It's time for York University to build in margin to its official schedule for "snow day" events. As I've discussed before, we should design and manage our university's infrastructure and processes to reflect the reality that we have to operate in the winter. Today, January 15, 2026, a snow storm has hit southern Ontario, including […]
I opened up eClass today and saw this big disclaimer for the new AI system that management has added to the platform. I don't even know where to start with this. I suspected something like this was coming but I don't recall any real collegial conversation with management about its plans for implementing this. I'd […]
There are a lot of discussions at York University regarding the student status of individuals here at York University. The issue is complex and affects multiple aspects of life at the University. Here, I'm going to tackle one very specific issue: computer user profiles (or IDs). It is very common here at YorkU for an […]
It's the April 2025 exam system and it's clear to me that the Student ID system here at YorkU is completely broken. I've previously written about how silly it was to rely on cell phones as ID cards. And, in parallel to this, the administration at YorkU has also permitted the use of just about […]
York University hides a lot of health and safety documents behind the Passport York wall. The "YU-Link" set of pages was introduced about ten years ago and, in the process, many documents that were previously accessible are now locked away and hard to obtain. In other words, this means that many important documents cannot be […]
The York University community is hearing all kinds of messaging about restructuring these days and it's important to provide some context as to what is behind it and examples of other restructurings, like those that were forced on the City of Toronto by Mike Harris and Doug Ford that did not deliver on the promises […]
Piracy of professor-authored teaching material is rampant. I've written about it before. Students and teaching staff have uploaded my material to Course Hero and I'm not happy about it. In spite of requesting that they don't do it, they still do it. I write explicit footnotes in my documents saying not to do it, and […]
Incoming engineering and computer science students often ask "which computer should I get?" when preparing for university life. I tackled this a few years ago on Twitter and in my previous blog posts, each year from 2020 onward. The basics remain the same: Laptops are useful tools Macs are fine for most students Windows may be required […]
Last month I posted about why it's important for my students to be careful when (not if!) they use AI chatbots like Bing / ChatGPT. Today, I turned on Bing and noticed this disclaimer: Frankly, that's good to see. These chatbots are interesting and potentially useful tools, but one must be cautious when using them. […]
On August 4, 2023 the YorkU community was told that just days earlier the whole University, including students, was no longer requiring physical identification cards: "As of July 31, all incoming students to York University will receive their YU-card digitally" By "digitally" we mean having identification information on a cell phone or "smart watch" similar, […]