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| Three faculty members–Heather Rhodes (HESS), Andrew McWard (Politics & Public Affairs), and Matthew Smalley (English)–shared some of their goals and practices around assigning reading at a recent Teaching Matters session. Their comments naturally coalesced around the pedagogical purposes of assigning reading: as a way to encourage depth, challenge students to think in different ways about the material at hand, and inculcate reflective habits of thinking. |
Teaching Tips
Articles and resources to empower your teaching experience.
Getting to the Far Side
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| Last Wednesday, with the launch of Artemis II, four astronauts headed to the moon–the first human-crewed mission to the moon’s orbit since 1972. In the deluge of our post-spring break weeks, I didn’t even realize it was happening until I saw FB posts about where people were last Wednesday when they were watching it.
As a result of my ROMO (realization of missing out—is that a thing?) |
Slowing Down for Thinking
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| Thinking takes time. In our culture of speed and instant gratification, our students don’t necessarily come into our classrooms recognizing or valuing the time required to think deeply about things, so it’s important to create space in our classrooms to help them slow down, even–or especially–at this frantic time of year.
In this short essay, “I Made My Students Write by Hand. |
Relationships Matter
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| Why is building social and professional networks on campus important to us, what strategies work, and what would help us to build more connections? It is important to network beyond our departments as we develop our own perspective on professional challenges. Connecting with colleagues outside our disciplines benefits not only our teaching and scholarship but our students’ understanding of their liberal arts education. |
Constructing Your Personal Advising Philosophy
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| It is important to think through our own goals as advisers as a part of setting expectations for ourselves and our students. The “Situational Model of Academic Advising Styles” has four quadrants (Guardian, Accountant, Endorser, Mentor) and recognizes that we shift among versions of these different approaches depending on the needs of particular students at different stages of their Denison careers. |
Teaching “Efficiently”
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| When you have 90 seconds between advising sessions, please take a look at our Read of the Week: Alan Levinovitz’s brief Chronicle essay, “Efficiency Isn’t Everything,”
This may seem like a strange topic for April and advising season, when time is of the essence. But I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the tension between arguments for the inevitability and value of embracing the “efficiency” of AI in the workplace and insufficiently explored questions about the place of “efficiency” in our classrooms and our students’ learning processes. |
Gauging Student Learning in the Age of AI
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| This edition’s read of the week is a pairing for your reading pleasure: 2 essays that work together well to underline the importance of rethinking our learning goals and what exactly we are assessing in our students work in our AI era–their ability to produce an output, their ability to think through, understand, and explain what they have produced, or a bit of both. |
Spring Cleaning
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| As I was preparing to head back to class this week, I was thinking about Marie Kondo. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve never read a single one of her books about “tidying up”–as anyone who lives in my house can attest. But I do know that her name is now synonymous with decluttering, with an emphasis on letting go of anything that no longer serves a clear purpose for you or “sparks joy.” |
Teaching Toward Slow Hope
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| Looking for an inspiring read? Try this interview with Douglas Haynes about his new book, Teaching for Slow Hope: Place Based Learning in College and Beyond.
Haynes says, “So, when I discuss collaboration in this book, I’m not just talking about assigning students to do more group projects. This, too, is important work that builds students’ communication and listening skills, as well as empathy, organization and more. |
Teaching Across the Liberal Arts
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As usual for Teaching Matters sessions, the conversation last Thursday (3/5) was rich with idea-sharing. We were talking about what “moves” we make in our classroom to help our students see the connections between all of their courses and articulate how their liberal arts education has impacted them. Here’s a list of some of our ideas:
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