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Journey of Joy: Teaching Tips for Reflection, Rejuvenation and Renewal

Mary Bart — Thu, 13 Sep 2012 16:00:08 +0000

Teaching and Learning Reflections for College Faculty

Journey of Joy: Teaching Tips for Reflection, Rejuvenation and Renewal

This ebook is about pursuing a joyful journey in college teaching. Part memoir and part advice for others, it is meant to encourage and inspire faculty who may have fallen out of love with teaching.

The thrill is gone makes for a great blues song, but it also can be an accurate, albeit unfortunate, description of how experienced teachers may sometimes feel.

Patty H. Phelps, EdD knows what it’s like. A few years ago, she says, her teaching life had reached what felt like a dead end. She would see articles in her local newspaper about faculty who were retiring and longed to be one of them. At the time, she was “going through the motions” and had definitely lost her joy of teaching.

Today Phelps, a professor at the University of Central Arkansas and director of the Instructional Development Center on campus, has her joy back. In Journey of Joy: Teaching Tips for Reflection, Rejuvenation and Renewal she shares her experiences and offers advice to guide others to more joyful teaching. From building connections with students in new, unexpected ways to celebrating even minor victories, the ebook is loaded with practical tips for keeping your teaching fresh and invigorated.

She writes: “We often hear the advice of ‘focus on the students.’ But, what exactly does this mean? I have found that it involves first getting the focus off self. However, it also entails giving of myself—my creative energies, my thought processes, my time and attention, and my expertise. I am pleased to report that my teaching joy has been restored.”

This 32-page ebook is divided into 21 sections, each with its own set of tips for getting out or staying out of a teaching rut. The sections include:

The Meaning of J.O.Y.
Looking in the Mirror
Joy Zappers
Joy Boosters
Make It Authentic
The Golden Triangle of Teaching
“Can We Go Outside?”
Unexpected Delights
Two Lessons from Daddy about Teaching
“A” for Advising

As a student of teaching for 35 years, Phelps offers her personal perspectives as a means to help others find joy along the way, too. For the past three years she has led a standing-room-only plenary session on joy in teaching at the annual Teaching Professor Conference, inspiring her to create this written work to share with an even larger audience.

Journey of Joy: Teaching Tips for Reflection, Rejuvenation and Renewal

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Faculty Focus contains a wealth of valuable material on all of the key issues that matter to today’s top faculty and administrators. It’s packed with strategies, tips, and other information you can use on the topics that impact your students, your school, and your work, including:

Student Engagement
Instructional Design
Online Education
Classroom Management
Educational Assessment
Teaching with Technology
Faculty Development
Curriculum Development
Trends in Higher Education
And much, much more.

Journey of Joy: Teaching Tips for Reflection, Rejuvenation and Renewal

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Online Student Engagement Tools and Strategies

Mary Bart — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 15:57:30 +0000

A Guide to Engaging Online Students

Online Student Engagement Tools and Strategies

Most online students, even those who are successful, will tell you it takes an extra dose of motivation to stay on top of their assignments compared to the traditional classroom. No wonder online courses have an attrition rate that’s 10 – 20 percent higher than their face-to-face counterparts.

The anytime/anywhere convenience of online learning sometimes makes it too convenient … to procrastinate, forget about, and become otherwise disengaged.

For faculty teaching in the online classroom, this reality underscores the importance of having activities that build student engagement and help create a sense of community among their geographically dispersed students.

Online Student Engagement Tools and Strategies features 11 articles pulled from the pages of Online Classroom newsletter and provides practical advice from online instructors who recognize the value of engagement and its role in student retention and success.

Online Student Engagement Tools and Strategies

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Here are just a few of the articles you will find in this 22-page report:

Engaging Students with Synchronous Methods in Online Courses
Indicators of Engagement in the Online Classroom
Teaching Online With Errol: A Tried and True Mini-Guide to Engaging Online Students
Engage Online Learners with Technology: A Free Tool Kit
Promoting Student Participation and Involvement in Online Instruction: Suggestions from the Front

In short, this special report explains how adjustments in tone, technology, teaching presence and organization can bring positive changes to student learning.

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Student Engagement
Instructional Design
Online Education
Classroom Management
Educational Assessment
Teaching with Technology
Faculty Development
Curriculum Development
Trends in Higher Education
And much, much more.

Online Student Engagement Tools and Strategies

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Social Media Usage Trends Among Higher Education Faculty

Mary Bart — Tue, 13 Sep 2011 17:35:33 +0000

Survey finds faculty divided on social media in the classroom

Social Media Usage Trends Among Higher Education Faculty

The popularity of social media and its rapid ascension into our daily lives is nothing short of astounding. Sites that weren’t even around 10 years ago are now visited every day. What’s more, 56 percent of the faculty surveyed said they expect their use of social media to increase this school year.

Do you friend your students on Facebook?

Do you tweet, or use Twitter in the classroom?

Do you network on LinkedIn, and participate in its groups?

Does your college or university have a social media policy?

For the past two years, Faculty Focus conducted a survey on Twitter usage in higher education. This year we expanded the survey to include Facebook and LinkedIn, while adding a number of new questions as well.

Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn all have their strengths and weaknesses, and each are better used for some things than others. But how are the three being used in higher education today? It’s our hope that these survey results provide at least some of the answers while lending new data to the discussion.

Here are just some of the findings from Social Media Usage Trends Among Higher Education Faculty, a 2011 Faculty Focus survey of nearly 900 higher education professionals:

Facebook is the most popular social media site for the people who took this survey. Nearly 85 percent have a Facebook account, following by LinkedIn at approximately 67 percent and Twitter at around 50 percent.
Thirty-two percent have “friended” an undergraduate student on Facebook; 55 percent said they wait until after the student graduates.
Eighty-three percent allow students to use laptops in the classroom; 52 percent allow smart phones.
Thirty percent said their institution doesn’t have a social media policy. About 40 percent weren’t sure.
Sixty-eight percent have talked to their students about managing their online reputation.

Social Media Usage Trends Among Higher Education Faculty

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Social Media Usage Trends Among Higher Education Faculty includes a complete breakdown of all the questions asked in the survey, as well as narrative comments. In many cases, the comments show a great divide between those who have embraced social media, and those who have not.

Here are just some of the comments, in their own words:

I am quite sure that students are learning less and less because they are distracted by Facebook (primarily) when they should be engaged in the class.

