Page 95 – The Cengage Blog

Virtual Currency Transactions: Revised IRS FAQ And Enforcement Activities

Posted on April 3, 2020 (November 21, 2023) by Michael Britt

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 […]

The Business Of A Private Foundation

Posted on April 3, 2020 (April 3, 2024) by Michael Britt

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 […]

Start with the STUDENTS rather than the discipline

Posted on April 2, 2020 (November 21, 2023) by Michael Britt

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 […]

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

Posted on April 2, 2020 (November 21, 2023) by Michael Britt

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 […]

Where To Find Images You Can Use In Your Teaching

Posted on April 2, 2020 (November 21, 2023) by Michael Britt

Word cloud containing words like CC, Creative Commons, non-commercial, licenses, rights, share, work, etc.

Reading Time: 3 minutesMany faculty like to use photos in their presentations, but finding images that are open to the public is difficult and of course we want to model to our students the ethical use of web images. Here are some suggestions. 1. Google Search Many faculty get their images from a Google search and you can […]

Xenophobia: An Ugly Byproduct of Covid-19

Posted on April 1, 2020 (November 22, 2023) by cengage

"Virus has no nationality" and a person holding up a sign that says "stop"

Reading Time: 3 minutesJanet Mizrahi is a continuing lecturer of professional writing at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She is also an author at BizCommBuzz. As if COVID-19 weren’t ugly enough, we are now seeing another offshoot of the pandemic’s effect: xenophobia. Before so many campuses shut down, students and instructors were understandably edgy about every […]

Why Don’t People Respond to Your Emails?

Posted on April 1, 2020 (November 21, 2023) by Michael Britt

Reading Time: 2 minutesStudents know how it feels: you spend hours crafting the perfect email—and then nothing. You refresh and refresh, check on your phone, laptop, and desktop. We know how it feels. Here are three common reasons and suggested responses for each. Sometimes having the language helps, and of course, these can be adjusted to the situation and […]

Using Transitions for Paragraph Cohesion

Posted on April 1, 2020 (November 21, 2023) by Michael Britt

Reading Time: 2 minutesGood paragraphs are built by using transitional expressions to glue ideas together, creating a logical and cohesive whole. Skilled writers use several techniques to make paragraphs stick together. One such technique is transitional expressions. Transitional Expressions are words and phrases that: add information show time or order clarify show cause and […]