The Cost of “Call Me Whatever”
Nichole DeWall
March 9, 2026
I sidestepped the question for years.
I sidestepped the question for years.
Two of my past articles for The Teaching Professor describe different types of educational “moments”: teaching moments and critical moments. Although I have been in the classroom for nearly 35 years, I continue to seek out strategies, like these moments, to fine-tune my teaching. In
Faculty and institutions are using AI to create educational material and tutors that help students learn the material. These are text-based interactions. But AI can also build digital simulations that allow students to experiment with different variables to learn how they affect processes. This ability
“May I have your slides, please?” If you’re not an instructor who posts their class slides online, you’ve undoubtably heard this question. Should you make your slides available? One answer is, “It depends.” As with most pedagogical questions, there are many nuances indeed. But after
A hot moment is one of those classroom situations where you can feel the temperature shift. Someone makes a comment that lands wrong. Discussion gets charged. A student reacts—verbally or visibly—and suddenly the room isn’t about the lesson anymore. It’s about safety, power, and whether
Higher education has come to understand that AI is akin to the computer and the internet, a new technology that students will need to know how to use in the future. The problem, though, is that most instructors don’t know how students will use AI
Creativity scholars Kaufman and Glăveanu (2019) argue that “like love or happiness, creativity is everywhere and nowhere in academia” (p. 27). They make this claim within the context of scholarship, stating that while everyone has an opinion, creativity can be difficult to define and categorize.
What if the most powerful teaching tool wasn’t a new AI technology but humans helping other humans become teachers themselves? After two decades working with neurodiverse students who think differently, are brilliant, and struggle academically, I’ve discovered that the combination of metacognitive problem-solving instruction and
Picture this: You spend hours crafting a midterm exam that could provide valuable learning opportunities. Students get their exams back early in the course, leaving them plenty of time to improve before the final. Yet when you look at final exam results, you see that
There is an elusive win-win in teaching in which both teachers and students truly enjoy a class together. The teachers find pleasure and satisfaction in educating students, and the students are fully engaged in learning concepts they find interesting and meaningful. Unfortunately, some teachers and