A concern that I have is that some students use social media inappropriately with faculty…e.g. too friendly and exposing personal matters…

I’m a senior faculty member and it took me time to get over my resistance…now, I wouldn’t be without these tools for professional and personal use.

Ever since we adopted the use of social media we’ve had better communication with students and the community. We also use it as an assessment and planning tool. We are using Twitter for an entire program.

I hope that more instructors learn the value/opportunity in using these tools for learning – especially when instructors often use these tools for their own learning.

It is very risky for a professional educator to use social media as a learning tool.

Join the Faculty Focus community for full access to all our special reports!

Student Engagement
Instructional Design
Online Education
Classroom Management
Educational Assessment
Teaching with Technology
Faculty Development
Curriculum Development
Trends in Higher Education
And much, much more.

Social Media Usage Trends Among Higher Education Faculty

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Designing Online Courses: Models for Improvement

Mary Bart — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 14:50:32 +0000

Getting Started with Online Course Design and Development

Designing Online Courses: Models for Improvement

Designing an online course shares many of the same elements and processes that go into designing a traditional face-to-face course, however the online environment brings a unique set of challenges that require special attention and a different approach.

Faculty charged with developing their own online courses can find learning the new technology particularly frustrating, and those who are not early adopters to technology might resist the process entirely. Many institutions are realizing that the development and delivery of online courses is an increasingly complicated process, requiring both a specialized pedagogy and a technological expertise – and it’s rare to find both qualifications in the same person.

In the article “The Collaborative Approach to Developing Online Courses,” the author explains how one university adopted a centralized and standardized approach to the design, development, and management of online programs that respects the talents of both instructional designers and faculty by allowing each to work in their own specialty. As a result, courses have the same quality standards and a more consistent look and feel.

Designing Online Courses: Models for Improvement

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This 20-page special report features eight articles pulled from the pages of Distance Education Report, and covers a variety of different aspects of online course design. Take a look at the articles you will find in the report:

The Collaborative Approach to Developing Online Courses
Building Course Quality Systematically
Who Ya Gonna Call When a Course Needs Help?
Developing a Course Maintenance Process for Your Online Courses
What Learning Object Repositories Mean for Your Program
Practice Simple and Effective Course Design—Use the Learning Experiences Framework
Is There Too Much Interaction in Your Courses?
Rapid Online Course Design: Course Development in Days

Whether you’re developing a new online course from scratch, or updating one that’s starting to show its age, this report will give you new ideas to consider.

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Student Engagement
Instructional Design
Online Education
Classroom Management
Educational Assessment
Teaching with Technology
Faculty Development
Curriculum Development
Trends in Higher Education
And much, much more.

Designing Online Courses: Models for Improvement

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Educational Assessment: Designing a System for More Meaningful Results

Mary Bart — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 14:29:36 +0000

Making Sense of Higher Education Assessment

Educational Assessment: Designing a System for More Meaningful Results

Assessing institutional effectiveness is a noble pursuit, but measuring student learning is not always easy. As with so many things we try to quantify, there’s much more to learning than a number in a datasheet.

When it comes to assessment. Sometimes there are more questions than answers, even after you get the results.

How do you define success?
How do you know what your students are learning?
Are you happy with your assessment results?
Will you use the results to bring changes to learning goals, curriculum, teaching methods, and perhaps the assessments themselves?

Using Assessment Data to Inform and Reform
Assessing student learning outcomes can help institutions understand what students are learning, and where there might be gaps. However, as Trudy Banta notes in her article An Accountability Program Primer for Administrators, “just as simply weighing a pig will not make it fatter, spending millions simply to test college students is not likely to help them learn more.” (p. 6)

Educational Assessment: Designing a System for More Meaningful Results

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This special report Educational Assessment: Designing a System for More Meaningful Results features articles from Academic Leader, and looks at the assessment issue from a variety of different angles to help you a strong assessment program.

Counting Something Leads to Change in an Office or in a Classroom
An Accountability Program Primer for Administrators
An Effective Approach to Generating Questions for Guiding Program Assessment and Reform
The Dash to Dashboards
Collaborating on Rubric Development: A Work in Progress
Surviving Your Regional Accreditation: A Tongue-in-Cheek Reflection
The Faculty and Program-Wide Learning Outcome Assessment
Assessing the Degree of Learner-Centeredness in a Department or Unit
Keys to Effective Program-Level Assessment

Whether you’re looking to completely change your approach to assessment, or simply improve the efficacy of your current assessment processes, we hope this report will help guide your discussions and eventual decisions.

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Student Engagement
Instructional Design
Online Education
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Teaching with Technology
Faculty Development
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Trends in Higher Education
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Educational Assessment: Designing a System for More Meaningful Results

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Teaching with Technology: Tools and Strategies to Improve Student Learning

Mary Bart — Thu, 13 Jan 2011 18:19:27 +0000

Tools of Engagement for Face-to-Face, Blended and Online Teaching

Teaching with Technology: Tools and Strategies to Improve Student Learning

If you’re interested in using technology tools to enhance your teaching, it’s easy to get overwhelmed by the mountain of information out there. To make matters worse, much of what you find is either highly technical or simply not very practical for the college classroom.

That’s why we created this special report. Teaching with Technology: Tools and Strategies to Improve Student Learning approaches teaching technologies from your perspective — discussing what works, what doesn’t, and how to implement the best ideas in the best ways.

Teaching with Technology: Tools and Strategies to Improve Student Learning

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The 13 articles in the report were written by John Orlando, PhD, program director at Norwich University, as part of the popular Teaching with Technology column on Faculty Focus. You’ll find that the articles are loaded with practical information as well as links to valuable resources. Here are the articles featured in the report:

Using VoiceThread to Build Student Engagement
Wikipedia in the Classroom: Tips for Effective Use
Blogging to Improve Student Learning: Tips and Tools for Getting Started
Prezi: A Better Way of Doing Presentations
Why You Should be Using Social Bookmarking Tools
Unleashing Innovation: The Structured Network Approach
Save Time and Teach Better with Screencasting
Integrating Social Media into Online Education
Using Polling and Smartphones to Keep Students Engaged
Lecture Capture: A New Way to Think about Hybrid Courses
Personal Learning Environments Help Students Extend Learning Beyond the Classroom
Education Remix: Unlocking Creativity to Boost Learning
Effective Uses of Video in the Classroom

Whether the courses you teach are face-to-face, online, blended, or all of the above, this report explains effective ways to incorporate technology into your courses to create a rich learning experience for students, and a rewarding teaching experience for you.

