My name is Philip Kirkbride. I’m a college graduate from Ontario studying at AU. I’ve always wanted to do an exchange program or study abroad but never found the right time to do so. This is part twelve in the story of how Athabasca University has allowed me to create my own study abroad program…. Read more »

In the movie Her, a lonely man named Theodore Twombly falls in love with his operating system. The digital personality seems to know Theodore better than the humans around him do. Farfetched? Not according to a new study that claims our computers can judge our character more accurately than friends and family can. As The… Read more »

There is nothing more that The Study Dude wants for you than to know not just how to write a dissertation upon your acceptance into graduate studies, but also how to apply the principles to your undergraduate essay writings in the meantime. Well, in these articles, as The Study Dude, I’ll try to give you… Read more »

Who needs a travel alarm clock when she has a smart phone? Who needs a Rolodex, quaint little purse-sized address book, or the five-pound Yellow Pages when everyone who’s anyone can be Googled? Who needs two-way radios when everyone and his brother have a cell phone? These are just some of the thoughts rattling around… Read more »

Meetings that achieve a certain flow can be deceivingly hypnotic, like a soothing zephyr. For me, Wednesday’s AUSU council meeting began on the right foot, because I was able to get an agenda for the meeting. Trying to follow a meeting over the phone without an agenda is challenging, especially when I want to write… Read more »

Dear Barb: I am the oldest of four; I have two younger sisters and one younger brother. My parents have always been hard on me and I tried to accept this because I was the oldest and had to set an example for the younger ones. When my youngest brother was in his early twenties… Read more »

Mehmet Polat is a Turkish master of the oud (the Arabic lute), a musician noted for having developed new techniques in his playing and for mixing different musical traditions (Turkish, Arabic, Azerbaijan, Persian, Indian, Flamenco, and Jazz, to name a few) in his compositions. Along with the Mehmet Polat Trio (with Sinan Arat playing ney… Read more »

Artist: The Bone Chimes Single: “High Line” Music has a way of becoming part of our everyday lives. Personally, there is nothing I love more than creating and listening to a personal soundtrack when I am out and about in the world. The songs on my playlist are typically not of the average pop music… Read more »

“Allan Pinkerton . . . saw the way the police went about their work, and he didn’t like it, so he came up with a new methodology for solving crime. My writing partner Kevin Abrams and I are the same way. We looked at the way television was created and developed, and wanted to do… Read more »

Happy New Year! Let’s kick off 2015 by starting out small. Very small, that is?we’ll spend a few weeks sorting through the world of acronyms, initialisms, and other small but tricky abbreviations. This week we’ll look at how to label them and when to use the long form. In later installments we’ll get into issues… Read more »