November 25, 2019 Robert S. Fleming, PhD
Regardless of one’s academic discipline or the courses that we teach, college faculty members share a responsibility to prepare our students for success in our courses and academic programs,…
In Effective Teaching Strategies
September 6, 2018 Matt Anderson and Micah Fierstein
Most of us are aware of the important benefits that cooperative learning offers for student achievement (Johnson, Johnson, & Smith, 2007). We frequently use, or seek out these strategies…
February 5, 2018 Jane A. Scheuermann
Five years ago, I transitioned from a totally lecture-based classroom to a more student-centered, engaging one. Initially, I found that when students were placed in groups, they didn’t necessarily…
In Effective Classroom Management
July 12, 2017 Maryellen Weimer, PhD
Students don’t always like working in groups. Ann Taylor, an associate professor of chemistry at Wabash College, had a class that was particularly vocal in their opposition. She asked…
In Effective Teaching Strategies
April 14, 2017 Patricia O’Sullivan
Any course in ethics demands a high degree of student engagement and discussion as students wrestle with ethical dilemmas presented in case studies and real-life situations. Without discussion, an…
In Effective Classroom Management
January 25, 2017 Maryellen Weimer, PhD
Three articles in the February issue of the Teaching Professor newsletter deal with peer learning—a large category that includes activities through which students learn from and with each other.…
In Effective Teaching Strategies
September 21, 2015 Claire Major, PhD
Enter the term “group work” into a Google search, and you’ll find yourself bombarded with dozens of hits clustered around definitions of group work, benefits of group work, and…
January 21, 2013 Oliver Dreon, PhD
Last week, a student named Mary visited me during my office hours and presented me with an interesting dilemma. In one of her classes, a professor had distributed a…
July 28, 2010 Mary Bart
If it seems like everyone is tweeting these days, it’s not just your imagination. In 2007 Twitter users, as a whole, made about 5,000 tweets a day. By 2008…
February 26, 2010 Sedef Uzuner and Ruchi Mehta
As more and more courses go online, interaction and knowledge building among students rely primarily on asynchronous threaded discussions. For something that is so central to online learning, current…
