In This Issue Current Issue Archives

June/July 2004

June/July 2004 full issue in PDF format

A Three-Tiered Approach to Connecting Learning Components
By Craig A. Almeida, Stonehill College, MA
The principal hurdle hampering students' learning is that they often perceive topics and concepts as discrete and unrelated pieces of information. A three-tiered method that centers on the use of notes and course packet comprised of illustrations to help students visualize intangible course materials can help.

Students as Clients: Exploring the Metaphor Further
Michael Armstrong looks at the implications of three metaphors in terms of what they might say about how students relate to faculty and the institutions that aspire to educate them: students as customer, as clients, and as junior partners. He thinks the junior partner metaphor aptly describes how graduate students relate to their faculty advisers, and that the student as client metaphor depicts undergraduates.

Confronting Failure Constructively
How often do we take a long, hard look at an instructional failure and come away with a reasonable set of conclusions? I think we look long and hard all right, but we do so from such a place of emotional distress that we do not leave stronger and better teachers. More often we emerge scarred; sometimes we feel victimized, and other times we just hope to goodness we never find ourselves in that place again.

12 Commandments for PowerPoint
By Susan Buchholz and Jill Ullman, Purdue University Calumet, Indiana
PowerPoint has become a major tool used to disseminate information in classrooms. Yet many faculty and students often use PowerPoint in ways that distract and confuse viewers. To help, we’ve assembled 12 commandments for using PowerPoint effectively.

An Internship for the Professor
By Thomas J. Gerstenberger, SUNY Potsdam, NY
In response to a major initiative to increase student internship opportunities from the president of my college, I applied for a sabbatical leave to partake in my own “informal internship” to gain direct knowledge of the material I was teaching and foster relationships leading to internships for my students

Learning Portfolios Encourage Deeper Learning
How do we get students better connected to and with their learning when all they seem to care about are their grades? How do we focus on learning and cover the content?

Building on ‘First Word’ Activity
By Joan Benek-Rivera, Bloomsburg University, PA
As part of my continuing efforts to improve the quality of my teaching, I used a technique described by Barbara A. Mezeske in the October 2003 issue of The Teaching Professor. This activity (titled, “Students Get the First Word”) requires students to make a three- to five-minute presentation at the very beginning of class on something relevant to the course.

Presentation Software: Does the Course Make a Difference?
As experience with and use of technology to support instruction grows, more specific questions about its effects on student performance can be asked, and those answers can increase its impact still further.

Deciding on Which Active Learning Activities to Use
Not all faculty use active learning (although most all claim to be in favor, at least in principle), and many more use only a bit (despite widespread acknowledgement that it facilitates learning). So why aren’t faculty doing more? There are many reasons. There’s still the content coverage issue and the fact that when students are “doing” the content, it isn’t getting covered as expertly and efficiently as when the professor does it. There’s some just good, old-fashioned resistance to change. And then there’s the lingering fear that at their heart active learning activities are more about entertainment than real substantive learning experiences.

Covering Content and Teaching Thinking
Many of us have pointed out in writing and exchanges with colleagues that we’ve got too much to teach, but more often than not, it’s seen as one of those inevitable ills, something like giving grades, that we just to learn to accept. The problem is that we may soon reach the point of no return; there’s only more to add, little that can be taken out, and course lengths that remain unchanged.