Articles and resources to empower your teaching experience.
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Whenever colleagues invite me to observe their classes for formative feedback, I always ask them to share two or three aspects they’re working on where they’d appreciate some constructive input. For instance, they could be aiming to engage more students, attempting to summarize the class within the last five minutes, or simply organizing their board work more effectively.
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Does your students’ writing seem vague? As we approach the final weeks of the semester and brace ourselves for the onslaught of paper revisions, John Orlando offers a fresh perspective that might hold the key to addressing this issue. In his insightful article, Writing versus Thinking Skills: A False Dichotomy, he posits that writing problems extending beyond basic grammar and spelling errors are, in fact, manifestations of muddled thinking.
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When I started teaching last century, I was hyper-sensitive about avoiding mistakes. Or at least that was my intent. However, welcoming mistakes and ambiguity in the classroom can spark your students’ curiosity. In their Chronicle article, How to Embrace Uncertainty in Your Teaching, Murphy and Levison give five simple ways to spark curiosity, including pursuing the unanticipated in class discussions and modeling not knowing (something I’ve grown more honest about).
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Over the past several decades, considerable scholarship has focused on conditions that promote students’ learning, retention, and transfer of academic knowledge. The term ‘science of learning’ is often used to describe this field of specialization. My center colleague, Dr. Chris Hakal, recently shared the free e-book In their own words: What scholars and teachers want you to know about why and how to apply the science of learning in your academic setting, which explores the history, principles, application, and practice of the ‘science of learning.
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I always prided myself on returning feedback to students right away – usually by our next meeting. This required some forethought from me – collect on Friday to return on a Monday – but I thought it was pedagogically significant to get things back into their hands ASAP. Some recent studies show this might not be the case: Delayed and Immediate Feedback in the Classroom: The Results Aren’t What Students Think! |
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At this time last year, professors reported widespread anxiety, depression, and a lack of motivation in their classrooms. Hopefully, this year is faring better, but we can use our recent break to reset the tone in our classes if things have drifted. This Chronicle article, How to Solve the Student-Disengagement Crisis, provides tips from six experts on how to keep students engaged. |
As Process Advisor for Academic Integrity, I often see the aftermath of an integrity violation. But what if we, as faculty members, could craft our courses and assignments to reduce students’ temptation to cheat? In his short article “10 Ways to Prevent Cheating: Ten simple strategies to reduce academic dishonesty that don’t rely on students’ ethics,” Steven Mintz argues, “In the end, cheating is as much an engineering problem as a moral problem.
In her piece, So Over COVID!, Prof. Lisa Lawmaster Hess shares her frustration with student attendance and participation. But she explains how an in-clas discussion with her first-year students revealed much she hadn’t consider. She writes, “During their sophomore year (of high school), everything had shut down. During their junior year, classes were hybrid. And senior year?
We are well into the testing season. Whether you’ve given that first test or are preparing to, here are some quick ideas I got from a webinar from Dr. Diana Skrzydlo (University of Waterloo) on assessment.
Before the test:
When reviewing test topics in class, have students practice metacognition by actively rating their understanding of each topic.
Many of us use the active classroom technique known as minute paper, which provides an opportunity to quickly assess students’ understanding of the lesson’s main point. Unfamiliar with the practice or want to take it to the next level?
