course policies

Are You Seeking Student Engagement . . . or Obedience?

Lately, my favorite days in class have been the rowdy ones. If someone asks me how my classes are going, I can say with genuine happiness, “Great! They were so rowdy today.” What I’m recalling in that moment is a picture of students completely engaged

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Changing the AI Narrative: Embracing Defiant Optimism

Since January, I have led multiple faculty development sessions on generative AI for faculty at my university. Attitudes from faculty at these events have ranged from concerned to frustrated, overwhelmed to worried, as well as a sense of grim resignation (to be fair, there were

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The Student We Carry in Our Heads

Years ago, I got to work late and had to grab the last parking spot, right in front of the university print shop. Technically, this was legal, but it was frowned upon; the person who ran the shop had a habit of hanging signs

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Food for Thought: Setting the Table for Learning

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

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Cell Phone Policies and Power Sharing

Teachers do have power, but it’s not absolute—as witnessed by students’ ongoing, widespread use of cell phones during class and online instruction. While policies abound, enforcement has proven difficult. True, faculty can prevent most students from using their phones, but as Karlin (2021) points out,

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The Effects of Requirements on Learning

Students must comply with lots of educational requirements. They take “required” general education and major courses. Sometimes the sequences of those courses is also mandated. In most courses students must submit required assignments on specified due dates. Policies mandate student actions, such as attendance, participation,

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Too many course policies?

Examining Our Course Policies

Recent pedagogical interests have me wading through research on multi-tasking and revisiting what’s happening with cheating. In both cases, most of us have policies that prohibit, or in the case of electronic devices, curtail the activity. Evidence of the ineffectiveness of policies in both areas

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The Teaching Professor Conference 2024

June 7-9, 2024 • New Orleans

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