What began as a routine summer workshop on incorporating games and game-like elements into instruction turned into the surprise of the summer; two weeks of fun and intense online game play by an engaged and committed cadre of faculty and staff who were working to
We all know faculty who do; often we do so ourselves. But overall, how many faculty grade participation? Would you guess a majority? What reasons justify our decisions to grade or not to grade participation? Those questions help get at our assumptions about participation, and
Sociologist David Purcell thinks he did. He shares his method and what he learned from it in a detailed article. Purcell writes for 10 to 15 minutes after every class. If he teaches back-to-back sections, he makes comments on his lecture notes, which he uses
Many teachers experience “the decline in reading” as the weeks of a semester progress.To remedy the decline in reading and resulting silence, I conduct “guided tours” of assigned readings.
At one time or another, most of us have been disappointed by the caliber of the questions students ask in class, online, or in the office. Many of them are such mundane questions: “Will material from the book be on the exam?” “How long should
Researchers Daniel Smith and Thomas Valentine begin by making an important point. At two-year colleges “the classroom serves as the epicenter of involvement.” (p. 134) The same could be said for commuter campuses as well. Students who attend two-year colleges often do so part- time
When we talk about teaching effectiveness, it’s usually in the context of evaluation. Student ratings are frequently described as measures of teaching effectiveness, and that makes our understanding of the term important. Researcher Leslie Layne wondered whether students and teachers define the term similarly. If
Because research into the effects of test-item order on exam performance has produced equivocal results, the editor recently suggested that “it is not a bad idea for instructors to systematically order test items and analyze the results to see how test-item order might be affecting
Screen after screen of text is what Kevin Gumienny refers to as “crappy” learning. Gumienny, curriculum coordinator for the Texas A & M Engineering Extension Service (TEEX), says that there are some valid reasons for using this type of instructional design—it’s easy to create and
Last fall, we did a survey of our top faculty to gather their best tips for teaching online. We observed that many of our top-tier faculty led very busy professional lives—counseling a full load of clients each week, teaching several classes for Liberty University Online,
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