Posts Tagged ‘supportive learning environment’
May 7 - Witness the Struggle: the Gifts of Presence, Silence, and Choice
By: Patricia Kohler-Evans, PhD and Candice Dowd Barnes, PhD in Teaching and Learning
I have long pondered a phrase I learned from a mentor: “Witness the struggle.” Frances, my mentor, used the phrase when she talked about working with students in emotional pain. She was referring to those students who sometimes lash out in frustration over missed assignments, family dynamics, or other stressful life issues. As a career educator, I have a deep desire to help students and a strong tendency to offer solutions and suggestions. I want to fix their problems and tell them what to do. The wise words of this phrase offer a more powerful and profound answer to the part of me that thinks I need to rescue students. Its simple urging suggests that I be fully engaged and present, that I use silence to clear a space, and that I guard against telling students what to do. More often than not, students simply need to know that their voices count, that they have been heard, and that who they are matters.
March 8 - Classroom Management: Finding the Balance Between Too Rigid and Too Flexible
By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD in Effective Classroom Management
For quite some time now I’ve been interested in a widely held set of assumptions faculty make about the need to assert control at the beginning of a course. The argument goes something like this: When a course starts, the teacher needs to set the rules and clearly establish who’s in charge. If the course goes well, meaning students abide by the rules and do not challenge the teacher’s authority, then the teacher can gradually ease up and be a bit looser about the rules. The rationale behind this approach rests on the assumption that if a teacher loses control of a class, it is very hard to regain the upper hand. In these cases, student behaviors have compromised the climate for learning so seriously that the teacher has an ethical responsibility to intervene and reassert control.
January 28 - Love the One You’re With: Creating a Classroom Community
By: Cynde Gregory in Effective Classroom Management
It’s the first day of class. They shuffle in, spot similar life-forms, and slip in with that group. Hipsters sporting wild hair and tats, buttoned-up and serious young scholars, middle-aged moms and dads, maybe a couple of aging hippies. One or two sad souls choose spots isolated from the others; they don’t want to identify with them for reasons of insecurity, arrogance, or something else.
January 11 - Students Place a Premium on Faculty Who Show They Care
By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD in Teaching and Learning
Most teachers know that caring for students is important, but do they realize just how important? A recent article by Steven A. Meyers offers a succinct, well-referenced, and persuasive review of research that addresses the topic. It begins with what most teachers already know: Caring is regularly identified as one of the ingredients or components of effective instruction. What many teachers do not know is that students value the dimensions of caring more highly than teachers do.
December 7 - Online Student Retention Strategies: A Baker’s Dozen of Recommendations
By: Michael Jazzar in Online Education
Despite the tremendous growth of online education programs, student retention for online courses remains problematic. The attrition rate from online universities is often cited as 20% to 50% (Diaz, 2002). Studies also reveal that attrition from online programs can be as high as 70% to 80% (Dagger, Wade & Conlan, 2004).
December 3 - Academic Customer Service Shouldn’t be a Dirty Word
By: Christine M. Nowik in Faculty Development
Earlier this year, we kicked off the semester with a faculty development workshop on academic customer service. Academic customer service is a hot and contentious topic on many college campuses, with faculty often reeling at the suggestion that students are customers (and therefore “always right”) or that education is a product intended for consumption. The feedback from our session in August was prickly and some of the comments demonstrated that we were in worse shape than I imagined.
November 16 - The Five R’s of Engaging Millennial Students
By: Mary Bart in Teaching and Learning
The first indication that the Millennial Generation may be different from previous generations is to consider how many different names we have for the generation and the people who belong to it. They’re referred to as Generation Y, Nexters, Baby Boom Echo Generation, Echo Boomers, Digital Natives, Generation Next, Generation Me and, of course, Millennials.
September 28 - The Question of Control in the College Classroom
By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD in Teaching Professor Blog
The August 24 post, What Does Your Syllabus Say About You and Your Course?, in which I asked a series of questions designed to encourage revisiting the syllabus in terms of its role in setting course norms and establishing the tone of the course generated some interesting responses. I am always pleased when a post stimulates reaction, including disagreement. This is how we learn and grow as professionals. It also makes blogs worth reading, in my opinion.
September 28 - Sacrifices to Attend College
By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD in EdTech News and Trends, Teaching Professor Blog
I’m cleaning out my Dad’s apartment and found a letter from the President of Washington State University addressed to my grandfather. The letter tells him that his daughter Barbara (my much loved aunt) has made the All-College Honor Roll for the sixth time and that no student does this without being “thoughtful” and “earnest minded.”
April 1 - Changing Attitudes about Learning
By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD in Teaching and Learning, Teaching Professor Blog
Following up on the previous post, I wanted to write a bit about how teachers might intervene with those students who don’t believe they can learn something, whether it’s math, writing, French, economics, or whatever it is you teach.
