We’ve moved! The Teaching Professor blog is now part of its sister site, Faculty Focus.
What does this mean for you, my loyal readers? Well, other than the different look and location, you’re not going to notice any big changes. The subject matter, style, and tone of the blog will remain the same. All previous posts and comments from the blog have been retained on the Faculty Focus site.
My best wishes for your holidays. Thanks to those who read the blog faithfully as well as those who read it intermittently. I enjoy meeting you on my travels and hearing about a blog post that you’ve read and appreciated. I work hard to make them useful—hoping to enlarge your understanding, challenge your thinking, and [...]
Still finishing up? I remember one semester when I was doing my final grading in my office on a Saturday morning. It was very close to Christmas. I finally finished, submitted the grades, and exuberantly headed home with Christmas music on the radio far louder than it should have been. It was such a relief [...]
What can I offer this week, which for many is one of the busiest weeks of the semester? It is such stressful time for teachers and students—everybody gets tired, even the best of us get cranky. I know what many teachers would love to have: a grading machine, delivered overnight with no assembly required.
Minus the [...]
“The type of assessment used in a course provides a clear indication of what the course goals truly are. No matter what the teacher says, tests are proof of whether the goals are memorization of chemical facts, plug-and-chug mathematical problem solving, or the ability to understand and apply the concepts of chemistry.” (p. 678)
I can’t [...]
“Teaching with Rubrics: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.” What a great title and the article is equally as good. For a quick review, rubrics, as this author points out, are most simply lists of criteria and levels of quality. (p. 27) What makes them good, bad, and ugly? Here’s a list condensed from [...]
“In most of the writing on learner-centered education … the focus remains on the teacher—what he or she can or should do to achieve learner-centered instruction. Although a learner-centered model is based in a different set of assumption than a teacher-centered model, the starting point is still pedagogical techniques initiated by the teacher. … In our view, such a focus objectifies students, distances teachers, and underemphasizes the most critical element in the classroom: learning.”
All memorization is not bad. It can be a tool that leads to understanding. It opens the door to knowledge. Sometimes even rote memorization is a necessary first step. If you’ve got it in your mind, even though you may not understand it fully or at all, its relevance, connection, and value is there to be discovered, provided it moves from short-term memory (where most things memorized by rote are stored) to long-term memory.
