Teaching and Learning Archives - Faculty Focus | Higher Ed Teaching & Learning

November 1

Teaching Through Community-Based Projects

In my teaching experience I have come to the conclusion that many college students are unaware of the cultural differences and social issues in their communities. I have also realized that some teachers are often limited in delivering academic content inside the classroom, which might prevent learners from contextualizing the knowledge in real-life situations. Therefore, helping students understand that there is a relevant relationship between their professional skills and their role as citizens within their communities is important. The purpose of including community-based projects in your syllabi is to instill in students a sense of social responsibility and cultural awareness at an early stage in their professional life.

October 22

A Stupid Letter to My Student

By: Stacy Greathouse, PhD

Stupid.

This word was spoken triumphantly and repeatedly as self-speak by a talented pre-service, k-12 special education teacher during my course Library Resources for Children. Until I heard her say it several times through the semester, I hadn’t seen how one word can hold an entire teaching philosophy. I hadn’t considered how the power of that word multiplies when it takes the form of self-speak. I hadn’t realized how much it scared me to think that that word might follow her into a k-12 classroom.

When I learned that my own teaching philosophy existed on the pinhead of a single word whenever I’ve thought it at myself, I needed to send to this email to that amazing up-and-coming teacher:

October 15

Leveraging High-Impact Practices at the Course Level

By: Priscilla Hobbs, PhD, and Evan Kropp, PhD

A decade has passed since the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) published George D. Kuh’s seminal report “High-Impact Educational Practices: What They Are, Who Has Access to Them, and Why They Matter.” Kuh (2008) argued that student learning is…

October 11

Remembering to Learn: Five Factors for Improving Recall

By: Debora S. Herold, PhD

As a professor of cognitive psychology, I teach about memory, especially about when and why our memories often fail us. Students are excited to apply this material to their everyday lives.

October 9

Proactively Equipping Beginning Principal Preparation Students with Pre-Licensure Testing Strategies

By: Warren Ortloff and Ava J. Muñoz

Presently, 40 states have adopted a full or partial interpretation of the Educational Leadership Consortium Council (ELLC) standards (Vogel & Weiler, 2014). Principal preparation programs must fully integrate these standards into their course curriculum, if their driving force is student success. It is anticipated that by adhering to ELCC standards, accredited CAEP principal preparation programs are naturally employing the most current leadership knowledge and best leadership practices throughout their coursework (Vogel & Weiler, 2014).

October 8

Disrupting Illusions of Fluency

By: Shreyas Desai, MS, Kenja McCray, PhD, and Curtis L. Todd, PhD

No matter the academic discipline, course level, or time of day, the last five minutes of class often present instructors with a challenge and an opportunity. The challenge is maintaining students’ interest. Disrupting “illusions of fluency” is the opportunity. The term refers to misjudging the depth of what one knows (Carey 2015). Further, it describes the belief that a mastery over something has been achieved, when actually it has not (Lang 2016). The final class minutes can be best spent constructively assessing levels of student learning and understanding of course material.

October 2

From Curriculum to Career: Connecting Curriculum Outcomes to Future Careers

By: Judith Levin and Cathleen Mudd

Students often arrive at university level instruction with some idea of their future employment direction. It is important for university instructors to seize their student’s career enthusiasm and foster a connection between the curriculum and potential future career applications. Providing students with an opportunity to connect their classroom learning, (online or face-to-face) with workplace relevance will result in many positive learning outcomes such as motivation, grit, and career goal setting. As stated by Schwartz, Gregg, and McKee (2018) “Guidance and information focused on careers should be included throughout one’s undergraduate experience” (p. 51). To integrate career content into the classroom the following tips are suggested: integrating career focused topics in discussions and activities; using and integrating services offered by career resource centers; including guest speakers; and incorporating additional online career resources. These strategies help foster a connection between course material and professions and careers students may be considering.

October 1

Put Teaching First

By: Matthew J. Wright, PhD

Universities are strange places. People pay thousands of dollars a year to be taught by supersmart people. These supersmart people are required to do research, write grants, and bring in money and resources to their university. Teaching is only a minor—almost insignificant—part of the job. While this often goes without saying at big R1 universities, it is surprising that this is all too often also true at smaller “teaching” colleges. At my home university, Adelphi, teaching is emphasized, but this is often the exception and not the rule.

September 25

Jedi Training: Developing Habits of Perception in Our Disciplines

By: Gillian Parrish, MFA

As longtime practitioners in our disciplines, we develop implicit skills that can be the source of some of the deepest learning for our students. In his book Experience and Education, John Dewey describes habit as “the formation of attitudes, attitudes that are emotional and intellectual…our basic sensitivities and ways of responding to all the conditions we meet in living” (35). Experiencing implies the sensing body, embodied learning, and Dewey does not shy away from the emotional dimensions of learning—both of which are often where the deepest learning happens, where students’ passion for a discipline ignites, and where experts’ best ideas originate. These often-overlooked dimensions of learning are also where empathy lives, and so it is there that knowledge might blossom not only into expertise but into wisdom.

September 24

Focus Your Lectures with the ‘One-Sentence Lesson Plan’

By: Norman Eng, EdD

Professors tend to cover a lot of content over the course of one class session. Yet students will probably forget most of it by the end of the semester. Why? One reason is that we focus too much on teaching, and not enough on learning. Students, therefore, don’t really get to grapple with the topic you just lectured about. They’re too busy taking notes. And most times, they don’t see a point to learning all this “stuff.”

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