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 Strategies
Feedback, not just Grading
Good feedback creates dialogue between the instructor and student. In order to foster this dialogue, it’s important to give students feedback both early and frequently throughout the semester. Timely feedback allows students to act on the information to improve their learning while still in your course. This requires providing students with frequent opportunities to demonstrate… Read more »
Designing Assignments to Promote Academic Honesty
Assignment design can be a powerful tool in your efforts to engage your students with your subject matter and encourage them to do their own work. To make assignments more interesting and less vulnerable to cheating, consider some of these suggestions: Ground assignments in real-world events or in controversies in your field. Ask students to… Read more »
Have you Innovated Lately?
When is the last time you innovated in the classroom? Are you sitting in your comfort zone? There’s something to be said for cruising in the comfort zone to perfect your previous innovations, however it’s not a place to stay long term. The comfort zone is the place where you know what to expect, you… Read more »
Emphasize Time on Task
Outside of class, students should spend 2 hours preparing for every 1 credit hour (i.e. 6 hours per week outside of class for a 3 credit hour class). However, most students only spend 1 hour preparing per credit hour (i.e. 3 hours per week for a 3 credit hour class). During this hour, students often… Read more »
Writing is a Process! Responding to Writing by International and Multilingual Students
We can best support all of our students’ writing development by integrating the writing process into our courses. The writing process consists of several carefully staged steps including brainstorming, drafting, peer review, revision, and editing. Students should be taught multiple strategies for accomplishing each of these steps. The writing process provides lots of opportunities for… Read more »