If you are concerned about your students’ reading habits, why they complete or don’t complete readings, and whether they comprehend the readings, ask them. Here are a few survey questions you can use. In the CITL’s current Faculty Learning Community, “Designing and Building Equitable Large Classes,” participants are surveying their students about their reading practices…. Read more »
Entries by Sarah Pedzinski and Madeleine Gonin
Unspoken Expectations and Student Success: Revealing the Hidden Curriculum
What is the hidden curriculum? The “hidden curriculum” or “invisible curriculum” refers to the unstated norms, policies, and expectations that students need to know to succeed in higher education but are often not taught explicitly. Your students might not know how to do things that seem quite rote and standard to someone more experienced, like… Read more »
Creating an OCQ Game Plan
With end-of-term deadlines, grading turnarounds, and rapid student emails, it is easy to get overwhelmed in December. Then, when your inbox quiets and holiday chaos has begun, online course questionnaires (OCQs)—IUB’s version of student ratings of instruction—suddenly appear. If you’re like me, you stare at the email announcing their availability for a few days before… Read more »
Course Design for Graduate Students: You’ve Got This!
Midway through the 2022 spring semester, I walked into my classroom and was greeted by one of my students giving her classmates an impromptu presentation on educational best practices, punctuated with examples of work I’d been doing in her classroom. Despite the student’s praise and the fact that she was connecting claims and evidence (a… Read more »
Quick Tip: Use Attendance Questions to Increase Student Engagement and Build Classroom Community
Let’s face it: getting students to participate in class is a challenge. My discussion-based sections of English composition sometimes felt more like Old Western standoffs than the collaborative learning communities I was striving for. After much trial and error, I found a simple practice that amped up the volume in my classes: attendance questions. Research… Read more »