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My former colleagues at another university in Middle East have also been moved to online teaching indefinitely, with the students…
If much of the interest of high-quality papers lies between the lines—in the metaphorical fire that a paper lights in…
I would also recommend that potential grad students make inquiries into how far the compensation package actually goes towards cost…
It’s a mix. I’m still in the UAE with my family, and we feel safe. But some students and faculty…
In the above comment, Michel wrote: “As an aside, every once in a while I check out how the chatbots…
I could imagine LLMs having saved me a *ton* of time in graduate school–e.g., by having supplied reasonable answers to…
The McMaster Department of Philosophy has now put together the following notice commemorating Barry: Barry Allen: A Philosophical Life Barry…
IHE story here, which, unfortunately, implies (falsely) that most philosophy courses are taught via the Socratic method.
ADDENDUM: Manyul Im (Fairfield) writes: "I'd be interested in what people think about an online degree in philosophy, having taught a few online courses myself and still trying to sort out the issues in my own mind. I expect there's hearty disagreements among philosophers." I've opened this for comments from readers.
I think it's great!
As for advantages of online philosophy courses — from my experience it creates students with better writing abilities because they are required, by circumstance, to voice more of their views and hold more of their discussions with the class and professor in text. Consequently, I find it more important to supplement certain courses with one of the many 'how to write philosophy' books (such as "Writing Philosophy" by Vaughn or "Doing Philosophy" by Feinberg & Shafer-Landau), or even having an entire separate course.
As for disadvantages — depending upon the extent of audio/video lectures and discussion, it can be much more difficult to be 'in-tune' with a class. I cannot use visual cues to let me know whether the majority of the class is understanding a topic. Also, since it takes longer to type a question than voice it, then a student may have less time to sit down and ask all the questions he or she has in mind. I'm sure many of us can recall sitting in our professor's office for half an hour just asking questions about the material, throwing out ideas, and so forth : )
Clearly there are many more aspects that should be considered for online courses and programs, but these are just a few that stuck out to me.
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