When I began teaching graduate-level courses in educational leadership early in the COVID-19 pandemic, my classroom existed entirely online. I quickly learned that keeping students
In higher education, assignment titles often serve a functional purpose, indicating the sequence of assignments rather than their specific objectives. However, intentionally structuring assignment titles
Inclusivity and feelings of psychological safety in the classroom should not be reserved solely for K-12 learning environments. Students in higher education also deserve nurturing
Our primary role as educators is to create learning environments that service a diverse student body. To be successful, this environment should focus on the
Appreciative inquiry (AI) has been effective in guiding changes in organizational and human systems through engaging stakeholders to create a transformed, shared vision of potential
I would like to begin with one of the age-old dilemmas facing instructors. We all probably concur that teamwork is a key skill needed in
In response to the worldwide spread of COVID-19, most erstwhile face-to-face and hybrid courses have now transitioned into remotely delivered ones. In these new educational
With written communication becoming increasingly multimodal—from newspaper websites to your social media feed to your learning management system’s announcements page—researchers and practitioners alike have made
As a teacher of a subject that I adore and cherish, I often find myself scrambling for enough time to cover everything that needs to be covered and still find a clever way to introduce yet another “cool story” that will further convince my students that my field (microbiology) is relevant to everyday life.
No doubt I am not alone in this challenge of finding ways to demonstrate relevancy of what we teach, but not at the complete expense of the time and effort we desperately need to guide our students through challenging, key concepts and ideas.
“Even with years of teaching experience since then [grad school TA experience], there were still areas of my pedagogy that remained as they always had been—unexamined and essentially running on autopilot.” So writes Kevin Gannon in an excellent piece on redesigning his exams (Chronicle of Higher Education, March 6, 2017). I appreciate the honesty of his admission and suspect it resonates with many of us.
Some of what’s unexamined in the practice of many faculty are what seem like intractable problems—say cramming and procrastination. Students have procrastinated for decades—some of us did when we were students and a few (?) of us still do. It’s a perennial problem for anyone who teaches, there can’t possibly be a solution or someone would have come up with it by now. In fact, that was basically the conclusion of a colleague who wrote to me recently. “My students procrastinate. It compromises the quality of their work and diminishes what they learn, but I’ve come to accept it as a given.”
