Articles

Classroom Management Tips for Online Courses: Dealing with Difficult Students

“Managing student expectations is important in any class but even more so for online and blended courses where it’s easy for students to feel lost,” says Susan Ko, executive director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at the University of Maryland University College (UMUC). “Even well structured, academically rigorous online classes can have diminished effectiveness due to a lack of clear expectations.”

Mary Bart April 27, 2009

Strategies for Teaching Large Classes

Once I passed my 50th semester of introductory biology, I began to regret that my profession doesn’t have a real apprenticeship for teaching—why should every young professor facing his or her first big class…have to make the same mistakes I did and, perhaps more important, why should they not know that everybody…has the same problems?

Maryellen Weimer, PhD April 24, 2009

Should Senior Faculty Teach More Introductory Courses?

After years of service and moving up through the faculty ranks, senior faculty members often feel they have earned the privilege of concentrating their teaching efforts on upper-division courses, leaving the introductory courses to younger faculty members. It seems fair enough: If you stick around long enough, you will be able to teach the courses you enjoy most. But is it the best arrangement for students?

Rob Kelly April 23, 2009

Experiential Learning: Bridging the Gap Between Engaged and Disengaged

Not all disengaged students fall into the stereotype of the slacker who comes late to class (if at all), or is as easy to spot as Jeff Spicoli from Fast Times at Ridgemont High. In fact there are a number of students who are masters at playing the game … doing just enough to get by … attending class but not really participating, much less engaging with the content.

Mary Bart April 22, 2009

Faculty Collegiality: Six Tips for Getting Along with Disagreeable Colleagues

Have you ever left a meeting in which you were trying to work with some colleagues on aligning the curriculum for a course that several of you teach, and decided that the best (printable) word to describe a colleague was “difficult?”

Jacqueline Waggoner Ed.D. April 21, 2009

Are You Encouraging Plagiarism? Six Tips for Improving Your Term-Paper Assignments

Take the plethora of information available online, add the ease of which students can cut-and-paste material, throw in lots of pressure to get good grades, and plagiarism becomes an appealing option to almost any student.

Maryellen Weimer, PhD April 20, 2009

Incorporating Diversity-related Materials into the Curriculum

Incorporating material that addresses diversity issues in classes has positive effects on a number of learning outcomes. The success of efforts to make curricula more diverse depends to a large degree on faculty willingness to incorporate these materials because control of the curriculum remains in faculty hands—both collectively, in terms of course and program approval processes, and individually, in terms of daily decisions about what to teach.

Rob Kelly April 17, 2009

How to Handle Helicopter Parents in College

When faculty members receive phone calls from parents about their children’s academic work, the response is often, “Our contract is with the students, not the parents,” says Marjorie Savage, parent program director at the University of Minnesota. Faculty need to keep in mind, however, that today’s parents are different than in previous generations.

Rob Kelly April 16, 2009

Faculty Collegiality: Q&A with Robert Cipriano

Collegiality—the ability of faculty members to get along with each other and contribute to the collective good—is a key component of success within the department

Rob Kelly April 15, 2009

Classroom Teaching Methods: Are Your Lectures Sidetracking Student Learning

Most teachers work to add interest to lecture material in an attempt to gain student attention. If they aren’t attending, they aren’t listening, and if they aren’t listening, it’s pretty hard to imagine them learning anything from a lecture. But is there a point at which the interesting details are more arresting than the content? And if that’s so, do those kinds of details get in the way of attempts to learn and apply content?

Maryellen Weimer, PhD April 14, 2009

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