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Faculty Development
Instructional Design
Teaching Strategies
Online Education
Classroom Management
Educational Assessment
Faculty Evaluation
Curriculum Development
Trends in Higher Education
And much, much more.

Teaching with Technology: Tools and Strategies to Improve Student Learning

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Twitter in Higher Education 2010: Usage Habits and Trends of Today’s College Faculty

Mary Bart — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 12:08:13 +0000

Second Annual Survey Finds More Professors Using Twitter, but …

Twitter in Higher Education 2010: Usage Habits and Trends of Today’s College Faculty

Is Twitter a powerful learning tool or a colossal waste of time? It depends whom you ask. In its second annual survey on the popular micro-blogging technology, Faculty Focus found a great divide in how professors perceive Twitter, including whether it should be used in the classroom or is best reserved for networking with peers.

The 2010 Faculty Focus survey of nearly 1,400 higher education professionals found that more than a third (35.2 percent) of the 1,372 respondents who completed the survey in July-August 2010 use Twitter in some capacity. That’s up from 30.7 percent in 2009.

Meanwhile, the percentage of people who never used Twitter decreased from 56.4 percent in 2009 to 47.9 percent in 2010. The remaining 16.9 percentage consists of those who tried Twitter, but stopped using —up from 12.9 percent in 2009.

Of those who currently use Twitter, the most common activities include “to share information with peers” and “as a real-time news source.” Instructional uses, such as “to communicate with students” and “as a learning tool in the classroom” are less popular, although both activities saw increases over the previous year.

Non-users expressed concerns that Twitter creates poor writing skills and could be yet another classroom distraction. Many also noted that very few of their students use Twitter. Finally, a new trend that emerged this year centered on the belief that many feel they already have too many places to post messages or check for student questions/comments. As one professor put it, “I have no interest in adding yet another communication tool to my overloaded life.”

In terms of future use, just over half (56.8 percent) of current Twitter users say they expect to increase their use during the coming academic year. Only 2.5 percent say their Twitter use will likely decrease, and 40.7 percent say it will stay about the same.

As we learned from last year’s survey, people have very strong feelings when it comes to Twitter. Not much has changed in that regard. Some still see it as a platform for people to make mind numbing pronouncements on the minutia of everyday life, while others say they use Twitter to build a strong personal learning network (PLN), communicate with students, and stay current.

Twitter in Higher Education 2010: Usage Habits and Trends of Today’s College Faculty

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Here are just a few comments from faculty on how they use Twitter effectively:

Greatest learning tool since Socrates spoke… No I’m not kidding. The access to industry leaders and educators I have developed is second to none!

I find Twitter can be a useful academic tool. It provides immediate access to a world of ideas regarding the implementation of technology into pre-service teacher education.

I’ve found Twitter useful for increasing students’ time thinking about course related content through tweeting supplemental content links and for some very limited student interaction. I’m hoping to encourage more student input.

Twitter has been the most effective, efficient, and cheapest professional development I have had in years.

Twitter is a useful educational tool, administrators need to reward faculty that push their teaching forward using innovative methods, otherwise other faculty see no value in expending time and energy on yet another thing to do.

I’m quite happy with Twitter and what its ability to facilitate dissemination of information to groups in real time, but getting students to adopt it has been the biggest drawback.

Twitter in Higher Education 2010: Usage Habits and Trends of Today’s College Faculty

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Here are a few of the comments from educators who don’t use Twitter:

Too superficial, too instantaneous, leaves no time or space for reflection

My goal as an educator is to get students to think deeply and extend their attention spans. This tool is completely antithetical to both. It is a sign of what is wrong with education today.

Don’t need any more distractions for students. Keep the classroom free from this nonsense.

When I asked my students if they would like me to start using Twitter, they almost universally said ‘no’. Instead, they felt it would be more useful to use Facebook.

I may be an old codger, but between land lines, cell phones, Skype, email, Blackboard, and Facebook, I have enough to keep me busy.

We use Moodle on campus which allows us to communicate using forums, blogs, wikis, etc. I don’t think it is necessary to use every tool available just for the sake of using them. You need to ask yourself if using the tool is actually adding value to the work that you do.

Twitter in Higher Education 2010: Usage Habits and Trends of Today’s College Faculty

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11 Strategies for Getting Students to Read What’s Assigned

Mary Bart — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 12:32:51 +0000

What to do When Students Won’t do the Reading

11 Strategies for Getting Students to Read What’s Assigned

Getting students to take their reading assignments seriously is a constant battle. Even syllabus language just short of death threats, firmly stated admonitions regularly delivered in class, and the unannounced pop quiz slapped on desks when nobody answers questions about the reading don’t necessarily change student behaviors or attitudes. So what can be done?

Despite the correlation between reading and course success, many students remain committed to trying to get by without doing the reading, or only doing it very superficially, or only doing it just prior to exam dates. In return, some exasperated instructors fall into the trap of using valuable class time to summarize key points of the readings.

It’s not a new problem, and clearly we can’t simply bemoan the fact that students don’t read. Furthermore, doing what we’ve been doing — the threats, the endless quizzes, the chapter summaries — has failed to solve the problem. The better solution involves designing courses so that students can’t do well without reading, and creating assignments that require students to do more than just passively read.

11 Strategies for Getting Students to Read What’s Assigned

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Featuring 11 articles from The Teaching Professor, this special report was created to give faculty new ways of attacking an age-old problem. Articles in the report include:

Enhancing Students’ Readiness to Learn
What Textbook Reading Teaches Students
Helping Students Use Their Textbooks More Effectively
Text Highlighting: Helping Students Understand What They Read
When Students Don’t Do the Reading
Pre-Reading Strategies: Connecting Expert Understanding and Novice Learning
Getting Students to Read
Still More on Developing Reading Skills
The Student-Accessible Reading List
How to Get Your Students to Read What’s Assigned
The Use of Reading Lists

Whether your students struggle with the material or simply lack the motivation to read what’s assigned, this report will help ensure your students read and understand what’s assigned.

