Among teachers’ biggest worries about trying to incorporate humor into their classes are that no one understands their humor, that they might offend someone, and that they’re just not funny. As someone with a clear bias in favor of humor notwithstanding, I say balderdash. Incorporating
Have you ever struggled to get students to do required readings? Do your students treat them as optional? Perhaps they do the readings, but when you ask them to engage in critical discussion or think deeply about the material, they are unable to do so.
When students learn there will be group work in a course, they often let up a collective groan. Group work tends to leave a bad taste in students’ mouths due to their lack of understanding of group dynamics. If you plan to use group activities
Lecture as a pedagogical approach has come under considerable fire in recent years. Indeed, critics have called lectures boring, obsolete, old-fashioned, overused, and even unfair, among other, less-flattering terms. The criticisms, however, have most often been leveled at one type of lecture: the full-class-session, transmission-model
Despite the range of functionalities available in most learning management systems (LMSs), faculty and institutions still find themselves looking to add content or tools not available in their LMS to meet instructional strategies or goals. For this reason, the Learning Systems and Technology (LS&T) team
It’s night; a boy bikes alone on a dark, empty forest road, the only sounds those of his bike wheels whirring, the cicadas singing, and the gentle breeze. He passes a large metal fence with a warning sign that reads, “RESTRICTED AREA. NO TRESPASSING. U.S.
As part of our teaching philosophy, we believe in the value of exploring contentious issues with our students to encourage civic engagement and effective leadership. When we introduce contentious issues in the classroom, we define a contentious topic as one that is (1) debatable and
Flipgrid is arguably the best-known video hosting and collaboration tool for education. An instructor can set up a “grid” that hosts all their class’s videos. Then the instructor creates “topics”—video or image discussion prompts with text descriptions. Students then post replies to those topics as
As a writing teacher, I’ve discovered that counseling writers to sequence details logically does more for their writing, their readers, and their intellectual development than encouraging them to take risks or to make art. Plot really is everything. Not just in story writing but in
Long ago I learned that the best way to tour a city is by bike. A car isolates a tourist from a city, while a bike immerses them in it. A car is a means of racing from tourist destination to tourist destination in as
