are for people who are already versed in the subject area, typically academic researchers, professors, and the like. They tend to be large, contain massive amounts of information, and be unintelligible to everyone but their target audience. Then, there are expository textbooks, which are for people who actually want to learn things (aka me, a confused undergraduate student).</p>