Articles and resources to empower your teaching experience.
With all the formalities of the first few weeks behind us, hopefully, your classes have settled into a routine of productive learning. How is the reading going? Often we get frustrated that students are not doing the reading we assign; reading that is critical to course discussion and understanding. The short articles Why Students Won’t Read—and What to Do about It by Chris Hakala and Want Students to Do the Reading?
As we put the finishing touches on our syllabi, here is a quick list of things to consider to make your syllabus more inclusive from this short handout from the STEM Inclusive Excellence Collective at UNC:
Please follow the handout link for a brief explanation of each.
Are you interested in incorporating inclusive teaching practices but unsure where to start? Want to see some examples of inclusive teaching practices in action? Please look at the Inclusive Teaching Visualization Project website, developed by Dr. Addy and her collaborators. View examples in a social science lecture course, STEM laboratory course, or a first-year seminar.
As Daniel Cole notes – You can’t avoid it anymore: students have submitted their papers, and now you have to read, comment on and grade them. How can you give good feedback yet, at the same time, avoid overworking yourself?
Take a look at his two-page article from Inside Higher Ed, Tackling the Stack, for tips on end-of-semester grading.
When colleagues want me to observe their class for formative feedback, I always ask them to share two or three things they are working on in which feedback would be helpful. For example, working to involve more students, trying to summarize class in the last five minutes, organizing my board work, etc. This helps me to focus the observation and provide more useful feedback.
I know there are only a few weeks left, and many eyes are on the exit, but this short article about improving class discussions caught my eye. There were several techniques new to me – warm calling, half-formed thoughts, and doubting-and-believing squares – and can fit in your last few classes to add some variety.
As we near the end of the semester, many of us have projects that students present. These can be high stressors for students and a huge time sink for your course schedule. In this short two-page article, Dr. Traci Levy of Adelphi University describes a presentation format she calls the Presentation Cafe. On Presentation Cafe days, she divides the class into presentation slots, scheduling three or four groups to present simultaneously depending on class size.
Like many of us, I relaxed my due dates as we struggled with the pandemic. Now that we have just passed the second anniversary of the national lockdown, I’m beginning to reflect on my choices. On the one hand, I can point to certain students who benefited from this more empathetic approach (not a word that is often used to describe me), but doesn’t the “real world” operate on deadlines?
I don’t know about you, but this semester has been particularly bumpy for me with inclement weather and illnesses. Sometimes we need to take a step back and realize why we chose this career path. The Faculty Focus article, “Reclaiming the Joy of Teaching,” is a great article to peruse over the spring break.
Like newspapers, which may be read one day over morning coffee and may be used, as my grandmother did, to wrap vegetables the next day, student evaluations have second, subsequent, and multiple lives. In the classroom, student evaluations are usually resurrected at the mid and endpoints of the semester, but discussing prior course evaluations with your current students at the beginning of the semester can also help in telling the course’s story and the argument it’s trying to make through the act of re-seeing course readings and assignments.