11 Strategies for Getting Students to Read What’s Assigned

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11 Strategies for Getting Students to Read What’s Assigned

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Promoting Academic Integrity in Online Education

Mary Bart — Fri, 07 May 2010 13:17:22 +0000

Cheating in Online Courses: How Prevalent and What Can You Do About It

Promoting Academic Integrity in Online Education

Although there’s some disagreement as to whether distance education is more susceptible to academic dishonesty than other forms of instruction, what isn’t up for debate is the fact that for as long as there’s been exams, there’s been cheating on exams. The online environment simply opens up a different set of challenges that aren’t typically seen in traditional face-to-face courses.

If you teach online or manage the distance education program for your school, the issue of academic integrity is always top of mind. This free report features nine articles from Distance Education Report that will give you the latest techniques and technologies for mitigating cheating and other unethical behaviors in your online courses.

Promoting Academic Integrity in Online Education

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Ask most people who don’t teach online about the likelihood of academic dishonesty in an online class and you will likely hear concerns about the many ways that students could misrepresent themselves online.

Indeed, concerns about the lack of face-to-face faculty-student interactions have forced online education providers to continuously examine their programs and develop sophisticated approaches to ensure the integrity of their academic programs. As a result, some believe that distance education has done more to align pedagogy, assessments, and learning objectives than many traditional post-secondary programs.

You can read about many of them here in Promoting Academic Integrity in Online Education. The 20-page special report features these articles:

Combating Online Dishonesty with Communities of Integrity
The New News about Cheating for Distance Educators
A Problem of Core Values: Academic Integrity in Distance Learning
Student Authentication: What Are Your Duties Under the HEA Reauthorization?
91 Ways to Maintain Academic Integrity in Online Courses
Remote Proctoring: Key to Secure Exam Administration?
A Chink in Our Armor: Can Technology Provide a True Online Proctored Exam?
Practical Tips for Preventing Cheating on Online Exams
Identity Gift: The Opposite of Identity Theft?

Promoting Academic Integrity in Online Education

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Whether you’re a believer in the honor system, stringent policing or something along the “trust but verify” approach, this report is jam-packed with practical information you can use right away.

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Instructional Design
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Faculty Evaluation
Learning Styles
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Promoting Academic Integrity in Online Education

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Course Design and Development Ideas That Work

Mary Bart — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 15:35:54 +0000

Is it time to freshen up your course structure?

Course Design and Development Ideas That Work

So much of what determines the overall success or failure of a course takes place well in advance of the first day of class. It’s the thoughtful contemplation of your vision for the course — from what you want your students to learn, to selecting the instructional activities, assignments, and materials that will fuel that learning, to determining how you will measure learning outcomes.

Featuring 12 articles pulled from the pages of The Teaching Professor, the report will inspire you to rethink some components of your course, especially if it’s one you’ve taught for a few years and you are feeling in a bit of a rut.

Course Design and Development Ideas That Work

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This special report Course Design and Development Ideas That Work examines this multifaceted issue from a variety of fronts to bring you proven course design alternatives implemented in courses of varying sizes and disciplines.

For example, in the article titled A Large Course with a Small Course Option, we learn about an innovative course design for a large 300-level course. Essentially, the instructor created two options: in one, students attend lectures and take four exams. In the second option, students are responsible for those same lectures and exams, but they also participate in small group discussions and complete a set of writing assignments. The second option was most valued by students who are not very good test-takers or who have a keen interest in the subject.

In the article The Placement of Those Steppingstones, the University of Richmond’s Joe Ben Hoyle compares the placement of steppingstones in a koi pond to the educational processes teachers use to help their students get from point A to point B. Hoyle theorizes that “education stumbles when either the learning points are not sequenced in a clearly logical order or they are not placed at a proper distance from each other.”

Course Design and Development Ideas That Work

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Other articles in Course Design and Development Ideas That Work include:

A Course Redesign that Contributed to Student Success
Pairing vs. Small Groups: A Model for Analytical Collaboration
How Blended Learning Works
Should Students Have a Role in Setting Course Goals?
In-Class Writing: A Technique That Promotes Learning and Diagnoses Misconceptions
A Critique of Scaffolding
A Blog, a Physics Course, and a Change in Student Attitudes
When to Begin the End: The Role and Use of Summary in Course Design

If you’re looking to update an existing course, this report will give you sound strategies to consider.

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Instructional Design
Faculty Development
Teaching Strategies
Distance Learning
Classroom Management
Educational Assessment
Faculty Evaluation
Learning Styles
Curriculum Development
Trends in Higher Education
And much, much more.

Course Design and Development Ideas That Work

Download your copy of this report today! It's FREE to Faculty Focus members.

Teaching Mistakes from the College Classroom

Mary Bart — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 14:42:02 +0000

Faculty Share the Mistakes they Made as Beginning Teachers

Teaching Mistakes from the College Classroom

Think back to your first few years of teaching. If you’re like most educators, you probably made your share of mistakes. Maybe you were too strict … or not strict enough. Perhaps you were so absorbed delivering your course content that you didn’t realize half the class was completely lost. Or maybe you made assumptions about your students that later proved to be false. You’re not alone.

Teaching Mistakes from the College Classroom features 15 reflective essays from instructors who were generous enough to share their early-career missteps in hopes that others can learn from their mistakes.

Teaching Mistakes from the College Classroom

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When Faculty Focus put out a call for articles for this special report on teaching mistakes, we really didn’t know what to expect. Would faculty be willing to share their mistakes for all to see? Would the articles all talk about the same common mistakes, or would the range of mistakes discussed truly reflect the complexities of teaching today?

We were delighted at the response, not only in terms of the number of instructors willing to share their stories with our readers, but by the variety of mistakes and lessons learned. For example, in “You Like Me, You Really Like Me. When Kindness Becomes a Weakness,” Jolene Cunningham writes of her discovery that doing everything you can for your students is not always the best policy.

In “If I Tell Them, They Will Learn,” Nancy Doiron-Maillet writes about her realization that it’s not enough to provide information to students if they don’t have opportunities to then apply what you are trying to teach them.

