Interested in this topic? There is still time to register for our March 22 SoTL talk on “Helping Students Learn in an Age of Digital Distraction” by Katie Linder from Oregon State University. Register here. If you’ve ever faced a room full of students who seem to be paying more attention to their laptops or… Read more »
Taking the Pulse of Your Class with a Mid-Semester Evaluation
Perhaps you’re trying a new teaching strategy or teaching a new course and you wonder what your students think of it. Or you want to avoid surprises in your end-of-semester evaluations. All of these are reasons get some feedback from your students through a mid-semester evaluation. A mid-semester evaluation gives you an opportunity to get… Read more »
Lecturing is Not a Four-Letter Word
Is lecturing an outmoded form of instruction that you should avoid at all costs? Not at all. As “active learning” becomes the norm in college classrooms, many faculty who believe in the importance of using in-class activities to engage students with course content may hesitate to admit that they actually sometimes…lecture. While concerns about lecturing… Read more »
Teams Without Tears: Setting Up Students for Successful Teamwork
Assigning students to work in teams on a project can have a lot of benefits for your students’ learning, but those benefits depend on creating successful student teams. Such teams have positive interdependence among members, individual accountability, face-to-face interaction, interpersonal skills, and periodic reflection on the team’s performance. How can you design an assignment so… Read more »
Teaching the Election and Other Hot Topics
Because we’re in the midst of an election season, you’ve probably had some conversations (perhaps even heated discussions) about election-related topics with friends, colleagues or family members. Now imagine that same heated discussion arising in your classroom. How would you handle it? This election has raised issues such as immigration, climate change, health care, the… Read more »