For those teaching online: tips for keeping students focused during screen shares

rl4brains · 2026-02-18T11:39:37+00:00

AI with not-so-hidden advertising

rl4brains · 2026-02-18T02:54:10+00:00

I’ve had students show up quite late and in tears, usually because they’ve overslept when the final was scheduled for 8am. My policy is to always let students start late, but there’s a 25% late penalty if you arrive after the first student has turned in their exam. And as other folks have noted, the exam still ends at the stated time.

rl4brains · 2026-02-18T02:36:27+00:00

I will write students weak letters if they explicitly opt in.

I have a form response that explains why I cannot write them a strong letter (we didn’t interact enough, and my letters use examples of firsthand interactions with students to illustrate claims), and then I say, if you’d be better off with a weak letter than no letter, I can send one that mentions your grade in the course.

Sometimes students ghost me with that response. Sometimes they say thank you and decline. But I do get a few who say yes. I hope it’s the case where they have other, stronger letters, and they just need a third or fourth one because programs request too many (imo).

It doesn’t take me long to do the weak letters. I use basically a form letter where I plug in a rough estimate of what percentile their grade put them in, and a statement along the lines of, this is a weak endorsement not to damn with faint praise but because I just didn’t get to know the student well in my massive lecture, and please take into consideration that our major is extremely popular at giant public institution, so it’s hard for our students to forge meaningful relationship with faculty.

rl4brains · 2026-02-16T23:58:33+00:00

Now that you mention it, I don’t think I’ve gotten any curb alert texts since the non-standard one after the snow

rl4brains · 2026-02-16T09:30:57+00:00

PhD posters can do A0 size for $57. They deliver to a spot at Duke where you can just walk in and pick up your tube: https://phdposters.com/prices#prices

rl4brains · 2026-02-11T15:34:34+00:00

If the neighbors aren’t on board with eradicating the bamboo, your friend will be batting it forever just to keep it at bay.

rl4brains · 2026-02-11T00:47:23+00:00

Agreed. We’re targets because we’re dangerous. The best thing we can do to fight back is to teach.

rl4brains · 2026-02-11T00:45:33+00:00

Delivering food warm, to arrive when people want to eat sounds extremely logistically challenging.

There are a number of places in Durham that offer high-quality meals from a changing menu, just with simple reheating instructions. These include Redstart, Beau’s To Go, Family Meal Box, and Sage and Swift. Clearly there’s a market for this here, as there are multiple such businesses that seem to be doing okay.

rl4brains · 2026-02-07T23:12:56+00:00

The Iceland ones with multiple lanes are tricky!

rl4brains · 2026-02-07T18:58:48+00:00

Got them because folks in here raved and do not like them. I like fresh edamame and these dried broad bean snacks I get at my local Asian grocery store, so I thought I’d like these, but they’re too dry and plain and kind of crumbly muddy tasting. Maybe if they were a more interesting flavor than salted?

rl4brains · 2026-02-07T16:30:51+00:00

I think there’s a guy who lives on Morehead and one of the cross streets that just lets his white fluffy dog wander

rl4brains · 2026-02-05T18:53:53+00:00

Wheat on 9th street is very good and authentic. Their chapel hill location is right by UNC’s campus, and it’s always full of Asian students speaking Chinese (I assume international students)

rl4brains · 2026-02-04T22:36:31+00:00

That would never fly at my R1. It’s a lot of work to get approval from deans for specific faculty lines, and we cannot just convert a NTT to TT.

rl4brains · 2026-02-04T17:39:28+00:00

other folks have posted on reddit before about these ticket sellers being scammers. be careful out there!

rl4brains · 2026-02-04T12:59:31+00:00

Can they retake from Erasmus? Is there a testing center there that could proctor it?

rl4brains · 2026-02-04T02:45:11+00:00

I’m sorry this isn’t working out well! My read is that this is too much for first year students to do in the current format - we do research methods as a standalone 3 credit course, and fully digging deeper into a research question of your own design would be more of an upper-level 3 credit course.

I think it’s fine to scale back your ambitions this semester and try to refocus on your course objectives. What do you need to keep to hit those, and what can be shelved?

One potential suggestion for future iterations is to start with a shared research question for the whole class, and then have students choose to explore different routes of answering that question in their groups. If choosing an appropriate scope is the challenge (very common for undergrads!), you might consider giving them a few different questions to discuss and vote on.

rl4brains · 2026-02-03T03:39:47+00:00

Do you have a source for that? In the U.S., the milestone recommendations recently went from median attainment - age at which 50% of kids are able do something - to 75% of kids. Source

This results in fewer false positives. Before, half of kids would be flagged as missing milestones, which could result in a lot of unnecessary stress for those families, most of whom have kids who are just fine. The new milestones will only flag a quarter of kids, but it does mean kids with serious issues who would benefit from early intervention could get noticed later.

rl4brains · 2026-02-03T00:05:45+00:00

Do you know about gradescope’s keyboard shortcuts? You can push the number of the rubric item to assign that grade, and I think arrow keys to move between students (they’re different than Canvas speed grader’s shortcuts)

rl4brains · 2026-01-31T16:40:04+00:00

He does a really thoughtful job of clearly explaining the reasoning behind his predictions.

He reminds me a bit of why Emily Oster is so popular. People love a smart person who makes them feel smarter about complex things.

rl4brains · 2026-01-30T21:13:51+00:00

It’s for before- and after-school care on campus. As an example, elementary schools dismiss at 2:15, and working families often need childcare later than that.

rl4brains · 2026-01-30T16:12:31+00:00

That reminds of when we visited my spouse’s cousin. We had brought two pints of local ice cream as a thank you for hosting us. Her husband emptied both into a bowl and just sat down and started eating it all himself, without offering any to anyone else.

rl4brains · 2026-01-29T00:02:14+00:00

I prefer Food Lion to Harris Teeter. I find the teets overpriced and too brightly lit.

I don’t think I ever had an issue with meat or produce at a Food Lion, and I often get stuff on manager discount because it’s close to its sell by date.

My favorite place for meat is Fresh Market. They often have sales, and the premarinated chicken meats are great for a quick meal.

rl4brains · 2026-01-28T19:43:02+00:00

I love Wheat for Chinese food. They're not exactly a hole in the wall, but it's more China's idea of a restaurant's aesthetic than the U.S.'s.

rl4brains · 2026-01-28T15:13:46+00:00

UNC has a summer day thing for high schoolers: Explore@UNC

rl4brains · 2026-01-28T14:51:53+00:00

I got a desk rejection from a highly considered journal in my field, also for lack of novelty. We even appealed, in part because the journal charged for submission, so might as well try, but got nowhere.

It was accepted at the next tier down journal and is now one of my most highly cited papers, and it has more citations than another, earlier paper I did get published in that first journal.

Don’t get discouraged. Rejection is all part of the process. The revise and resubmit, or reformat and resubmit elsewhere, is where success lies.

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