Monthly Archives: January 2025

Slack Etiquette at Work

Instructors: Download PDFs of the exercise and its key at the bottom of this post.

In many workplaces, employees communicate with one another using the collaboration platform Slack, which was designed to mirror a social media network. For this reason users sometimes forget they are composing work messages and fall into overly casual language. To ensure that communicators demonstrate professionalism on texting platforms such as Slack, they should consider the following etiquette guide:

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Should Grades Be Abolished? Some Say Yes.

The numbers tell the grim tale of a college grading system that is broken. In 1950, the average GPA at Harvard was an estimated 2.6 out of 4. By 2003, it had risen to 3.4. Today, it stands at 3.8. The more elite the college, the more lenient the standards, but the problem is also prevalent at less selective colleges. Across all four-year colleges in the United States, the most commonly grade awarded is now an A.

This grade inflation has made the A lose its significance as the highest achievement. The roots of the problem are manifold. High tuition has led universities to treat their charges as customers instead of students, and students (and their parents) like seeing As. To add to the situation, some academics loathe assessment and grading, preferring instead to focus on teaching. They say they do not want to participate in a broken system that uses grades as a measure helping nonacademics eliminate graduates from fellowships, graduate programs, and high-paying jobs.

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Taking Advantage of the First 10 Minutes of Class

We all do it—judge the first ten minutes of a movie to decide if we will continue watching—give a boring conversation perhaps ten minutes before we bail—decide within the initial moments of a first date whether there will be a second.

Our students evaluate a class session, too. If we haven’t grabbed them within the first ten minutes, we have lost them. But how to pull in our distracted and anxious Gen Z students? A recent article in The Teaching Professor offers invaluable advice that is especially applicable in the business communication classroom.

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