In a now-classic scene in Star Wars: A New Hope (Episode IV for those of you keeping track), pilot Luke Skywalker has one shot to destroy the Death Star. He must fly in a narrow channel and hit a small target. To concentrate, he
Most instructors know the value of YouTube videos for supplementing instructional material. YouTube has a wealth of instructor- and expert-created content that can vividly illustrate course concepts. But instructors can use YouTube for more than just instructional content. They can also use it as
While the emergence of ChatGPT has created considerable consternation among faculty who fear students will use it to write their assignments, the positive side is that it provides a powerful tool for faculty to use in developing course content. ChatGPT
“How do I fill up four hours a week of class time?” At first, this exclamation from a first-year graduate student preparing to teach her first class seemed alien to my experienced teacher mindset. Perhaps I have long stopped thinking about how much time
I’m a professor of psychology, and I’ve taught courses in behavioral statistics and research methods my entire career. No one decides to major in psychology for the chance to take statistics and research methods. Students usually choose the major because they want to help
Assigned short papers with research and application components expose students to the analytical process of research and writing; too often, however, students turn in papers without any appropriate or reliable sources. We have noted in recent years that college students’ abilities to distinguish appropriate academic
When news broke of the Margory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting on Valentine’s Day 2008, students and faculty at the small liberal arts college where I taught at the time were catapulted out of the pastoral slumber and relative safety of our tiny rural
The first day of class is a big deal. Just as there is only one chance at love at first sight, teachers like us only have one chance to demonstrate of each class. As Sarah Rose Cavanagh (2016) writes, “On the first few days
Whenever a restaurant asks him for a credit card to schedule a reservation, New York Times food critic Pete Wells writes, “I hear several messages, none of them warm and fuzzy. [The practice] says that I’m not trustworthy. . . . It says that a reservation isn’t
“I’d do things a lot differently if I just had fewer students.”
Have you ever thought or said this? This sentiment has been voiced to me over and over again by attendees in faculty development workshops and by graduate student instructors I have supervised. Truth
