I once heard class discussions described as “transient instructional events.” They pass through the class, the course, and the educational experiences of students with few lingering effects. Ideas are batted around, often with forced participation; students don’t take notes; and then the discussion ends—it runs
The life of a faculty member is filled with noisy busyness—planning class sessions, grading, meeting with students, advising, committee work, research, scholarship, and publications. We are consumed by the swirl of activities and the need to juggle all these responsibilities without dropping one of the
Frequently, in our beginning accounting course, some of our students find a topic or procedure completely incomprehensible. Since these topics are discussed and illustrated in the textbook, our initial reaction was that these students simply weren’t doing the assigned reading. In some cases this was
Most students find it difficult to think of famous historical personalities as real people. They also read texts without realizing that there are tangible personalities behind them. I have found one of the most effective ways to give flesh and blood to the past is
Clickers have made their way into many classrooms, and unlike any number of other instructional innovations, they have already generated a plethora of research findings, almost all of them indicating the positive benefits of the use of these response systems. The study highlighted here illustrates
Countless studies document that many instructors are quick to intervene when they see students struggling with the material. Most instructors perceive wrong answers as something they should correct. When students misunderstand, teachers perceive it as signaling the need for greater instructor involvement. But what else
When making classroom decisions, too often our main focus is the standards, learning objectives, and/or discipline competencies that must be addressed by the end of the course. Instead, we should focus on the students who sit in our classrooms and how we can best help
I’ve been doing some presentations on classroom interaction and thinking yet again about how we could do better with our questions—the ones we ask in class or online. Good questions make students think, they encourage participation and I think they improve the caliber of the
I was looking at one of my old teaching and learning books, Kenneth Eble’s 1988 book The Craft of Teaching. Some parts are now a bit dated, but many are not. It was one of those books that greatly influenced how a lot of us
Here’s the scenario: Students are taking a chemical thermodynamics course. The instructor solicits clicker responses to a conceptually based multiple-choice question. Students answer individually, write a brief explanation in support of their answer, and indicate how confident they are that their answer is correct. They
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