When I was an undergraduate at the University of Texas, all students were required to take two courses in US history. The courses were US History Before the Civil War and US History Since the Civil War. I took the first course from a historian
There is an elusive win-win in teaching in which both teachers and students truly enjoy a class together. The teachers find pleasure and satisfaction in educating students, and the students are fully engaged in learning concepts they find interesting and meaningful. Unfortunately, some teachers and
Last month I wrote about how students fool themselves into thinking they have learned concepts when they really haven’t. This month I focus on how faculty can fool themselves into thinking that they are teaching effectively when their students aren’t really learning.
Like millions of people, I play Wordle each day in The New York Times. If you are unfamiliar, Wordle is a logic game in which you get six guesses to figure out a five-letter word. After you submit a guess, you get feedback about each
A number of online programs now have a “plain language” requirement for course content. This means that course content cannot use words that might be unknown to some students; institutions enforce the policy by keeping the content language at or below a designated education
No faculty member sets out to be a bad teacher—at least I hope not—but there are bad (or ineffective) teachers. I’m sure some of these faculty see teaching as an obligatory chore or are indifferent to whether students learn. Then there are those who want
