Using MindTap Educator Guides to Plan Your Course

Illustration of User Guide

Reading Time: < 1 minuteMindTap Educator Guides The MindTap educator guides are an incredible resource at your disposal. The guides provide detailed information about content specific to your MindTap solution to help you plan and personalize your course. Studies have shown that students are more likely to engage with—and therefore retain—the course content if it’s been customized by their […]

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Teaching Academic Integrity & Plagiarism Across Disciplines

close-up of the word plagiarism

Reading Time: 3 minutesAcademic Integrity Teaching students the value of academic integrity and the dangers of plagiarism should be part of any college discipline. Learning the importance of original work, intellectual property, and appropriate attribution of source material should not be exclusive to a composition course. It is, however, in such a course where I help my students […]

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What Are the Federal Budget Effects of the Corporate Tax Rate Cut?

Tax Cut Image

Reading Time: 2 minutesContributing Author: Mark Persellin  When the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA) was enacted, the Trump administration (and others) asserted that the legislation would not add to the Federal deficit.  The U.S. Department of Treasury argued that the TCJA would be, at worst, revenue neutral.  The Treasury posited that the TCJA would stimulate economic growth and that the resulting tax revenue increases would more than offset the bill’s tax […]

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Virtual Currency Transactions: Revised IRS FAQ And Enforcement Activities

Image of Virtual Coins

Reading Time: 4 minutesContributing Author: James C Young  In Notice 2014–21 (2014–16 I.R.B. 938), the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) provided some basic answers to questions taxpayers were asking about virtual currency (also called cryptocurrency) like Bitcoin or Ethereum.  Although virtual currency operates like “real” currency in some environments (e.g., the coin and paper money of the United States), it does not have legal tender status in any jurisdiction. In its guidance, the IRS […]

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The Business Of A Private Foundation

Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation building

Reading Time: 4 minutesContributing Author: William A Raabe  The 2018 Budget Act (signed into law on February 9, 2018) included an interesting exception to the long-established rule that a private foundation cannot own an operating for-profit business. SWFT Volume 2 Chapter 15 Exhibit 15.4 points out that an excise tax applies when a private foundation owns more than 20% of the shares of an unrelated […]

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Start with the STUDENTS rather than the discipline

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Reading Time: 2 minutesStart with the students rather than the discipline: this is the 3rd principle from Ken Bain’s book, “What the Best College Teachers Do” (pp. 110-112): …the best teachers start with something that, as [Harvard political theories Michael] Sandel put it, “students care about, know, or think they know… Such an approach often means asking students to […]

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What Do Old Polar Bears and Great Teachers Have in Common? They Know How to Break the Ice!

Image of Students stacking their hands on top of each other at the center of a circle

Reading Time: 4 minutesClass Ice Breakers Polar bears break the ice to survive. Teachers break the ice to thrive. Join this interactive, high-energy webinar and explore ways to use icebreakers and topic starters to socialize, stimulate, motivate, and prime your students for success. Participants will leave with practical strategies they can immediately implement to move students from passive […]

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