Designing a Home Study Setup That Actually Helps You Focus

The home study setup advice industry has produced an enormous quantity of content about ergonomic chairs, monitor arms, smart lighting and aesthetic desk arrangements. Most of it is wrong about what matters. A student who buys the entire optimized setup will not study any better than a student who has done a few unglamorous things … Read more

The Quiet Revival of Asynchronous Discussion Boards

For a decade, the asynchronous discussion board was the joke of online education. Students were required to post a 200-word response to a prompt by Wednesday and respond to two classmates by Sunday. The result was a tide of formulaic posts that started with phrases like “I really enjoyed reading your perspective” and added nothing … Read more

What Makes Synchronous Online Classes Actually Work

The phrase “synchronous online class” still carries a vaguely traumatic flavor for anyone who survived the first year of pandemic schooling. Black tiles, frozen video, the muted hum of a teacher asking, for the fourth time, whether anyone could hear them. The format earned a reputation for being the worst of both worlds – the … Read more