By: Alison Rogers
Isaac Newton first conceptualized the idea of gravity when an apple fell on his head. This moment was simple, but inspirational—with a huge impact on scientific progress to come. Answers of great importance such as this can originate in the…
The important role professors play in helping our students appreciate cultural diversity cannot be overvalued. There has been much written about what a Culturally Responsive educator can do to help his or her students engage with the course content, their…
I credit my husband as the inspiration for this article. He is a writing professor who is exceptionally good at waiting. He has a unique ability (and probably disturbing to some) to ask his students a question and then wait…wait…
By: Jörg Waltje, PhD, and Aubree Evans, MA
Regardless of whether you’ve been teaching for 15 years or 15 minutes, how to act and what to do on the first day of class seems to be something many faculty are constantly revising. The impact of the lasting nature…
By: Faculty Focus
This week on The Focus is You, we’re getting to know Angela Britcher who works in instructional design, faculty training, and content writing. We’ve catered some of the questions to fit what she does for higher education. What topic in…
I started teaching economics in higher education almost a decade ago, and yet the memory of the first time I asked a student to meet with me to talk about plagiarism is still painful. Rather than resolve anything, in the…
By: Bryan J. Coleman
In-class activities can be a great way to foster student engagement in the classroom. Depending on the activity, the results can vary greatly. Sometimes they can fall flat, but every so often an activity manages to hold the students’ undivided…
All too often I have heard colleagues pondering over situations in which students are found on their smart phones rather than engaged in class. As a former elementary school teacher who now instructs students at the college level, I wonder…
By: Joseph Finckel
As college faculty, we put tremendous pressure on ourselves to talk. We want to cover the course content and thoroughly explain our assignments. We want to sound smart, share what we know, and communicate convincingly about the work of our…
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…