Articles

Five Tips for Designing an Online Faculty Workshop

What is the best way to train and support a beginning online faculty member? At some colleges, the only option is on site training held on the campus over a day, a weekend, or a period of days during the summer. These on-site workshops, while potentially very effective, commit the faculty members to time, travel, and often inflexible scheduling. However, Berkeley College, with campuses in New York and New Jersey, has designed an online faculty workshop and set of training and support tools to complement its other professional development offerings.

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Jennifer Patterson Lorenzetti June 25, 2009

Top 10 Tips for Addressing Sensitive Topics and Maintaining Civility in the Classroom

1. Create a classroom environment that from the first day sets ground rules for discussion and makes it clear that all students are included in the work of the class. Make sure you make all students feel connected to each other, the class, and the topic, and establish strong expectations about the content and manner of communication.

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Center for Teaching and Faculty Development at San Francisco State University June 24, 2009

Creating a Faculty Investment and Reward Model

What obligations do faculty members have to their institutions beyond their disciplines and departments? It’s a question that is sure to get a lot of play as higher education institutions deal with the pressures brought about by increased scrutiny from outside constituents and other factors such as changing student demographics and a shift from a faculty-focused to a learner-focused orientation.

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Rob Kelly June 23, 2009

Helping Online Faculty Succeed

Online education programs are known for their convenience, but they’ve also developed a reputation for poor student retention rates. So when someone who oversees an

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Mary Bart June 22, 2009

Portfolio System Provides Integrated Assessment across the Institution

In 2000, the college of education at the University of Nebraska at Omaha (UNO) introduced an electronic portfolio system for its students. The goal was to get students to understand their own learning by requiring them to create these portfolios that highlight their work. Building on that success, the university is in the process of implementing myMAPP, (Mapping Academic Performance through ePorfolios), an electronic portfolio system that integrates student, faculty, staff, department, college, and campus performance measures.

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Rob Kelly June 19, 2009

A Classroom Cell Phone Policy that Builds Community

The first time a student’s cell phone rang in my class, I was angry and frustrated. With their musical ringers, cell phones that go off in class are rude and distracting. But how to respond? I’ve never been very good at playing the heavy. Was there any way I could take this annoying occurrence and twist so that it would contribute to a more positive classroom environment?

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Alan Bloom PhD. June 18, 2009

Using Twitter to Facilitate Classroom Discussions

As a history major I usually found most of my history courses pretty interesting. Certainly some were more interesting than others but I think a lot of that had more to do with the instructor than the content. Of course not every student who takes a history class course plans to major in it, which is why I love it when I hear about a history professor (or any educator for that matter) doing innovative things to engage students in one of those “core courses” many students often dread.

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Mary Bart June 17, 2009

Students Agree Cell Phones in Class Are Distracting

In case you ever had any doubts, research verifies that both students and teachers find cell phones ringing in class distracting. The results also document strong support from students and faculty for policies against ringing cell phones. Although there was strong support against cell phones going off in class, the strength of that support was mediated by age. The younger cohort in the study was more tolerant of cell phones than the older cohort.

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Maryellen Weimer, PhD June 16, 2009

Addressing the Unique Needs of Your Students

Why are you interested in improving your courses and instruction?

That was the question posed to attendees to kick off the online seminar Five Steps to Improve Your Online Courses and Instruction by presenter Dr. Patti Shank. Most of the respondents selected as their answers “to better support students” or “I hope this will reduce some of the hassles of teaching online.” A few of the more honest ones chose “I’m expected to do this” and a couple more came because they “need to address specific problems.”

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Mary Bart June 15, 2009

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