What does your syllabus say?

Like everyone else I am trying to get all my last minute class preparations done, including my syllabus, while at the same time trying to come up with a CTE blog post that would be interesting, timely and relevant.  And quick.  Then, I saw this  blog post from Maryellen Weimer’s Teaching Professor Blog. Those of [...]

Teaching Tip: Balancing Flexibility and Fairness through Course Design

This week’s teaching tip is a guest post from Mark Potter, Center for Faculty Development at Metropolitan State College of Denver. http://www.mscd.edu/cfd/ ●     “Prof. Smith, I won’t be able to make it to class tonight because unfortunately my flight back from vacation has been delayed by an hour and now I won’t make it back [...]

Teaching Tip: Learning to be a group

If you would like to use more group work in your classes, but have had difficulty getting the groups to work as well as you would like, here are some suggestions from an expert in the field, Dr. Barbara Millis.  Her most recent book “Cooperative Learning in Higher Education” (2010) describes cooperative learning as a [...]

Teaching Tip: Unprepared and at-risk

Today’s post is less of a “tip” and more of a look at one of the major issues we are all dealing with in our classrooms.  Unprepared and “at risk” students are on the rise across the country, in both graduate and undergraduate programs.  We might prefer to remember the students we used to have [...]

Teaching Tip #13: Summertime and the living is EZ (er)

Can you see the light yet?  Right now, it may feel like that last big Light where your dear departed await, but it’s really just the end of the spring semester tunnel.  So, let’s look forward to planning your summer.   I hope you are including large dose of fun and relaxation; could some of that [...]

Teaching Tip #4: Better Lectures?

The lecture method of instruction may be the original pedagogical strategy.  Before information was readily available in print form (and now online), a lecture was the most efficient way to transmit expert knowledge to novice learners.  Now, rather than being the primary source of information, faculty experts need to help students learn to find, select, [...]

Teaching Tip #3: Writing is Learning

Try this experiment:  ask your students to spend 5 minutes writing about a topic before beginning class discussion on the topic. You don’t need to grade it or even collect it, although you might want to use the students’ work as a way to take attendance.   Why do this?  Research findings suggest that students who [...]

Teaching Tip #2: Naming Names

Do you routinely learn and remember your students’ names? There are some excellent reasons to develop this skill, since research shows that when instructors display a personal interest in students it positively affects class participation and learning. Students see instructors who know their names as more supportive and easier to approach with questions. Your student [...]

Feel like Surfing?

Yeah, it’s Friday so I’m thinking about the beach. Not really. But it is a good time to surf around on the web and call it work. One great place to land? ProfHacker, featuring “Tips and Tutorials for Higher Ed” I’ll post the link in our links section, but here it is now if you’re [...]