Writing (Teaching) Tip: Teaching Students to SCROL

Yes, with one L. I’ve been reading about teaching reading to second-language students, and this little exercise using headings and subheads in a text might benefit any student.  It’s quick to teach and focuses on the organization of a text in a way that’s useful to both readers and writers. It’s called SCROL (Grant 1993, [...]

Teaching Tip: Avoiding academic drift

In their new book, Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa report their findings on learning in college classrooms.  Using the Collegiate Learning Assessment (CLA), an essay-format critical thinking measure,  Arum & Roksa assessed the writing, critical thinking and problem solving skills of over 2,000 students from 24 institutions of [...]

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 [...]

We’ve Had Writing Day–Now It’s Reading Day

March 2 is reading day.  Unlike the National Day on Writing, this celebration centers on K-12 readers.  But these readers–and nonreaders–grow up to be MU students, and it’s sobering to note that the 2002 National Assessment of Educational Progress indentified only 34% of 12th-graders as reading proficient. On a happier note, Reading Rockets invites your [...]

Teaching Tip #5: Homework Blues?

It’s only February 2nd and already some students are behind in their reading or other assignments.  If you mention the standard Carnegie definition of a credit hour (one hour in class plus two hours outside of class for each credit) many students look at you with horror or incredulity (the ones who don’t just laugh).  [...]

Adam Kovach on Critical Reading Problems

Adam Kovach (philosophy) presented on “critical reading problems” at fall 2009 Innovations.  He finds students are not reading and/or not engaging with their texts. He likens philosophical writing to a jungle.  Students need to bushwhack their way through texts but too often give up.  If professors pull out the key ideas and present them as [...]