What messages do our students receive from their parents, their high school teachers, their older peers, and siblings before they enter college? When I ask my first-year students the answers are, “Now you are on your own,” or “No one…
I’ve sat on the Curriculum Committee at two different higher education institutions. I’ve also participated in college assessment committees and accreditation committees at both the school level and institutional level. I’ve designed courses and entire programs from scratch and have…
By: Joseph Finckel
As college faculty, we put tremendous pressure on ourselves to talk. We want to cover the course content and thoroughly explain our assignments. We want to sound smart, share what we know, and communicate convincingly about the work of our…
By: Sandra Seay
Faculty are urged to turn classrooms into activity centers where lively discussion serves as an antidote to bored students zoning out of class lectures and zoning into images and words appearing on their screens of various sorts. Eliminating boredom in…
Recently, I worked with a research assistant to assess the efficacy of the use of smart phones and tablets in lectures. The study involved asking students to use their own devices to access an app. On the app, students could…
By: Anthony R. Sweat, PhD, and Kenneth Alford, PhD
“There’s just not enough time in class with students!” It’s a common faculty complaint and when students are provided quality course materials they can use outside of class, this blended learning approach gives faculty more time in class. There’s a…
By: Bill Bergman
It is difficult to predict what the dynamics of a college class will be like at the beginning of a semester. Two sections of the same subject taught by the exact same instructor can have radical differences in how students…
By: Tracie Addy, PhD, MPhil, Ayat Husseini, and Anna DeVault
Inclusive teaching involves creating equitable and welcoming educational environments for the diverse learners in our classrooms. Such approaches may involve, but are not limited to: designing educational experiences informed by the pre-knowledge, skills, demographic backgrounds, and attitudes that learners bring…
By: Tierney King
Igniting an emotional connection to content inside the classroom can be a powerful tool for student retention, but intertwining technology and emotion in the classroom can be even more impactful. Flower Darby, senior instructional designer at Northern Arizona University, delves…
By: Laura Trujillo-Jenks, PhD and Warren Ortloff, PhD
There has been a long discussion within our college about whether or not teaching to the test is appropriate. Of course, the test that we mean is the TExES Principal as Instructional Leader (268) exam, which is in the process…