In the rural part of North Central Pennsylvania where I live, a lot of families have owned the same farmland for generations. Houses are handed down, with each new family adjusting the home to their needs—adding a porch here, a back bedroom there, an attachment
Making meaning is the key to deep understanding. One instructional strategy that helps students reach understanding is concept maps. Concept maps display information through various forms, including charts, timelines, tables, and graphic organizers.The benefits of concept maps include aiding students in establishing relationships between ideas,
If you were to compare the average college class with the average elementary school class, one thing you would immediately notice is that college students almost never move around after they have sat down, whereas elementary classes often involve hands-on activities that require movement. There
A question has been floating around in my head since I started teaching college students: are we supposed to act like swimming instructors or Olympic coaches? The analogy is not as odd as it might seem at first. Don’t we talk about whether students “sink
What qualifications does it take to be considered for a faculty position at a four-year college or university? Guy Boysen (2021) recently answered that question for the field of psychology. He surveyed 267 faculty, asking them to describe the minimal research and teaching qualifications needed
Critical to an instructor’s ability to confidently, clearly, and effectively communicate with students is an understanding of the truism that communication begins with the self (Watzlawick et al., 1967). To engage in productive interactions that result in student learning, we must be broadly but simultaneously
As we teach specific topics in our classes, it is easy to lose the forest for the trees by looking at the topics in isolation from one another. For instance, a European history course might cover the various wars between France and Germany, but in
In more than a decade of teaching Romeo and Juliet at my small liberal arts college, I’d never had a student walk through class wearing only a towel. Then again, I’d never taught Shakespeare during a pandemic before.
In my previous column I addressed what makes it difficult for students to speak up in peer groups, especially to express opinions different from those that others in the group offer. As I’ve noted before, some columns continue to follow me around, and this one
With the pandemic came a flurry of faculty quickly moving their courses online. The question I heard most during this time was, How can I move my students’ presentations online? Most faculty chose to have students do live video presentations with a system such as
