Tips, tutorials, and commentary on pedagogy, productivity, and technology in higher education.

Tag Archives: meetings

Scheduling 101: The Ideal Academic App

February 11, 2010 in Productivity, ProfHacker 101 by George H. Williams

Today I'd like to brainstorm with ProfHacker readers about what the ideal academic scheduling service or app might look like. I've taken the various comments that ProfHacker readers have shared over the last few months and combined them with some ideas of my own. So consider this an open letter of sorts.

Myers-Briggs: or how to learn to get along

February 5, 2010 in Life by Natalie Houston

Do you ever sit in a meeting and wonder why no one else in the room seems to understand the right way to set the agenda? Do you ever wonder why your friend wants to go out on the town at conferences and you want to just go back to the hotel and sleep? Does your collaborator's working style make you grit your teeth, but you know he's brilliant so you stick with him anyway? For myself, I've found that the Myers-Briggs system for understanding personality traits has been very helpful in understanding and working through the conflicts that can arise in situations like these.

Scheduling 101: Using Tungle.me for Committee Meetings and Student Appointments

February 1, 2010 in How-To, ProfHacker 101 by George H. Williams

Since using scheduling & calendaring services Doodle and Jiffle, I've learned about Tungle. Conclusion? It combines the best features of the other two and offers some features they don't, making it the best choice of the three for academics (though it's not without drawbacks). In this post I explain why.

Digital Office Hours

January 22, 2010 in Pedagogy, Productivity by Brian Croxall

Many of us use instant messaging in our professional and personal lives, and we can pair IM with different tools to offer digital office hours.

Robert’s Rules Are a Means, Not an End

November 9, 2009 in Productivity by Jason B. Jones

What we can learn about academic meetings from Stringer Bell.

Scheduling: Using Doodle to find the best time for a committee meeting

September 24, 2009 in How-To, ProfHacker 101 by George H. Williams

This "ProfHacker 101" post explains how to use Doodle.com, a dead-simple and user-friendly service for scheduling meetings or surveying people. There are basically just three steps to take every time you use Doodle: create your poll; share the poll with other participants; check the poll after everyone has responded. In this post, we'll walk you through each of these steps.

Scheduling & Surveying 101: Introduction

September 17, 2009 in How-To, ProfHacker 101 by George H. Williams

Whether you’re an instructor, a student, or a staff member, part of your responsibilities inevitably involve meeting with other people for collaborative work or discussion. And there aren’t many things more tedious or unnecessarily difficult than trying to find a meeting time that works for everyone. Fortunately, there are several possible solutions to the problem.

The ProfHacker Podcast: Merlin Mann and the First Person Transitive

September 11, 2009 in Podcasts, Productivity by Jason B. Jones

Launch week at ProfHacker continues today with our very first podcast, featuring a very special guest: Merlin Mann, of 43folders, Inbox Zero, and the comedy podcast troupe You Look Nice Today! A Journal of Emotional Hygiene. Mann first became internet-famous for 43folders.com, a site concerned with how to sustain the attention necessary for creative work.

What not to say at a department meeting

August 27, 2009 in Productivity by Jason B. Jones
No blaming the victim in this week’s discussion of meetings!  If you’re in your first job, you might well be attending your first department meeting soon, and I wanted to offer some advice.  Some people will say that junior faculty should be seen and not heard; conversely, some junior faculty are paranoid enough about their [...]

Bad meetings are your fault

August 20, 2009 in Productivity by Jason B. Jones
Judging by Twitter this week, an awful lot of university faculty and staff have celebrated the return of the academic year with meeting, after meeting, after–you get the point.  And surprisingly few of those tweeted comments seemed happy about it; most voiced implicit agreement with this cartoon: Meetings are an unproductive waste of time.  (In [...]

Paul Graham on scheduling meetings

July 28, 2009 in Productivity by Jason B. Jones
Lots of sites have been linking to Paul Graham’s essay on “Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule” for its clear delineation between one type of schedule, built around meetings, and another, built around vast empty spaces in which you can get things done.  He also makes the point–familiar to anyone who’s ever frittered away an hour’s research [...]