Other articles in Teaching Mistakes from the College Classroom include:

When Expectations Collide
Things My First Unhappy Student Taught Me
Understanding My Role as Facilitator
Don’t Assume a Student’s Previous Knowledge
Establishing Credibility with Students: It Doesn’t Happen Automatically
Teaching Mistakes: Four Lessons for Beginning Instructors
What Works in One Culture May Not Work in Another
Disaster at the Casino: Betting on Subject Matter Expertise to Win Over Adult Students
On a Frustrating Day or in a Troubled Class, Remember We All Make a Difference
Neglecting to Cultivate a Research-Based Teaching Practice
Becoming Aware of the Instructional Value of Student Writing Samples
Assumptions I Made in the Past and How I Come to Know My Students Now

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Sign up today for the Faculty Focus e-newsletter to gain access to all of our free reports. Like our special reports, the e-newsletter is completely free and will give you the strategies, tips, and insight on the topics that impact your students, your school, and your work, including:

Instructional Design
Faculty Development
Teaching Strategies
Distance Learning
Classroom Management
Educational Assessment
Faculty Evaluation
Learning Styles
Curriculum Development
Trends in Higher Education
And much, much more.

Teaching Mistakes from the College Classroom

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Academic Leadership Qualities for Meeting Today’s Higher Education Challenges

Mary Bart — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 14:25:26 +0000

What Does it Take to Succeed in Higher Education Leadership?

Academic Leadership Qualities for Meeting Today’s Higher Education Challenges

It’s been said that no one dreams of someday becoming an academic administrator. It’s a tough job that’s only gotten more challenging as budgets shrink, public scrutiny rises, and responsibilities continue to grow. It requires a unique skill set – part field general, part mediator, part visionary, and part circus barker – to name just a few. But what does it really take to be an effective leader?

Featuring 13 articles from Academic Leader this special report seeks to provide answers to your biggest leadership questions give guidance to anyone in a campus leadership role.

Academic Leadership Qualities for Meeting Today’s Higher Education Challenges

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Whether you’re an experienced administrator, or just starting out, this report will give you an inside look at what it takes to succeed.

For example, in the article “Leadership and Management: Complementary Skill Sets,” Donna Goss and Don Robertson, explain the differences between management and leadership, and share their thoughts on how to develop leadership skills in yourself and others.

In “Zen and the Art of Higher Education Administration,” author Jeffrey L. Buller shows how the Buddhist practice features many principles for daily life that could benefit academic leaders. Such advice includes “Walk gently, leaving tracks only where they can make a difference.”

In “Techniques of Leadership,” authors Isa Kaftal Zimmerman and Joan Thormann outline specific leadership skills for effectively running meetings, building consensus, and communicating across the institution.

The article “A Formal Approach to Facilitating Change” explains how Northwestern University’s Office of Change Management is structured as well as its operating principles for effectively managing change at the university. The key is to articulate how a change can benefit those directly affected and others not directly affected, to be accountable, and to provide clear criteria for measuring success.

Academic Leadership Qualities for Meeting Today’s Higher Education Challenges

Download your copy of this report today! It's FREE to Faculty Focus members.

Other articles in Academic Leadership Qualities for Meeting Today’s Higher Education Challenges include:

Factors That Affect Department Chairs’ Performance
Changing Roles for Chairs
Becoming a More Mindful Leader
Creating a Culture of Leadership
There’s More to Leadership than Motivation and Ability
10 Recommendations toward Effective Leadership
Hope-Centered Leadership in Practice

Academic leadership roles are changing constantly. This free report will help you be a more effective leader during these challenging times.

Download the report for FREE when you join the Faculty Focus community!

Instructional Design
Faculty Development
Teaching Strategies
Distance Learning
Classroom Management
Educational Assessment
Faculty Evaluation
Learning Styles
Curriculum Development
Trends in Higher Education
And much, much more.

Academic Leadership Qualities for Meeting Today’s Higher Education Challenges

Download your copy of this report today! It's FREE to Faculty Focus members.

Online Course Quality Assurance: Using Evaluations and Surveys to Improve Online Teaching and Learning

Mary Bart — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 14:29:46 +0000

Learn the best survey strategies for improving your online courses

Online Course Quality Assurance: Using Evaluations and Surveys to Improve Online Teaching and Learning

In today’s competitive online learning landscape, students have more options and higher expectations than ever before. Ensuring quality is not just important, it’s critical … and it requires constant vigilance. Simply having an online program is no longer good enough, if it ever was. So what are you doing to ensure the quality of online courses and programs at your institution?

Online Course Quality Assurance: Using Evaluations and Surveys to Improve Online Teaching and Learning

Download your copy of this report today! It's FREE to Faculty Focus members.

Creating surveys is easy, but creating good surveys take more thought and effort. This special report will show you how to build surveys that ask the right questions, the right way, to get the information you need.

In the report you will find 10 articles from Online Classroom, including a three-part and a five-part series that provides step-by-step guidance on how to use surveys and evaluations to improve online courses, programs, and instruction. You’ll learn when to use surveys, how to design effective survey questions, why it’s important to ensure anonymity, and the advantages and disadvantages of Web-based surveys.

Articles in Online Course Quality Assurance: Using Evaluations and Surveys to Improve Online Teaching and Learning include:

Online Teaching Fundamentals: What to Evaluate, parts 1-3
Course and Instructor Evaluation: If It’s So Good, Why Does It Feel So Bad?
Getting Evaluation Data through Surveys: What to Consider before Getting Started
Using Surveys to Improve Courses, Programs, and Instruction, parts 1-5

Online Course Quality Assurance: Using Evaluations and Surveys to Improve Online Teaching and Learning

Download your copy of this report today! It's FREE to Faculty Focus members.

In order to improve online programs, courses, and instruction, you have to first determine your goals, select metrics that will tell you what we want to know, analyze these metrics for clues about needed changes, and then make those changes. It may sound simple, but it isn’t.

If you’re dedicated to continuous improvement, this special report is loaded with practical advice that will help you create more effective surveys before, during, and after your course ends.

Shouldn’t you be a part of the Faculty Focus community?

Instructional Design
Faculty Development
Teaching Strategies
Distance Learning
Classroom Management
Educational Assessment
Faculty Evaluation
Learning Styles
Curriculum Development
Trends in Higher Education
And much, much more.

Online Course Quality Assurance: Using Evaluations and Surveys to Improve Online Teaching and Learning

Download your copy of this report today! It's FREE to Faculty Focus members.

