Eighteen students crammed themselves into a stuffy classroom assigned for my first-year seminar course on a sunny day in September. With desk tops touching and
Despite debate and disagreement about how to define and measure attention spans, numerous studies have put student attention spans in approximately the 10-minute range (Bradbury,
Data has become the cornerstone of decision-making and institutional strategy in today’s higher education landscape. From tracking retention rates to measuring academic performance, data offers
“What you appreciate appreciates” (Twist, n.d.). One of the practices I have employed in most of my classes during the past several years is “the appreciative close,” which is an offshoot of “the appreciative pause” recommended by Stephen Brookfield (Brookfield, 2015, pp.95-96).
Engagement – it’s another one of those words that’s regularly bandied about in higher education. We talk about it like we know what it means,
Have you ever struggled to get students to do required readings? Do your students treat them as optional? Perhaps they do the readings, but when
Although teaching first-time freshmen across all content areas presents challenges, first-year experience (FYE) courses also have unique obstacles which must be overcome, especially with the
In the previous two articles, I shared ideas to address student accountability and student preparation in the flipped classroom. Based on your feedback and emails, getting students to come to class prepared is an ongoing challenge for many of us! In this article, I’d like to keep the conversation going by zeroing in on the importance of the first five minutes of class.
How often do you hear college students say, “that was fun!” on their way out of your classroom? Probably not often enough. Of course, who has time for fun when you have a syllabus packed with serious learning outcomes and one semester to accomplish your goals. Not to diminish the hard work involved in prepping for lectures, but when was the last time you asked yourself: Is my class fun?
Editor’s Note: In part one of this article, the author shared openly some of the mistakes he made early in his teaching career. In this entry, he outlines some of the changes he’s made to his teaching over the years and the principles he uses to guide his teaching.
I had known it all along at some level, but now it suddenly became glaringly obvious to me. Deep down, sometimes out of conscious reach, students want to be transformed and their lives made more useful, productive, and powerful. I added the following new goal to my personal mission statement:
