The tendency of a traditional classroom is to build more basic, foundational knowledge during class and then send students out to do more complex thinking on their own as assigned work. So why do we ask students to perform, on their own, the cognitively challenging work where they are most likely to have questions and… Read more »
CITL
Tired of the Fake News (in your students’ papers)?
Do you want to help your students better evaluate their sources? Given the many types of fake news sites, knowing how to discern what’s fact and what’s fake is more important than ever. Here are some approaches, techniques and library resources you can pass along to your students to help them throughout their research. There… Read more »
Multipurpose Course Activities for SoTL Data
I am a huge advocate for multi-purposing, much like the Swiss army knife in the accompanying image. The same is true of my views on data. Collect it once and use it (at least) twice. Most data can be utilized to answer a number of questions, and multi-purposing saves effort on the part of both… Read more »
Making Educational Use of Difficult Moments
Every so often, issues arise on our campus (or beyond) that can weigh heavily on our students’ minds, impacting how they can engage with each other and their learning. Just recently, two issues rose to this level–the appearance on campus of flyers that mocked sexual assault and consent, and Provost Robel’s decision regarding the Benton… Read more »
Helping Students Write for your Discipline
When a student asked, “How many sources do I need?” history Professor Leah Shopkow took the question seriously, transforming her teaching. In an article she wrote about this assignment transformation, Shopkow explains how she went from answering, “It depends,” to truly teaching her students what historians do when they write. Unaware of the forms writing… Read more »
Quality Matters in Online Course Design
Instructors tasked with designing an online course often have two questions: What do I need to know, and where do I start? Our upcoming workshop, “Quality Matters: Applying the Rubric to Online Courses,” helps to answer both questions. Quality Matters (QM) is a non-profit organization concerned with improving and certifying the quality of online and… Read more »