Building Student Engagement: 15 Strategies for the College Classroom

Mary Bart — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 14:33:03 +0000

Tips for setting the stage for active learning

Building Student Engagement: 15 Strategies for the College Classroom

The more time students spend as active participants in learning activities, the more they learn. Research has proven this strong correlation again and again. But that doesn’t make it any easier to achieve. As an instructor, the challenge lies in not only lighting that fire of student engagement, but keeping the fire burning when student apathy and boredom creep into your classroom.

If you’re looking for a few smart new strategies to add to your student engagement toolbox, this free report is just the ticket.

Building Student Engagement: 15 Strategies for the College Classroom

Download your copy of this report today! It's FREE to Faculty Focus members.

Building Student Engagement: 15 Strategies for the College Classroom features proven tips for keeping students actively engaged in learning activities and offers ways to help you foster more meaningful interactions between students and faculty members, and among the students themselves.

For example, in “Student Engagement: Trade-offs and Payoffs” E Shelley Reid, associate professor at George Mason University, talks about how to craft engagement-focused questions rather than knowledge questions, and explains her willingness to give up some control to her students.

In “The Truly Participatory Seminar” Sarah M. Leupen and Edward H. Burtt, Jr., of Ohio Wesleyan University, outline their solution for ensuring all students in their upper-division seminar course participate in discussion at some level.

In “Six Opportunities for Building Student Engagement” Chris Palmer of American University outlines student engagement strategies using the syllabus and those first few classes, as well as things you can do inside and outside the classroom to ensure positive interactions.

In “Reminders for Improving Classroom Discussion” Roben Torosyan, associate director of the Center for Academic Excellence at Fairfield University, offers very specific advice on balancing student voices, reframing discussions, and probing below the surface of group discussions.

And finally, in “Living for the Light Bulb” authors Aaron J. Nurick and David H. Carhart of Bentley College provide tips on setting the stage for that delightful time in class “when the student’s entire body says ‘Aha! Now I see it!’” Who wouldn’t like to see more light bulbs going on more often?

Building Student Engagement: 15 Strategies for the College Classroom

Download your copy of this report today! It's FREE to Faculty Focus members.

Other articles in Building Student Engagement: 15 Strategies for the College Classroom include:

Student Attention Spans
What Do Students Think about Active Learning?
Participation: Revisiting the Basics
Active Learning: A Perspective from Cognitive Psychology
When Teachers are ‘Present’
Student Engagement: A Different Perspective

One of the most challenging tasks instructors face is keeping students engaged. Building Student Engagement: 15 Strategies for the College Classroom will help you meet that challenge while ensuring your classroom is a positive and productive learning environment.

Download the report for FREE when you join the Faculty Focus community!

Instructional Design
Faculty Development
Teaching Strategies
Distance Learning
Classroom Management
Educational Assessment
Faculty Evaluation
Learning Styles
Curriculum Development
Trends in Higher Education
And much, much more.

Building Student Engagement: 15 Strategies for the College Classroom

Download your copy of this report today! It's FREE to Faculty Focus members.

Faculty Development in Distance Education: Issues, Trends and Tips

Mary Bart — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 15:06:35 +0000

Best Practices for Online Teaching and Faculty Training

Faculty Development in Distance Education: Issues, Trends and Tips

Of the many lessons learned from the early years of distance education one of the most persistent to remain, and thankfully so, is the fact that you cannot simply pluck an instructor out of the classroom, plug him into an online course, and expect him to be effective in this new and challenging medium. Some learned this lesson the hard way, while others took a proactive approach to faculty training from the start.

Here’s your chance to learn from the mistakes and successes of those who blazed the distance education trail.

Faculty development for distance educators is a critical component of all successful distance education programs. Well thought-out faculty development weaves together needed training, available resources, and ongoing support, and carries with it the same expectations for quality teaching that institutions of higher education have for their face-to-face classes.

This special report, Faculty Development in Distance Education: Issues, Trends and Tips, features 12 articles pulled from the pages of Distance Education Report, including:

Faculty Development: Best Practices from World Campus
Developing Faculty Competency in Online Pedagogy
A Learner-Centered, Emotionally Engaging Approach to Online Learning
How to Get the Best Out of Online Adjuncts
Workload, Promotion, and Tenure Implications of Teaching Online
Four Steps to Just-in-Time Faculty Training

This report is loaded with practical strategies that can help you build a comprehensive faculty development program, helping ensure that instructors stay current in both online pedagogy and practical technical know-how.

Faculty Development in Distance Education: Issues, Trends and Tips

Download your copy of this report today! It's FREE to Faculty Focus members.

Download the report for FREE when you join the Faculty Focus community!

Instructional Design
Faculty Development
Teaching Strategies
Distance Learning
Classroom Management
Educational Assessment
Faculty Evaluation
Learning Styles
Curriculum Development
Trends in Higher Education
And much, much more.

Faculty Development in Distance Education: Issues, Trends and Tips

Download your copy of this report today! It's FREE to Faculty Focus members.

Effective Strategies for Improving College Teaching and Learning

Mary Bart — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 13:59:42 +0000

Innovative Teaching Strategies for bringing out the best in your Students

Effective Strategies for Improving College Teaching and Learning

A love of course content and a willingness to convey that enthusiasm to students is a vital component to effective teaching, but you also need to make sure the methods used to convey that knowledge are up to the task.

If you’re looking for some fresh approaches that will help make you a more effective teacher, you’ll want to download a copy of this free report.

Effective Strategies for Improving College Teaching and Learning

Download your copy of this report today! It's FREE to Faculty Focus members.

What we teach and how we teach it are inextricably linked. This special report features 11 articles pulled from the pages of The Teaching Professor to help you discover new ways to build connections between what you teach and how you teach it.

The report offers tips on how to engage students, give feedback, create a climate for learning, and more. It also provides perspectives on how faculty should approach their development as teachers.

Here’s a sample of the articles you will find in Effective Strategies for Improving College Teaching and Learning:

Faculty Self-Disclosures in the College Classroom
‘Warming the Climate for Learning
A Tree Falling in the Forest: Helping Students ‘Hear’ and Use Your Comments
Understanding What You See Happening in Class
Can Training Make You a Better Teacher?
Striving for Academic Excellence
Unique Perspectives on a Shared Classroom Experience

Effective Strategies for Improving College Teaching and Learning

Download your copy of this report today! It's FREE to Faculty Focus members.

