As students, I think we all had moments when we questioned the point of certain assignments. They might’ve been simple ones—posters, diagrams, or short stories meant to be completed quickly, graded, and never discussed again. You may have even told yourself that you didn’t have
Like so many other professors, I’ve noticed that student engagement is lower now than it was even five years ago. Students are skipping class, skipping assignments, and getting AI to do their reading and writing for them in ever-increasing numbers. When I sign in to
Faculty are forever looking for ways to improve performance, and a recent article by Xiao and Hew (2023) explores the possibility of using rewards to do so.
I spent many years managing a multimillion-dollar marketing budget for an online program and many years training faculty to be great teachers. One thing both experiences taught me is that institutions too often let marketing encroach on teaching. They do so when they create
Several years into my 30-year career as a professor, I had an experience that ultimately upended my entire approach to teaching. I came to see the conventional classroom in a whole new way—as a sensory deprivation chamber—and developed a hands-on antidote I call “thinking
The learning management system (LMS) discussion forum comes off as archaic and overly controlling to today’s students, who are used to working in a much richer social media environment. Whereas the LMS forum is designed for lengthy text comments, young people are used to
“How do I fill up four hours a week of class time?” At first, this exclamation from a first-year graduate student preparing to teach her first class seemed alien to my experienced teacher mindset. Perhaps I have long stopped thinking about how much time
When my son was growing up, my wife and I bought memberships at the local science museum so we could take him there any time we wanted. Like many parents, we wanted him to grow up in an intellectually stimulating environment. No vacuous video games
While animation used to be the purview of professional studios, today software like Vyond makes it easy for those with no animation skills at all. I design and teach an online college-readiness course that includes a wide variety of engaging content; however, students continue to
Studies have demonstrated not only a strong correlation between student time devoted to academics and success but also that students spend less time studying than ever before (Brint & Cantwell, 2010). This is a problem in both face-to-face and online classes, but online courses offer
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