What Does Student Engagement Look Like?
June 22, 2016 Maryellen Weimer, PhD
Engagement. . .it’s another one of those words that’s regularly bandied about in higher education. We talk about it like we know what it means and we do, sort…
Teaching and Learning
We often hear that peer review is an excellent opportunity for reciprocal student learning. In theory, this makes sense. Since an instructor can only dedicate a certain amount of…
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When I tell people that I study the role of communication in teaching and learning, the most common response is: “Isn’t communication just common sense? I’m an expert in…
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When teachers tell me about some new strategy or approach they’ve implemented, I usually ask how they found out about it and almost always get the same response: “Oh,…
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Establishing a Writing Community in the College Classroom
March 28, 2016 Cassandra O'Sullivan Sachar, EdD
When I hear the words “writing community,” my mind conjures up an elementary school classroom. I picture the warm, fuzzy second grade teacher wearing a warm, fuzzy sweater, handing…
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Instructor: “OK class, this semester we’ll be giving presentations.” Students: Collective groan Instructor: “AND...you’ll be providing each other with feedback.” Students: Deep sighs and suspicious glances around the room,…
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Wheelchair Ramps and Extra Time for Learning
February 24, 2016 Maryellen Weimer, PhD
“A wheelchair ramp is an alternate mode of access for the physically disabled so that they may access the same benefits as others. Similarly, being allowed extra time gives…
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Our Top 15 Teaching and Learning Articles of 2015
December 18, 2015 Mary Bart
As another year draws to a close, the editorial team at Faculty Focus looks back on some of the most popular articles of the past year. Throughout 2015, we…
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Five New Year’s Resolutions for College Faculty
December 11, 2015 Karen Hughes Miller PhD
One of the perks of an academic career is the year-end break in December. It gives us some predictable downtime (or at least a bit of time within our…
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Self-Directed Learning: Antecedents and Outcomes
December 3, 2015 Maryellen Weimer, PhD
Most faculty now recognize the importance of students being able to direct their own learning. It’s what positions them for a lifetime of learning. And most faculty also recognize…
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How to Improve Group Work: Perspectives from Students
November 19, 2015 Brigitte Vittrup PhD
Many college courses today incorporate some form of group assignment, such as a project, presentation, or a collaborative paper or report. However, instructors are frequently met with resistance from…
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It’s Not Me, It’s You: Coping with Student Resistance
November 9, 2015 Nicola Winstanley
A little before the middle of each semester, I ask my students to fill out an anonymous one-minute paper to indicate what they would like to “stop, start, or…
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Early in the semester, I assigned my first-year students a blog post as a low-stakes “read and respond” writing assignment. Written by psychiatrist Samantha Boardman, the article “Stop This…
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As college faculty, we put tremendous pressure on ourselves to talk. We want to cover the course content and thoroughly explain our assignments. We want to sound smart, share…
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Engaging students in class conversation is not always an easy task. Even though we may make class participation part of their final grade, stress its importance in the syllabus,…
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Developing Students’ Learning Philosophies
October 23, 2015 Neil Haave, PhD
Last year the Augustana Campus of the University of Alberta ran a pilot study to consider the efficacy of using e-portfolios to deepen students’ learning. We were interested in…
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Thinking about Teaching and Learning
October 21, 2015 Maryellen Weimer, PhD
I heard someone say today that he’s been teaching for 50 years and never really thought about his teaching. “I just go in there and teach—I don’t think about…
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Haven’t we all entertained that inquiry from an absent student, “Did I miss anything important?” The question is poorly phrased, but I recognize that it’s usually well-intentioned. The student…
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There’s an assumption that students arrive at college with some idea of how to study. They have, after all, completed four years of high school prior to their arrival,…
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This summer I am reading Linda Nilson’s book Creating Self-Regulated Learners: Strategies to Strengthen Students’ Self-Awareness and Learning Skills, which offers instructors a wealth of assignments and activities to…
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We are definitely way more interested in learning than we used to be. In the early years of my teaching and faculty development work, it was all about teaching:…
