Faculty Collegiality: Q&A with Robert Cipriano
Collegiality—the ability of faculty members to get along with each other and contribute to the collective good—is a key component of success within the department and the higher education institution…
Classroom Teaching Methods: Are Your Lectures Sidetracking Student Learning
Most teachers work to add interest to lecture material in an attempt to gain student attention. If they aren’t attending, they aren’t listening, and if they aren’t listening, it’s pretty hard to imagine them learning anything from a lecture. But is there a point at which the interesting details are more arresting than the content? And if that’s so, do those kinds of details get in the way of attempts to learn and apply content?
Connecting with Students One MPEG-4 at a Time
“If you do it right, digital media can really enhance a course and provide meaningful student-teacher connections,” said Kevin Reeve, head of Marketing and Communications for Information Technology at Utah State University. “When not implemented properly, it becomes a frustrating experience for everyone – students, instructors, IT and administration.”
Creative Ways to Start Class: Getting Students Ready to Learn
Starting a lecture can be a challenge: getting everyone seated, attentive, and ready to move forward with the content can take several minutes. I have found that sometimes it feels…
Creating More Effective Course Handouts
For most of us, handouts are a staple of instructional life, but as Teresa Sakraida and Peter Draus (reference below) point out, their “development is often a trial-and-error process.” (p. 326) Like so many other aspects of instruction, we take the construction of handouts for granted, their creation guided largely by intuition.
Classroom Management: Discipline Pitfalls in the College Classroom
Although endless volumes about classroom discipline proliferate in the professional libraries of K–12 instructors, as college professors we seldom think we need advice on the issue. After all, our students choose to be in classes at our institutions. Many, if not most, are placing themselves and their families in huge financial debt to attend. Besides, we’ll just kick them out of class if they display those behaviors not tolerated in civilized societies.
Effective Strategies for Reducing Test Anxiety
I don’t know why I didn’t see it before. After 10 years of teaching, I finally realize why students get so nervous about exams. It’s because taking an exam is a performance. It’s just like American Idol , when they are doing the first round of auditions. You can have great natural ability and sound terrific, but when the spotlight shines down as you stand in front of the judges and the TV cameras, can you make it happen?
Building Student Engagement in Online Courses
Despite all the high-tech communication technologies available to online instructors today — discussion boards, email, IM, wikis, podcasts, blogs, vlogs, etc. — every once in awhile Dr. B. Jean Mandernach likes to use a tool that was invented way back in 1876. The telephone.
Community Colleges Re-tooling to Serve Influx of Adult Learners
Move over 18-year-olds. There’s a new student on campus, and she might be your mom. A new survey by the Plus 50 Initiative at the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC) finds that community colleges are reaching out to students over the age of 50 and planning to expand programs for them.
Objections to Active Learning
If you think everybody’s pretty much on board with the idea of active learning, think again. I was surprised to find an article that in its opening paragraph describes active learning as “a philosophy and movement that portends trouble for the future of higher education and the American professoriate.”