Download the report for FREE when you join the Faculty Focus community!

Instructional Design
Faculty Development
Teaching Strategies
Distance Learning
Classroom Management
Educational Assessment
Faculty Evaluation
Learning Styles
Curriculum Development
Trends in Higher Education
And much, much more.

Although there is no single best teaching method, approach, or style, Effective Strategies for Improving College Teaching and Learning offers up a variety of strategies to try. Those that work effectively with your students you should make your own.

Effective Strategies for Improving College Teaching and Learning

Download your copy of this report today! It's FREE to Faculty Focus members.

Twitter in Higher Education 2009: Usage Habits and Trends of Today’s College Faculty

Mary Bart — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 13:08:19 +0000

Survey reveals how faculty are using Twitter, and why some never Tweet

Twitter in Higher Education 2009: Usage Habits and Trends of Today’s College Faculty

It happened seemingly overnight, but suddenly the education community is all a-Twitter. Or is it? That’s what Faculty Focus set out to learn when it launched in July 2009 a survey on the role of Twitter in higher education. The survey asked college and university faculty about their familiarity and use of the micro-blogging service, if any, as well as whether they expect their Twitter use to increase or decrease in the future.

In higher education, many of the first adopters were professionals involved in marketing, admissions and alumni relations. Today a growing number of professors use Twitter to connect with like-minded colleagues around the country (or world) as well as in the classroom to keep students engaged, communicate important deadlines, and encourage succinct dialogue.

Twitter in Higher Education 2009: Usage Habits and Trends of Today’s College Faculty

Download your copy of this report today! It's FREE to Faculty Focus members.

The Faculty Focus survey of nearly 2,000 higher education professionals found that almost a third (30.7 percent) of the 1,958 respondents who completed the survey are using Twitter in some capacity. More than half (56.4 percent) say they’ve never used Twitter. The remaining 12.9 percent of respondents say they tried it, but no longer use it.

Interestingly, while the majority of faculty do not currently use Twitter, their reasons are varied. Many questioned its educational relevance and expressed concerns that it creates poor writing skills. For others the reasons seemed to boil down to the simple fact that they either don’t know how to use Twitter, or don’t have time to use it.

Key findings of Twitter in Higher Education 2009: Usage Habits and Trends of Today’s College Faculty include:

21.9 percent of respondents say they are “familiar” or “very familiar” with Twitter.
Of those who use Twitter, 21 percent say they “frequently” use it to collaborate with colleagues; 15.6 percent do so “occasionally.”
Of those who use Twitter, 7.2 percent are “frequently” using it as a learning tool in the classroom; 9.4 percent do so “occasionally.”
71.8 percent of current Twitters expect their usage to increase this school year.
20.6 percent of current non-Twitter users say there is a “50/50 chance” they will use Twitter as a learning tool in the classroom in the next two years.
12.9 percent of respondents say they tried Twitter, but stopped using it because it took too much time, they did not find it valuable, or a combination of reasons.

Twitter in Higher Education 2009: Usage Habits and Trends of Today’s College Faculty

Download your copy of this report today! It's FREE to Faculty Focus members.

Depending how they answered the question — “Do you use Twitter?” — respondents were asked a unique set of follow-up questions. The 20-page report provides breakdown of the survey results by question, including comments provided by survey respondents. The comments allowed faculty to further explain how they are using Twitter, why they stopped, or why they have no interest in using it at all.

It is clear that those educators who’ve had a good experience with Twitter are eager to share comments or anecdotes with others, as well as stretch their imagination to find new applications for using the tool to engage students inside and outside of the classroom.

Here are just a few comments from faculty on how they use Twitter effectively:

Currently, we have a Russian instructor using it to tweet on every day activities. His students respond in Russian. It gives him a chance to correct mistakes and it gives the students daily practice in writing and understanding the language. Students from other universities have joined in to make it a very dynamic learning tool.

Turned a traditional assignment into a Twitter assignment. Received more quality and quantity of student input using Twitter.

I use Twitter to encourage students to participate in class. It can be a good tool as long as the professor uses some structure in the discussion – such as posting questions about a reading for the students to answer.

Of the survey participants who answered the question “What are your reasons for NOT using Twitter?” more than 161 added comments to further explain their position. Typically, the comments fell into the following categories:

No interest in or time to use it
Concern it creates poor writing skills/has little education value
Privacy/security issues
Haven’t used it yet but willing to experiment
Think it’s a fad that will pass

Here are a few of the comments from educators who don’t use Twitter:

My students don’t need another reason to distract themselves

The only role Twitter would have in education would be to further dumb down the curriculum and the student body.

It seems like another Web 2.0 technology that people are adopting simply because of its buzz factor and not a true ability to support teaching and learning.

Twitter in Higher Education 2009: Usage Habits and Trends of Today’s College Faculty

Download your copy of this report today! It's FREE to Faculty Focus members.

11 Strategies for Managing Your Online Courses

Mary Bart — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 13:41:41 +0000

Online course management tips for effective teaching and learning

11 Strategies for Managing Your Online Courses

Much has been written about the challenges of teaching an online course. While not discounting the unique (and sometimes frustrating) aspects of the online learning environment, it could be said that, despite the numerous differences, many of the same course management strategies that are essential to success in a traditional classroom also apply in the online classroom.

A strong syllabus, clear directions, well-organized materials, and timely feedback are the building blocks of any course management plan … whether you teach online or face to face.

Of course, the big challenge for online instructors is that the very nature of online education amplifies the importance of properly addressing these management issues, while throwing a few more additional obstacles into the mix. So if you think the flexibility of online teaching also means that it’s OK to “wing it” now and then, you’d be wrong. If anything, you have to be more organized, more consistent and more prepared for anything than ever before.

11 Strategies for Managing Your Online Courses

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Choosing the right communication tools and protocols, addressing technology problems, managing student expectations, and building community are just some of issues that can stretch online instructors to the breaking point.

11 Strategies for Managing Your Online Courses was created to help online instructors tackle many of the course management issues that can erode the efficiency and effectiveness of an online course. It features 11 articles pulled from the pages of Online Classroom, including:

Syllabus Template Development for Online Course Success
The Online Instructor’s Challenge: Helping ‘Newbies’
Virtual Sections: A Creative Strategy for Managing Large Online Classes
Internal or External Email for Online Courses?
Trial by Fire: Online Teaching Tips That Work
The Challenge of Teaching Across Generations

Remember, you’re not the only one who may be a little anxious about going online. Students often have anxiety when taking their first online course as well. It’s up to you to help them feel more confident and secure, all the while keeping your workload at a manageable level. The course management tips in this report will help.

