I started teaching three years ago. I was fresh out of graduate school, equally thrilled and terrified at the prospect of teaching my own classes. On paper it sounded straightforward: teach others the same material I just finished learning myself. I could do that, I
Being a college professor sometimes feels lonely. Yes, we have colleagues in our departments and elsewhere on campus, students in our classrooms, and administrators who support us, but we also spend a lot of time working by ourselves. As new faculty members, we decided that
Remember that article in the March issue describing how a sociologist used reflective writing to improve his teaching? Here’s another short testimony to add to that one. Matthew Liberatore explains in Chemical Engineering Education that a laboratory notebook holds an invaluable collection of procedures, measurements,
How much instructional advice have you heard over the years? How often when you talk about an instructional issue are you given advice, whether you ask for it or not? Let’s say you’re a new teacher or you’re teaching a class you haven’t taught before
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
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
“Error marks the place where education begins,” Mike Rose posits as one of the central themes of his book Lives on the Boundary. Error is a signal of stepping outside the confines of our comfortable knowledge base, of taking that risk and transcending what we
It seems that we are in a time—an educational crossroads of sorts—when teaching is overgeneralized to the point where it can be difficult for professionals to have meaningful conversations. Tired descriptors such as “sage on the stage” and “guide on the side” have permeated the