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How long is your students’ attention span? For that matter, how long is your own? According to one estimate, the average attention span in the year 2000 was 12…
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In Effective Classroom Management, Teaching and Learning
A Learner-Centered Syllabus Helps Set the Tone for Learning
July 29, 2015 Mary Bart
At its most basic level, the syllabus is used to communicate information about the course, the instructor, learning objectives, assignments, grading policies, due dates, the university’s academic integrity statement,…
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Cooperative learning structures such as jigsaw and think-pair-share are widely used in college classrooms. The two most basic tenets of cooperative learning involve positive interdependence and individual accountability. “Positive…
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Jennifer Roberts first noticed the difference a few years ago in Geology 101. The course regularly draws 300 or more students a semester, and Roberts, an associate professor of…
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The influx of nontraditional adult students in higher education has resulted in unprecedented institutional competition. Colleges and universities, vying for attention and increased enrollments, seek creative solutions to attract…
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When you take ideas to places of extremity, they become distorted. “It is not part of my job to make you learn,” Philosophy Professor Keith M. Parsons writes in…
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Kant declared false the commonplace saying “That may be true in theory, but it won’t work in practice.” He acknowledged that there might be difficulties in application, but he…
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An Exercise to Reduce Public Speaking Anxiety and Create Community in the Classroom
May 8, 2015 Stacey Peterson PhD
In public speaking classes or classes where there are oral presentations, students often enter these environments with a bit of anxiety and trepidation about speaking in front of others.…
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Strategies for Addressing Student Fear in the Classroom
April 27, 2015 T. Scott Bledsoe Psy.D. and Janice Baskin
Upon setting foot in the classroom at the beginning of the semester, many students experience varying degrees of anxiety or fearfulness. As educators, we often sense nervousness among our…
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Helping Students Who Are Performing Poorly
April 24, 2015 Maryellen Weimer, PhD
Unfortunately, all too often performance on the first exam predicts performance throughout the course, especially for those students who do poorly on the first test. Faculty and institutions provide…
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In Philosophy of Teaching, Teaching and Learning
Practical Tips for Cultivating a Learning Relationship with Students
March 27, 2015 John Orlando, PhD
Take a moment right now to ask yourself who your best teachers were growing up. Now list the qualities that made them your best teachers. Looking at your list,…
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“The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over and over again, is the very root of judgment, character, and will. No one is master of himself if…
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Thoughts on Professionalism and Communication Skills When Content Reigns
March 6, 2015 Kelly Grattan PhD
Instructors, particularly in online schools and those with open admission policies, often work with students who struggle with a lack of communication skills (namely writing) and professionalism. This is…
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The Power of Teachers’ Questions Lies in Their Ability to Generate Students’ Questions
February 27, 2015 Maryellen Weimer, PhD
I was looking at one of my old teaching and learning books, Kenneth Eble’s 1988 book The Craft of Teaching. Some parts are now a bit dated, but many…
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In the spring of 1991, I returned to teaching after more than five years as a Benedictine monk. The monastery had been founded in China in the 1920s, and…
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Why Students Should Be Taking Notes
February 20, 2015 Maryellen Weimer, PhD
Students can be pretty demanding about wanting the teacher's PowerPoints, lecture notes, and other written forms of the content presented in class. And a lot of teachers are supplying…
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Don’t Assume Difficult Question Automatically Lead to Higher-Order Thinking
February 13, 2015 Maryellen Weimer, PhD
They’re the kind of questions that promote thinking and result in sophisticated intellectual development. They’re the kind of questions teachers aspire to ask students, but, according to research, these…
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Students love it when teachers provide class notes—the more complete the set, the better. Students want the teacher’s notes online because it’s convenient, they’re readable, well organized, and relieve…
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Plagiarism: An Interesting Disconnect between Students' Thoughts and Actions
January 13, 2015 Maryellen Weimer, PhD
Almost 800 business, engineering, education, and health services students completed a fairly typical plagiarism survey. They were asked how strongly they agreed with a statement defining plagiarism as copying…