Artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini are increasingly prevalent in higher education, raising questions about how students can engage with AI
Liberal arts education empowers individuals to become well-rounded to handle complexity, diversity, and change by providing broad knowledge of the world and in-depth study in
The Age of AI is Upon Us. Generative AI is changing the landscape of higher education, in both good and bad ways (Balch, 2023). In
Have you wanted to incorporate current social issues into your course but struggled to do so? Are you looking for unusual ways to introduce the
Higher education has recently changed in faster and more dynamic ways than anticipated. COVID-19 is an immediate factor, but the access to information is more
Should you give your students another assessment or worksheet from the textbook? Why aren’t your students engaged in your classroom? Traditional instruction may not be
Information cannot always be trusted. Despite popular opinion regarding the devastating impact of the Internet on the modern age, the inherent untrustworthiness of information is not new. Satire, misinformation, and disinformation have been circulating for centuries, even long before the printed word. However, thanks to the relative ease of creating and sharing content online, our students are confronted with publications created solely to entertain, persuade, and incite via incorrect or incomplete statistics.
Could your students identify the most important concepts in your discipline? Do they leave your class understanding these most fundamental concepts, including the ability to reason using these concepts to answer essential questions? Do your students become critical thinkers who connect concepts and practices in your course with other courses? With their future professional lives?
Critical thinking. We all endorse it. We all want our students to do it. And we claim to teach it. But do we? Do we even understand and agree what it means to think critically?
According to Paul and Elder’s (2013a) survey findings, most faculty don’t know what critical thinking is or how to teach it. Unless faculty explicitly and intentionally design their courses to build their students’ critical thinking skills and receive training in how to teach them, their students do not improve their skills (Abrami et al., 2008).
How do we make learning messy and unpredictable for our students—and why? I posed this question to the members of the Teaching Professor group on LinkedIn in July, and a lively and insightful discussion immediately began. This article is based upon the insights shared in the discussion.