Effective Teaching Strategies

how to handle student excuses

Dealing with Student Deceptions: What to do with ‘Death in the Family’ Excuses

Early in my professorial career, I noticed two patterns: (1) requests for extensions on papers and forgiven absences spiked immediately prior to major breaks, and (2) dying grandparents were nearly always the explanation offered for those requests. I definitely wondered, and sometimes felt guilty, about the close correlation between expiring relatives and due dates listed on my syllabus.

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Motivating Students: Eight Simple Rules for Teachers

Principles of Accounting has the reputation of being a “hard and boring” course. It is difficult to motivate students to invest the time and effort necessary to succeed in the course. To meet this challenge, we have assembled a list of eight simple rules for keeping students focused and motivated.

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Large Courses and Student Expectations

Have you tried implementing some active learning strategies in a large course only to find students resisting those efforts? You put students in groups and give them some challenging discussion questions, only to see most of them sitting silently while a few make feeble comments to which no one in the group responds.

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Building Student Engagement: Beyond the Classroom

In this, the final installment of a six-part series on strategies for building student engagement, I offer suggestions for engaging students beyond the classroom. As professors, we impact students not only during classes, but also through office hours, emails, and feedback.

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Building Student Engagement: Classroom Atmosphere

In previous articles I’ve offered effective teaching strategies for building student engagement by setting the tone with the syllabus and first classes. Today we move to the general classroom atmosphere. The following suggestions will help you build an atmosphere of constant engagement, passion and learning.

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Building Student Engagement: The Syllabus

In this, the first installment of a six-article series on building student engagement, I offer some suggestions on how to use the syllabus to help you set a tone of engagement and excellence right from the start.

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