Where to Go From “I Don’t Know”: Building Trust Through Authenticity
Saying “I don’t know” feels like a flaw. It’s one of the smartest moves a person can make. In education, there is an unwritten expectation that to be in the profession is…
From Restriction to Integration: Practical Strategies for Embracing AI in Online Courses
A 2025 survey by the Higher Education Policy Institute found that 92% of university students now use AI tools in their studies, up from 66% the previous year (Freeman 2025). For online educators, the…
Fueling a Love of Learning Through Discovery
Let’s consider how much time you dedicate to information gathering each day. We scroll through items we consider necessary or important – the perception of “not knowing” is a powerful motivator. It sparks…
What’s With That Resume?: Strategies for More Effective Student Resumes
Have you recently been asked to review a resume? Do you coach learners on resume writing? When did you last update your own resume? The word "résumé" originates from the French word résumer, meaning "to summarize" (Burdick, 2023). It is a single document that could be the…
Students Rate the Experience; Peers Evaluate the Teaching: Rethinking the Evaluation of University Instruction
Student evaluations of teaching (SETs) are one of the most widely used tools for assessing teaching effectiveness and play a significant role in decisions related to promotion, tenure, contract renewal, and merit-based pay. Despite their widespread use, a growing body of…
Bridging the Gap Between Student Hesitation and Readiness
Some students hesitate before they put their thoughts into words. Not because they have nothing to say, but because they’re afraid what they think won’t be “right.” In my introductory music course, students write…
Rethinking Student Teaching Evaluations: Limitations and Strategies for Fairer Faculty Assessment
Student evaluations of teaching remain one of the most widely used tools for assessing instructional effectiveness in higher education. In many institutions, standardized student evaluation forms are administered at the…
Synthetic Socrates, Teaching Assistant: How AI Can Restore the Philosophical Classroom
When ChatGPT first arrived, many faculty reacted with horror. If an algorithm could write a plausible essay in seconds, what would become of higher education and philosophy, those disciplines that, at their…
The Hidden Curriculum of Testing: Multiple-Choice Exam Strategies
Most people working with university students have encountered it: a student who understands the course material but performs poorly on a multiple-choice exam. If prompted, the student might explain how much they studied yet cannot understand why their hours of studying did not…
College to Career: How Faculty Can Help Students Translate Their Humanities Education
Challenges to the utility of Humanities education have become louder and more frequent. The declining number of Humanities majors and the increasing number of applied or professional majors, only reinforces what some critics consider the “useless Humanities degree”, disciplines with…