By: Anthony R. Sweat, PhD, and Kenneth Alford, PhD
“There’s just not enough time in class with students!” It’s a common faculty complaint and when students are provided quality course materials they can use outside of class, this blended learning approach gives faculty more time in class. There’s a…
By: Bill Bergman
It is difficult to predict what the dynamics of a college class will be like at the beginning of a semester. Two sections of the same subject taught by the exact same instructor can have radical differences in how students…
By: Tracie Addy, PhD, MPhil, Ayat Husseini, and Anna DeVault
Inclusive teaching involves creating equitable and welcoming educational environments for the diverse learners in our classrooms. Such approaches may involve, but are not limited to: designing educational experiences informed by the pre-knowledge, skills, demographic backgrounds, and attitudes that learners bring…
By: Tierney King
Igniting an emotional connection to content inside the classroom can be a powerful tool for student retention, but intertwining technology and emotion in the classroom can be even more impactful. Flower Darby, senior instructional designer at Northern Arizona University, delves…
By: Laura Trujillo-Jenks, PhD and Warren Ortloff, PhD
There has been a long discussion within our college about whether or not teaching to the test is appropriate. Of course, the test that we mean is the TExES Principal as Instructional Leader (268) exam, which is in the process…
Over the years, I’ve had the pleasure of working with approximately 300 faculty who have developed and taught their first online course. One of the concerns I frequently hear from instructors considering teaching online is that they will lose the…
An initial look at a conference program can lead attendees to become (in the words of a former colleague) “paralyzed by the possibilities.” There are just so many sessions we’d like to attend that it’s hard to choose. At a…
By: Kevin Clifton
After a fifteen-year hiatus from teaching musicianship classes (I typically teach undergraduate music theory core classes and graduate classes), I taught Musicianship 1 last semester which opened my eyes to the many challenges teachers face on a daily basis at…
By: Stephanie Smith Budhai, PhD
Participating in team projects offers students the chance to develop interpersonal communication skills (Figueira & Leal, 2013), build relationships with classmates, and increase the level of collective competencies as each group member brings something different to the group. However, in…
By: Adam Smith, PhD
In the world of diets, movements are the thing that sells…Vegan, Paleo, Whole 30, Keto, and, now, Carnivore (…seriously, it’s a thing). Yet, upon closer inspection, many of these diets perform similarly in the long run, which is to say they perform underwhelmingly. When a dieter fails to get the pseudoscientific benefits promised, they are likely to blame themselves. They relapsed, cheated, or otherwise failed to follow instructions (succumbing to the fate of being an imperfect human being). It is less likely that we question the diet. Instagram before and after posts abound. Diets can put people in a bind: why won’t this work for me? Given the gap between basic principles (eat your vegetables, less processed foods) and the dos and don’ts of diets, it’s worth asking what value diets add to our lives.
