Articles

Three Active Learning Strategies You Can Do in 10 Minutes or Less

A 2015 survey of Faculty Focus readers found that the number one barrier preventing faculty from implementing the flipped classroom model and other active learning experiences into their courses is TIME. Faculty reported they don’t have time to plan extra learner-centered activities, due to increasing responsibilities, and they don’t have time to implement the activities in class because there’s too much content to cover.

If you feel this way, you’re not alone. But, you can still create engaging learning experiences for students. And you can do it in 10 minutes (or less).

Barbi Honeycutt, PhD April 23, 2018

Using Your Instructor Bio to Humanize Course, Reduce Student Anxiety

By now we’ve all heard about the importance of faculty engagement in online courses. A faculty member who properly engages in an online classroom can boost student success, improve satisfaction, and raise retention rates. Discussions about faculty engagement tend to focus on activities like interaction in discussion boards and frequency of posting announcements. Although these actions are important, what’s overlooked in these conversations is the need to ensure students are first comfortable and prepared to participate in their classes. Let’s face it, starting a new semester can be anxiety inducing for students and the situation can be exasperated in an online environment where students can’t ease their anxiety by walking to class with a friend or seeing a welcoming smile from their instructor as they enter a classroom.

Evan Kropp, PhD April 20, 2018

An Innovative Postexam Review Activity

We need to work more with students on seeing exams as something more than just grade generating experiences. Exams can be powerful encounters through which

Maryellen Weimer, PhD April 18, 2018

Three Keys to Stopping Plagiarism

Although there are software-based services that can help instructors check the originality of student writing and discourage students from deliberately copying the work of others, many instances of plagiarism stem not from a willful disregard of the rules but from simple ignorance of them.

Elizabeth Kleinfeld, an English instructor and director of the writing center at Metropolitan State University of Denver, has studied plagiarism and students’ use of sources for the last seven years, mostly among students in first-year writing courses. She has found that many students don’t understand the differences between paraphrasing, summarizing, and plagiarism.

Dennis Pierce April 16, 2018

Teaching and Evaluating Professionalism

The evidence is growing. Employers prefer to hire employees/graduates who consistently demonstrate professionalism and emotional intelligence skills in the workplace. Cognitive and technical skills are essential as well, but these are largely expected now.

Richard Hoylman April 13, 2018

Activities that Promote Awareness of What Is and Isn’t Cheating

Although some behaviors are pretty much universally identified as cheating (copying exam answers, for example), we’re not in agreement on everything. Particularly significant are disagreements between faculty and students (for example, students don’t think cheating occurs if they look something up on their phone and can’t find it; faculty consider cheating in terms of intent). In many cases, there is the question of degree (when, for example, collaboration crosses the line and becomes cheating). The effectiveness of cheating prevention mechanisms can be increased by clarifying upfront what is and isn’t cheating. Here’s a collection of activities faculty can use to ensure that students understand the behaviors that constitute cheating.

Maryellen Weimer, PhD April 11, 2018

Interactive Strategies for Engaging Large and Small Classes Alike

As the associate director at Tulane’s Center for Engaged Learning and Teaching (CELT), I work with faculty to help them transform their classrooms into more engaged spaces. One way to do that is by creating opportunities for interaction between the professor and the students and between the students themselves. I always start the conversation on this topic with three questions:

What is the purpose of making a class interactive?
What does an interactive class look like?
What gets in the way of you creating a more interactive space in your classroom?

Toni Weiss April 9, 2018

Strategies for Creating a Successful Online Classroom

Online learning presents new challenges beyond those of a traditional classroom because students must become more responsible for their learning. Many learners are unfamiliar with the online learning environment, which may include unfamiliar technology, isolation from instructors and university staff, and a lack of face-to-face interaction other learners. As online instructors, we must give additional attention to strategies that will keep our learners engaged, create a successful learning environment, and provide a rewarding learning experience where learners feel supported, valued, and connected.

Jill Alred, PhD, and Candace Adams, EdD April 6, 2018

Course Workload: What Influences Student Perceptions?

Course workload is yet another of those amorphous terms regularly used in print and conversation for which we have loose and different understandings. It’s a term with connections to various topics: hard and easy courses, standards and rigor, effort and accomplishment. For students, courses with a heavy workload can create feelings of stress. Their beliefs about the amount of work involved in a course sometimes (or is it regularly?) influence their decisions about what courses to take. In an end-of-course rating comment, a student wrote of a colleague’s course: “It’s very good. She’s an excellent teacher, but engineering students should be advised not to take it. It’s too much work for a required course not related to the major.”

Maryellen Weimer, PhD April 4, 2018

Helping Professional-Track Students Succeed

Today’s students enroll in college with expectations of a smooth and direct path to graduation, only to discover that professional track programs can be inflexible, challenging, and prescriptive. Programs such as nursing, dental hygiene, physical therapy, occupational therapy, veterinary technology, and others are governed by rigorous accreditation standards. Colleges and universities must adhere to the standards developed by the respective governing bodies; however, many of the standards are in direct conflict with how some students learn and absorb knowledge and do not take into account learning preferences, teaching styles, and student/faculty personalities. With accelerated programs popping up all over the country, how can we maintain high accreditation standards yet be flexible enough to meet the learning needs of today’s professional track student?

Doreen B. Johnson, CDA, RDH, MEd April 2, 2018

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