I wish I could erase the negative associations that surround the word improve. Improvement is not a dirty word, but it is somehow equated with the sense of deficiency—the sense that something is not right or needs to be fixed. Unfortunately these connotations premise the quest for better teaching on notions of remediation and deficiency. [...]

Have you seen this article in the June issue of the Atlantic? http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200806/college If you haven’t, it’s definitely worth taking a look at. The writing is powerful; the message depressing at the same time it’s provocative. A very smart writing teacher I know described the piece as “a screaming canary, showing off [...]

I’ve been on the road quite a bit during this past month. It will be good to be home for awhile but participating in conferences with different faculty groups and doing presentations at various sorts of institutions is a great way for me to keep my finger on the pulse of teaching and learning in [...]

My blog entry for June 3 highlights some content from an article in which a chemistry prof recounts his experiences moving away from lecture. It promoted a “devil’s advocate” comment from Wendy. “When we went to college most faculty presented the material in lectures and we learned. What’s different today? Why are lectures no longer [...]

It was the last time slot for sessions at The Teaching Professor Conference in Orlando. The room was full with close to 100 faculty attending a session on active learning. But the conference was winding down and people were tired.
Presenters Deborah Mink and Linda Pickett both from Winthrop University in South Carolina started with an [...]

I had a terrible time getting to and from The Teaching Professor Conference this year. It was as if all of Delta Airlines conspired against me. I will spare you most of the details, but I ended up with a return ticket that had a 5 p.m. departure from Orlando connecting with a 2:15 p.m. [...]

Shelley Reid, an English professor at George Mason University, did a presentation on peer-review at the recent Teaching Professor Conference. (For information about The Teaching Professor Conference, visit www.teachingprofessor.com/conference/index.html.) She has written previously on the topic in The Teaching Professor. I attended her session and was not disappointed. Her thinking about how students can be [...]

I’ve been working on my article library here recently, exchanging paper copies for pdf files. It’s a great chance to re-read significant material. Yesterday it was a 1993 article in the Journal of Chemical Education (despite my humanities credentials, I’ve been a regular reader of this periodical for years) by Kersey Black. I can’t imagine [...]