Preparing to Teach

Threshold Concepts: Portals to New Ways of Thinking

A threshold concept is discipline-specific, focuses on understanding of the subject and … has the ability to transform learners’ views of the content.” (Zepke, p. 98) It’s not the same as a core concept, although that’s a useful place to first put the idea. “A

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Creative Assignments: Where Do They Belong?

Can you teach students to be creative? Most of us would say no. It’s more like trying to teach for it—encouraging it, promoting it, acknowledging when it happens, and rewarding it. Despite the difficulties associated with teaching creativity, teachers shouldn’t be excused from trying to

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Does Use of Course Materials Placed Online Improve Performance?

Course websites now include such things as the course syllabus, PowerPoint slides, study guides, discussion questions, links to online content sources announcements, reminders of due dates, and opportunities for online discussion via e-mail and discussion boards. Most faculty put materials online to help students learn

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Thinking about Writing Assignments Developmentally

Often the articles highlighted in The Teaching Professor are examples of pedagogical scholarship that could beneficially be done in many fields. That is the case with this piece on developing writing assignments, but it also contains content useful to any faculty member who uses writing

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Keeping Students on Board with Concept Maps

The benefits of concept maps are well established. They encourage students to organize knowledge and do so in ways meaningful to them. They help students sort out, prioritize, and understand relationships between terms, concepts, and ideas. Students can also use concept maps to forge relationships

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What Types of Writing Assignments Are in Your Syllabus?

Thanks to the Writing-Across-the-Curriculum movement we are having our students write more and we’re using a wider range of writing assignments. Right?

If that’s what you’re doing, it’s consistent with the actions of faculty teaching undergraduate sociology courses; as documented by an analysis of 405

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The Writing Process

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.

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Assignment Options

No, the objective isn’t to make assignments optional. But the article referenced below raises the possibility of giving students some choice over the kinds of assignments they complete. In previous issues of the newsletter, we have shared systems that give students some discretion in the

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Lesson in Critical Thinking

Evaluating the Absurd: A Lesson in Critical Thinking

The College Success course taught at Polk State College introduces library resources and support services available to students. In a critical thinking and information literacy assignment, students are supposed to learn how to differentiate between a valid Web page and one that is questionable. They

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