When dealing with sources in the body text of a paper, writers frequently face the choice between paraphrasing or quoting the source. In student writing, mistakes in either can lead to reduced marks or plagiarism procedures. Having seen far too many problems with this recently, I provide a brief overview of both here. This is…
Author: Michael Plouffe
Writing for university
This is targeted to university students, primarily at students in the BA/BSc and MA/MSc/MPA classes that I most frequently instruct, although the points are relevant beyond those levels and my classes. Most of the poor written-assessment outcomes I see appear to stem more from carelessness than a lack of intellect. The prompt and assessment format…
Respectability Politics and Asian America
I originally submitted this on 7th April to The Atlantic, and got sick of waiting for their promised response. I pitched to a couple of other outlets, and email conversations dwindled to nothing. So here it is, three weeks later. The spread of COVID-19 has reignited anti-Asian bigotry in the United States, particularly following…
Nudge nudge
The UK government’s initial response to COVID-19 of reliance solely on a combination of nudge theory and assumed herd immunity, combined with a more recent criticism of some of the people and work underlying the policy,(1) got me thinking about the different responses to nudge theory and behavioral economics I’ve encountered. The first memorable introduction…
More on privacy and security
As a companion to my brief overview, this post focuses on browser and networking considerations. Hardening Your Browser Because everyone uses a browser, these pieces of software can present a significant security risk if they’re not kept updated. However, tracking of your browsing activities, as Google Chrome does, presents a threat to privacy (and potentially…
Some reflections on online teaching
At the end of our second term, all teaching was shifted to online delivery because of concerns relating to the novel coronavirus and the related illness. For me, this meant I had to deal with two new preps, one on a completely new topic, all in the course of a couple of weeks. This was…