 |
| Looking for something different at mid-semester to get your students thinking and your classroom energy flowing? “Two Truths and a Lie” may seem a little worn out as a first-day ice breaker, but Stephen L. Chew has a great idea for how to use the same game to engage students with key concepts in your course materials. |
Teaching Tips
Articles and resources to empower your teaching experience.
Characteristics of Good College-Level Writing
 |
In my W101, in most class periods, students do a graded in-class writing (ICW) assignment. A few weeks ago, I did an experiment: I required students to use a large language model (LLM) like ChatGPT or Gemini to do the ICW.
I gave them the following instructions: “Use an LLM of your choice to write a response to the ICW prompt.
Taking a Midterm Moment
 |
As faculty, we are not generally in the habit of taking time to pause and appreciate our accomplishments. There is always the next class meeting to plan, the next set of grading to finish, the next book order to submit. And those are only the things on the “classes” section of our to-do lists.
So let me take a post-fall break minute to say congratulations and well done on making it halfway through the fall semester! On
Mixing it up at Midterm Time
When October fatigue hits us and our students at the same time, occasionally it is tempting, against all of our better Denison instincts, to take the path of least resistance and just provide information and hope that students are listening. For days when you feel yourself working to resist that impulse, “3 Ways to Liven Up Your Lectures” has some great tips and reminders for small changes to help keep your students (and yourself) engaged with the material and one another.
Helping Our Students Connect with Each Other
It’s easy to assume that on a small campus like Denison, our students are already well-socialized and highly connected with one another before they ever get to our classrooms. But in the wake of Covid-19 and other dynamics of the 2020s, even Denison students often need some coaching to connect with each other. “Why One Professor Fosters Friendship in her Courses” offers some specific reasons and strategies for encouraging student connections, and if you take a minute to ask around, your Denison colleagues probably have even more!
AI Feedback on Writing: The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly
Students frequently ask AI for feedback on their writing, so we need to teach them how to interpret that feedback. This week I am sharing some materials I developed to do that. In my W101, when students peer review rough drafts, I am now integrating lessons on AI feedback. I teach an 80-minute class, and during the first half, students work in pairs on a traditional peer review exercise.
Helping Our Students Make Connections
In the lively Teaching Matters conversation last week about “Why We Teach,” a colleague raised this question: How do we help our anxiety-laden students make connections between our classroom learning goals and the other things they are trying to accomplish in college?
One of those student goals is building a career path, but as academic faculty, we don’t always feel prepared to talk to students about how the thinking they do in our courses might connect to possible professions beyond academia. We
Teaching: 5 ways students can think about learning so that they can learn more- and how their teachers can help
 |
| By week 5 of the semester, the rubber has hit the road, and our students can be feeling (and acting) overwhelmed. Providing consistent messaging about the challenges and value of the learning process is one of the many things that we can offer that can help them to build their own life coping strategies in the long run. |
Teaching: Supporting Our Students as Readers
 |
| As we navigate the fourth week of classes, you may be experiencing that moment when your summer vision of the semester, so carefully laid out in your syllabus, starts to bump up against your students’ busy schedules and reading habits. Although a quiet day in class may sometimes mean that students didn’t do the reading, John Orlando observes that other times it means that “many students simply didn’t get the needed information out of the assigned texts.” |
Teaching: A Fall Equinox Strategy- Accentuate the Positive
 |
| I know that I’m taking a risk here with this week’s title, throwing it out blithely to an audience professionally trained to be skeptical of the positive and always to look carefully and deeply for the potential negatives of any situation. But please (please!) bear with me.
As we officially head into autumn, with its dwindling daylight hours, intensifying grading loads, fluctuating student (and faculty) energy, and seemingly perpetual chaos in our information streams, it can be easy to focus on frustrations and challenges in the classroom. One |