Can we reform teaching and learning throughout higher education one class at a time? I used to think so, but the pace of change has made me less optimistic. I just finished preparing an article for The Teaching Professor newsletter that reports the
A colleague and I have been revisiting a wide range of issues associated with classroom interaction. I am finding new articles, confronting aspects of interaction that I still don’t understand very well, having my thinking on other topics challenged, and learning once more how
The term “teaching effectiveness” had its heyday in the 80s and early 90s during that period when so much work on student ratings was being done. Its connection to evaluation activities remains and even end-of-course ratings are often thought of as measures of teaching
I’m “reflecting” a lot these days. My tenure review is a few months away, and it’s time for me to prove (in one fell swoop) that my students are learning. The complexity of this testimonial overwhelms me because in the context of the classroom experience,
A few years ago, I felt that if students could wean themselves from relying on me to orchestrate class discussions, the activity would become richer and many of these problems would be solved. With this in mind, I decided to try “leading” a discussion without
In “Good Teaching as Vulnerable Teaching” (The Teaching Professor, December 2012), Rob Dornsife of Creighton University invites us to embrace the uncertainties teachers encounter. The article prompted me to invite colleagues also to embrace being strict when the conditions warrant it.
Though tons of attention has been paid to what good college writing looks like and to how bad student writing typically is, the writing process movement has made a radical breakthrough in terms of getting more students to actually write better.
Every October, members of the Canadian Forces College’s National Security Program—a master of public administration program for senior military personnel and senior public service professionals—have the opportunity (and privilege) to travel to Ottawa to meet with high-level policy practitioners. The intent of the trip is
Students don’t like them—that almost goes without saying. They prefer unit exams that include only material covered since the previous exam. And they’d like it even better if the final wasn’t a comprehensive exam but one last unit test. But students don’t always prefer what
Frequently instructors discourage cheating on multiple-choice exams by creating different versions of the exam. Test questions may be reordered randomly, according to their degree of difficulty, or in the order the material was presented in class, or the answer options may be ordered differently. The
Magna Publications © 2024 All rights reserved
