Would you prefer to go to a party with 50 exciting, brand-new people that you’ve never met before, or would you prefer to have dinner with an old, dear friend? You’ve probably guessed already that extroverts would prefer the party and introverts would prefer dinner
The single greatest strategy that I know to stimulate classroom learning is to write with students at the beginning of class.
Consider your own pre-class ritual to see if writing with your students might profit you and them. In my classes, students funnel in to
Do you have a system or standard process for prepping a course you’ve taught before? Where do you start? Early in my career, “one chapter per week” described my course outline. It wasn’t an effective system. Poor planning left my students and me burnt out
It’s hardly a new subject. There’s plenty of research. There’s lots of advice, suggestions, and possible strategies to try. But with all that, there’s not much participation in a lot of courses. The percentage of students who don’t participate has remained virtually the same for
Group work is one of those areas that some business and engineering faculty think is essential because that’s what those students will be doing in the workplace. I don’t want to undermine that view, but I do want to say that there is more to
Tests cause most students considerable anxiety. That’s good, because it usually motivates them to study. However, when it’s time to take the exam, excessive anxiety can compromise how students perform. They miss questions that they knew the answer to, or so they tell us. We
Early in my teaching career, I attended a professional development event. The only session I remember was one given by Alan Lakein. It featured his book How to Get Control of Your Time and Your Life. He proposed an elaborate scheme for making and prioritizing
The use of clickers, especially in large classes, has made participation a reality for a lot more students. It’s a safe way to offer an answer and an equally constructive way to find out whether yours is the correct answer. Research on clickers and learning
It makes more sense to focus on those teaching behaviors that help students learn, and that’s where the emphasis has been for many years. The characteristics, features, aspects, dimensions, and behaviors of excellent teachers have been identified and explored since research on teaching in higher
Pete Burkholder, a history professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University, is writing a series of columns for a website on teaching US history. He doesn’t teach US history, having only taken a course on it in high school. So it’s not surprising that his first column
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