ProfHacker.com is a site that aims to improve on all aspects of academic life.
Want to know the worst practices for e-mail? There’s a post for that.
Having issues with Facebook’s privacy settings? There’s a post for that.
Craving a recipe for sweet potato muffins? There’s a post for that too.
The idea that any aspect of academic life is worth improving is the main focus of the ProfHacker Web site, a blog that was started by two English professors and is now getting 10,000 views a week. The site is intended for anyone in higher education and is considered an intersection of a tech blog, a productivity blog and a pedagogy (the study of teaching) blog by founder Jason B. Jones, a professor at Central Connecticut State University.
The site first came to be last summer when the two founders, Jones and George Williams, an assistant professor of the University of South Carolina Upstate, decided they wanted to create a site that was dedicated to the ideals of openness and sharing and would look at what works and what doesn’t in everyday academic life. The name ProfHacker comes from the idea of “life hacks” or “mind hacks.”
“The (name comes from) the idea that you can optimize or customize aspects of your life that would otherwise be counterproductive or tedious,” Jones said. “We have common problems, or face common situations, and so if we drag them out into the open and work on them together, we can improve them.”
These problems include how to schedule students’ appointments online, developing policies for late assignments and finding the best way to create online writing groups. Jones thinks that professors should look at the site to learn more about things that are under an “assumed knowledge,” or the thought that everyone might know how to create something, such as a syllabus, even though that isn’t true. ProfHacker tries to include ways for viewers to get past the “assumed knowledge.”
“It’s interesting to learn about the diversity of approaches, and to see people arguing for or against their particular choices, both because it exposes you to new ways of thinking, but also because you can see that maybe you’re right,” Jones said.
While most of the posts relate to problems professors might encounter, there are also posts that could be valuable to students. There are two students among the various contributors to the site, who are all from different colleges and universities.
“Posts that relate to getting work done during the academic calendar will apply to (students) directly,” Jones said. “I don’t think it can hurt to see how professors talk about pedagogy.”
The posts can also be applied to help students work with their professors, Williams said.
“Many students wish their professors did things more efficiently, so by seeing these posts, students can encourage their professors to use certain tools to be more efficient,” Williams said.
The site has posts that suggest ways to be more efficient using methods other than just a Google document or Excel spreadsheet. A “tag cloud” that shows the different tags from each post includes the tags “twitter,” “paperless” and “flickr.” A recent post shows how to eat lunch more efficiently by buying Japanese bento boxes.
“The site is not so much about using technology, but it is more about sharing ideas to help with the responsibilities we have in higher education,” Williams said. “We want to reduce the friction that can get in the way of achieving things efficiently.”
paigecornwell@dailynebraskan.com
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