About

ProfHacker delivers tips, tutorials, and commentary on pedagogy, productivity, and technology in higher education.

Read on for more information about our editors, authors, content categories, ways to contribute content, and our commenting policy and community guidelines. If you’re just looking for a contact address, please use ProfHackerCHE@gmail.com.

License

ProfHacker posts are all published under a Creative Commons license:

 Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.

Commenting

We are committed to fostering an environment characterized by generosity, creativity, and (as corny as it might sound) kindness. Comments on this blog are an important part of creating that environment, and this comment policy aims to communicate our values to new readers and encourage comments that will build up the online community here.

Thoughtful comments (even when—and often especially if—disagreeing) are encouraged and appreciated.

No snark allowed (see David Denby on definition of snark). While snark certainly has its virtues, this blog provides a space for people to be inexperienced at something—or even wrong—to facilitate learning. That’s harder to do in the face of either persistent or “drive-by” snark.

ProfHacker should be a community built through regular comments made by recognized—but not necessarily “real name”—contributors. Some commenters’ identities reveal their real names; other commenters use pseudonyms. Our online identities are built from our comments here and our presence—as commenters and authors—in other places on the web, in print, at conferences. ProfHacker welcomes commenters—whether anonymous, pseudonymous, or publicly identified—who are committed to creating a rich and respectful dialogue. We want commenters to be able to explore the complexities of ProfHacker posts; we want commenters to inquire and debate; we want everyone to be able to learn from the conversation.

Links & images are encouraged. Gratuitous linking back to your own site is discouraged.

The Categories

Our content is organized into the following general categories, and you are likely to find posts associated with more than one of these categories:

  • Editorial: about ProfHacker, plus regular features (Open Thread Wednesday, Weekend Reading, Week in Review, and From the Archives)
  • Profession: research, administration, meetings, conferences; other professional responsibilities, duties, and goals
  • Teaching: from general pedagogical discussions to specific classroom activities and tools (it’s a very wide range!)
  • Productivity: time management, planning, and self-improvement
  • Wellness: “What’s for Lunch?” feature, plus content focusing on mindfulness and exercise
  • Software: specific tools and products, as well as programming languages and best practices
  • Hardware: devices of all sizes, such as smartphones, netbooks, microphones, and more
  • Analog: non-digital tools and technologies that we work with everyday (we love those too)
  • Reviews: product and book reviews (solicited or unsolicited)

Tags

Tags are usually used to identify specific topics for searching. Also, Jason thinks tags are funny.