Have you thought how an online course could help you learn differently than an in-class one? This post is about ways of learning that online courses can offer. In the past two terms, I have been teaching both online and in-class graduate courses. The general sentiment is still in favor of in-class courses. I say... Continue Reading →
On September 25, 2015, the UN Sustainable Development Summit takes place in New York to approve a set of 17 global sustainable development goals (SDGs) and 169 targets for the next 15 years. The title for the document is Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. The first goal is to end poverty in... Continue Reading →
Presented with the question as to ‘why you ended up in research’ in the first ever Starting Investigators Workshop by the CIHR's Institute of Population and Public Health (IPPH) in Ottawa, I said, "my interest in research dates back five generations in our family.” I was kidding, obviously. Yet, there is a tinge of truth in... Continue Reading →
I sometimes wonder what would it be like to live a gender-blind society, where surgeons, managers, and pilots were not assumed to be males, and fly attendants, waiters, nurses, and cleaners were not assumed to be females.
When I was a kid, I loved to hear the story of Dayw-Mayw. Dayw means Monster. Mayw does not mean anything. But if Dayw is Monster, then Mayw could be its antithesis -- a silly phonetic logic. The story goes like this. A young boy lives with his only grandma alive. They have a cow to survive... Continue Reading →
Since publishing the blog on knowledge translation, I have received a number of questions about what knowledge is, how it is produced, how we save it, and different forms of it. I find them all related and provide a brief summary of them all through reviewing a book. I am warning that this reading might... Continue Reading →
This blog was first published on March 24, 2010. It is edited and revised on its 7th anniversary. Do you remember your parents or grandparents shouting into a telephone, forcing their voice to reach the other end? The voice was the loudest if the call was intercontinental. My dad is much better these days,... Continue Reading →
On the first day of spring 2017, the day of Nawroz, they have produced a report on happiness and called it World Happiness Report only to say that the developing, the poor, and the third world countries are also the unhappier countries. Are you serious? I am celebrating this Nawruz in St. John's Newfoundland, Canada,... Continue Reading →
Speaking of suicide again, have you thought about the way we talk about it? We say commit suicide. I have done it too. One of my students in an online discussion raised this excellent point regarding the way we frame people into conditions through the use of our language. I want to quote her here, "saying a... Continue Reading →
Some stories are made in heaven. They are the kind of stories that start with once upon a time. They are the kind of stories that go down the history as legends because if they were told as events that happened, people just won't believe them. Unbelievable stories. Miraculous. In the history of soccer champions... Continue Reading →
