Sometimes we get into it with students. Most often it involves grades, exams, and excuses. And most often, at least from our perspective, the students don’t have a case. The grade is fair, the exam contains predictable content, and the offered excuse is lame. We dismiss the complaint and deny that a problem exists. And most of the time we are right, at least from our perspective. But how do these conflicts look from the student side?
Many of my students wait until they are in academic trouble before they seek help. By then, they are often in too deep to be retrieved. At the beginning of the semester, I’ve always tried to encourage students to know what support services are available to them. “Find help before you need it!” I tell them. But often times this advice is either completely ignored or stored for use when it’s too late. How could I convince students to heed my advice? I needed a more creative approach...
During the 2000-2001 academic year, a group of faculty from the School of Physical Activity and Educational Services in Ohio State University’s College of Education began meeting regularly with the school’s director to find ways to enhance instruction. From these meetings came the idea for the PAES Instructional Enhancement Initiative, a faculty-driven series of instruction-related activities, which includes workshops, a book club, a quarterly newsletter, and seminars.
Faculty learning communities provide opportunities for faculty to get together to discuss similar interests and improve their teaching and learning practices. In the past 15 years, they have become more formalized through the work of Milton Cox and others as well as through use of Web-based technologies to connect faculty in new ways.
“You will submit three projects.” “I expect regular participation.” “You must attend class.” “Students bear sole responsibility for ensuring that papers…submitted electronically to the professor are received in a timely…
In recent years, my desire to teach students more than chemistry content has increased considerably. I now want my students (even those in nonmajor, introductory courses) to learn how chemistry connects to their daily lives. Learning the nomenclature rules for monosubstituted amides helps students in the introductory course on their content-based standardized exam at the end of the semester, but it does not help them appreciate the relevance of chemistry across various disciplines. I have also struggled with...
worked in a small education studies department that used a wonderfully simple, three-part conceptual framework for responding to student work -- whether oral presentations, written papers, or even student teaching. First, we modeled active listening by succinctly summarizing what we understood to be the students’ theses or main points in their presentation, paper, or lesson. Next, we detailed...
I believe a good teacher, first, has a powerful faith in the future. Like the forester planting an oak seedling knowing he or she will never see the tree in…
Reflecting on my career as a teaching psychologist, I realized I was missing something. Trained as an experimentalist and employed academically to teach courses in the experimental areas of psychology,…
A large study of students enrolled in geography courses at multiple universities in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States looked at their conceptions of geography, teaching,…