In This Issue Current Issue Archives

March 2004

March 1, 2004 (Full PDF Issue)
IN THIS ISSUE
Total Team Teaching--Sharing Teaching Duties Equally
Music Metaphor Help Students Understand Group Dynamics
Understanding Student Motivation
Web-Based Quizzes
Quizzes--To Accomplish Classroom Management, Comprehension, Confidence and Conversation
Preventing Disruptive Behavior
Making a Difference in Students' Lives
Effects of Instructional Methods

Full March 2004 issue in PDF format

Total Team Teaching — Sharing Teaching Duties Equally
By Hal Blythe and Charlie Sweet, Eastern Kentucky University
In his excellent book on team teaching (Interdisciplinary Courses and Team Teaching), James Davis posits two extremes on the continuum of team teaching. One pole consists of “courses planned by a group of faculty and then carried out in serial segments by the individual members of the group” (p. 7). At the opposite pole are “courses planned and delivered by a group." They take primary responsibility for individual class sessions, but sometimes [italics ours] two or more faculty are involved in planning and delivering the instruction of a particular class.” (p. 7) The two of us take the latter extreme even further, going into what we call Total Team Teaching (TTT), and we find the results highly effective.

Metaphor Helps Students Understand Group Dynamics
When students work in groups, things don’t always go smoothly. In fact, sometimes things go so poorly, those process issues compromise or obliterate the learning potential of the activity. The interdependence and collaboration on which success in groups builds “can often stand in stark contrast to the individualism that may be the hallmark of students’ earlier school and life experiences.”

What Motivates Students?
What motivates students in classrooms? It’s one of those $64,000 questions -- of interest because we so often see what doesn’t motivate students in classrooms. They look like they’re bored, apathetic, there because they have to be, sitting back and waiting for education to be done unto them. For certain, these descriptors don’t apply to all college students, but most of us would agree that they characterize far too many of the learners that sit in front of us.

An Electronic Leap: Quizzes on the Web
By Jan D. Andersen, California State University, Sacramento
Like Mark Twain’s famous Jumping Frog of Calaveras County, many teachers are weighed down with the thoughts, traditions, and technologies of the past, unable to make that giant electronic leap, even though their colleges and universities have invested much to provide the necessary technology. Four years ago I leaped and changed my approach to quizzing. I eliminated all in-class quizzes. I stopped using quizzes as summative assessments and starting using them to provide students a management tool for keeping up with the assigned readings.

Quizzes Boost Comprehension, Confidence
By Scott Warnock, Penn State Berks-Lehigh Valley
Years ago, to encourage my students to read, I began opening class with short, user-friendly reading quizzes. I soon realized these quizzes accomplished a variety of objectives, and quizzing evolved into an important learning component of my courses. If you share some of the objectives described below and are seeking a way to jump-start the beginning of your classes, you might find this quizzing strategy useful.

Minimizing Disruptive Behavior in the Classroom
Some student behaviors disrupt the class and distress the teacher. From the teacher’s perspective the behaviors are outrageous -- showing up in class wearing a T-shirt, pajama bottoms, and slippers. If not outrageous, they are annoying and make teaching well difficult.

What Does it Mean to “Make a Difference” in Students’ Lives?
Teachers frequently resort to platitudes, especially when it comes to describing the softer, more emotional side of teaching. For example, one thing that many teachers aspire to do is to “make a difference” in the lives of their students. But what exactly does that mean?

The Effects of Instructional Methods on Student Learning
Does the way we teach have an impact on what students learn? This is the central question of a study of instructional methods (referenced below). This work on methods and learning is unique and interesting for several reasons. First, the faculty researcher set out to test an important question: Others have asked this question (some of that research we’ve highlighted in previous issues, like that of David Kember), but empirical inquiries are comparatively recent, and it is such key question. If some instructional approaches produce more and better learning, faculty need to know that.