Originally published at Mike Cosgrave. You can comment here or there.

For a couple of years now, the question of fixing our creaking Arts degree has been floating round, and there is to be another round of “review” this year.  Based on previous experience of reforms and new programmes, I think it is an impossible task, and we are better off starting ( Read more... )

Originally published at Mike Cosgrave. You can comment here or there.

First week of full term, and I am installed in my new office and dealing with changed and new courses - changes to Hi3112 International Organisations, and a new course Hi0090, Personal Development, which is basically a leadership course which I am looking forward to. Until it gets ( Read more... )

Originally published at Mike Cosgrave. You can comment here or there.

August is often a quiet month, as people straggle back  from beach to desk and and the new academic year, but this month has produced a fine crop of early autumnal fruit from the blog tree. This months History Canrival is a mixed bag of riots, roadways, building walls and ( Read more... )

Originally published at Mike Cosgrave. You can comment here or there.

Crowds in revolutions are fascinating for the historian as we try to unpick and explain to our students how the “Paris Mob” operated so the tweets from the revolutions of the “Arab Spring” are not only a wonderful document of a struggle for democracy, but also a case study in ( Read more... )

Originally published at Mike Cosgrave. You can comment here or there.

I had to explain why “Fourth Generation Warfare” is important for organizations last weekend at the Burren Slow Food Fleadh, and I thought I might set down a quick version of  it here . We are all familiar with the old model of hierarchical organizations, but we are lagging a bit ( Read more... )

Originally published at Mike Cosgrave. You can comment here or there.

Quoting O’Bama is a cheap trick this week, but it is a good headline to address the issue of the plethora of campaigns for reform that have spring up as a result of our current economic woes. Most focus on constitutional reform, or on fixing our banking laws, in the hope that we ( Read more... )

Originally published at Mike Cosgrave. You can comment here or there.

I’ve just seen more evidence that academic publishing, and the research assessment mechanisms based on it, are fatally broken - yet another over priced journal on a narrow field and three books I should read priced at $180 each. I don’t agree with burning books, but I’ll happily ( Read more... )

Originally published at Mike Cosgrave. You can comment here or there.

The best time to plan next years courses is right after this year’s end and I am already sketching out some revisions to my options for the coming year. Some old assessments are going, some new stuff is in and one course is going in reverse.
( Read the rest of this entry » )

Originally published at Mike Cosgrave. You can comment here or there.

The wargame design mid-term has demonstrated that students with little or no prior experience can create one page wargames based on battles from extended “The Age of Battles”, roughly 1494 to 1865. It has been the mid-term assignment for my second year class since 2008, and it ( Read more... )

Originally published at Mike Cosgrave. You can comment here or there.

On #twitterhistorians this morning there is a question from Adam Crymble -” What should a mobile ap for historians be able to do?” which is important and interesting. It is provoked by the fact that there is grant money to spent, in Canada, on such an app for Environmental ( Read more... )