I know two faculty members who are top-of-the-line teachers. I’ve seen them teach and interviewed students in their courses. They are two of the best. Even so, both struggled mightily with online teaching during the pandemic. “For me,” one of them reported, “online teaching demands
Expectations shape our responses. I come to supper thinking we’re having salmon, and instead it’s chicken thighs. I’m not smiling. A student studies for the exam, feels prepared, breezes through the questions, and anticipates a good grade. If the grade ends up a C, the
Have you ever disliked a student? That’s not a feeling most of us want to admit, but we are human and that means not kindly disposed toward everyone. In recent surveys (Boysen et al., 2020, 2021), about 50 percent of faculty in two cohorts, one
“When are you going to run out of things to write about?” a colleague recently quipped in an email. Truth be known, I’ve wondered that myself. I do regularly revisit topics I’ve covered previously, but hopefully with new ideas and information. Surprisingly, when it’s time
Student attitudes about group work have been an ongoing concern of faculty. Some students don’t like group work, and those negative attitudes have the potential to compromise learning and the quality of the experience for everyone involved. For that reason, it behooves teachers to keep
At the end of an article that summarizes research on self-regulated learning, Bjork et al. (2013) noted for their research on the topic, discuss evidence-based answers to questions that students frequently ask about exams, studying, and learning. I like the idea of being a bit
I used to question my students’ use of flash cards. Yes, I could see their value in language learning, but in a beginning communication course? In developmental English? My concerns did rest on a bit of academic elitism. I thought college students should be using
Another of those loosely defined but favorite words in higher education, metacognition is mostly understood superficially—“thinking about thinking.” We consider it broadly, generically, as it relates to learning. The mental processes involved are not easy to observe or measure. Even though most academics have good
Recently I’ve undertaken a new learning project: identifying the trees in the woods around my home. I’ve lived among trees for most of my life and feel a special affinity toward them, but I can’t name most of them. I’ve bought a tree book and
I’ve never been a big fan of lists and checklists. Their condensed statements oversimplify and sound definitive, as if that’s all there is to know. Often, they claim more than they can deliver— “best policies to prevent multitasking,” for instance. My hesitancy about them rubs
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