11 Strategies for Managing Your Online Courses

Download your copy of this report today! It's FREE to Faculty Focus members.

Faculty Focus contains a wealth of valuable material – not just about online course management, but all of the key issues that matter to today’s top faculty and administrators. It’s packed with best practices, tips, and other information you can use on the topics that impact your students, your school and your work, including:

Instructional Design
Faculty Development
Teaching Strategies
Distance Learning
Classroom Management
Educational Assessment
Faculty Evaluation
Learning Styles
Curriculum Development
Community College Issues
Trends in Higher Education
And much, much more.

11 Strategies for Managing Your Online Courses

Download your copy of this report today! It's FREE to Faculty Focus members.

Keys to Designing Effective Writing and Research Assignments

Mary Bart — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 14:06:40 +0000

Learn how to make college writing, research assignments relevant again

Keys to Designing Effective Writing and Research Assignments

Writing assignments, particularly for first- and second-year college students, are probably one of those items in the syllabus that some professors dread almost as much as their students do. While no one’s doubting that essays, research papers, and other types of writing assignments are an important part of the academic experience and vital to furthering student learning, they also are time consuming and, at times, frustrating to grade.

Professors often believe students should arrive on campus knowing how to write research papers. Unfortunately, many do not. In this free report, Keys to Designing Effective Writing and Research Assignments, you’ll get proven assignment strategies that are easy to implement.

Keys to Designing Effective Writing and Research Assignments

Download your copy of this report today! It's FREE to Faculty Focus members.

With as much content as professors have to cover, many feel they simply can’t take time to teach the research skills required to write a quality, college-level term paper. On the other hand, improving students’ writing skills is everyone’s business, and carries with it many short- and long-term benefits for teachers and students alike.

In addition, many instructors are finding ways to add relevance to writing assignments by aligning them with the type of writing required in a specific profession as an alternative to the traditional, semester-long research paper.

Keys to Designing Effective Writing and Research Assignments was created to provide instructors with fresh perspectives and proven strategies for designing more effective writing assignments, including how to thwart cut and paste plagiarism. It features 11 articles from The Teaching Professor, including:

Revising the Freshman Research Assignment
Writing an Analytical Paper in Chunks
Designing Assignments to Minimize Cyber-Cheating
Chapter Essays as a Teaching Tool
Writing (Even a Little Bit) Facilitates Learning
How to Conduct a ‘Paper Slam’
Making a Case for Writing Research Papers
20 Questions about Writing Assignments

While not every approach discussed in this special report will work for every course, every time, we invite you to identify a few that look appropriate for your courses, and implement them next semester. You just might be surprised by the results.

Keys to Designing Effective Writing and Research Assignments

Download your copy of this report today! It's FREE to Faculty Focus members.

Faculty Focus contains a wealth of valuable material – not just about assignment strategies, but all of the key issues that matter to today’s top faculty and administrators. It’s packed with best practices, tips, and other information you can use on the topics that impact your students, your school and your work, including:

Instructional Design
Faculty Development
Teaching Strategies
Distance Learning
Classroom Management
Educational Assessment
Faculty Evaluation
Learning Styles
Curriculum Development
Community College Issues
Trends in Higher Education
And much, much more.

Keys to Designing Effective Writing and Research Assignments

Download your copy of this report today! It's FREE to Faculty Focus members.

Academic Leadership Development: How to Make a Smooth Transition from Faculty to Administrator

Mary Bart — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 17:33:18 +0000

An Essential Toolkit for New Academic Administrators

Academic Leadership Development: How to Make a Smooth Transition from Faculty to Administrator

Inadequate preparation, unrealistic expectations, and increased workload can create undue stress on faculty members making the transition to department chair or other levels of administration. All too often new administrators are left to fend for themselves when it comes to discovering and developing the skills they need to succeed in their new position.

Making the leap from faculty to administration will never be easy, but this report will help new administrators navigate the potential minefields and find their voice when it comes to leading effectively.

Academic Leadership Development: How to Make a Smooth Transition from Faculty to Administrator

Download your copy of this report today! It's FREE to Faculty Focus members.

Remember how you felt during your first semester of teaching? Excited? Nervous? A little over-whelmed? At times you even might have wondered how the school could give you a job with so much responsibility and so little training.

Now you’re a seasoned educator making the move from faculty to administration. And guess what? You’re excited, nervous, and a little overwhelmed. And, once again, you wonder how the school could give you a job with so much responsibility and so little training.

Academic Leadership Development: How to Make a Smooth Transition from Faculty to Administrator will get you on the right track for long-term success.

Academic Leadership Development: How to Make a Smooth Transition from Faculty to Administrator

Download your copy of this report today! It's FREE to Faculty Focus members.

Here are some of the articles you will find in Academic Leadership Development: How to Make a Smooth Transition from Faculty to Administrator:

Look Before You Leap: Transitions from Faculty to Administration
It Seems Like Only Yesterday … The Challenges Face by Recently Appointed Administrators
Translating Teaching Skills to Leadership Roles
The First 1,000 Steps: Walking the Road from Academic to Administrator
Why New Department Chairs Need Coaching
10 Recommendations toward Effective Leadership
A Practitioner Model for Ethical Leadership
Look Before You Leap: Transitions from Faculty to Administration

This report will help new administrators find their way, while shedding new light on leadership styles, myths and responsibilities. It also may remind experienced leaders what it was like that first year in hopes that they might reach out to help make someone else’s transition a little easier.

Get this report for free when you join the Faculty Focus community

Faculty Focus is packed with innovative ideas, best practices, and other information you can use right away on the topics that impact your students, your school and your work, including:

Teaching and Learning
Instructional Design
Faculty Development
Distance Learning
Classroom Management
Educational Assessment
Teaching Strategies
Faculty Evaluation
Learning Styles
Curriculum Development
Community College Issues
Trends in Higher Education
And much, much more.

Academic Leadership Development: How to Make a Smooth Transition from Faculty to Administrator is the perfect example of the free, high-value we offer on Faculty Focus.