In This Issue Current Issue Archives

Aug-Sept, 2005

The Teaching Professor
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Need to Get Your Students Talking? Try Speed Dating!
By Berni Murphy, Deakin University Melbourne, Australia
We have long known that students learn best when they are enthused, yet so often we settle for having just a few students dominate discussions while the rest remain either disengaged or intimidated by those who make frequent contributions. After the class, we assure ourselves that robust debate occurred—that the quiet students have learned something even though they did not actively participate. But is this really the best we can hope for? Perhaps we could apply some of the lessons drawn from the currently popular speed-dating model, where interested parties meet and briefly engage with a variety of potential “dates.” Here are a few suggestions.

Active Learning: Some Interesting Results
Conventional wisdom and considerable research support the contention that full-time students, especially those who live on campus, experience more and faster intellectual development than those students who only attend college part time and commute. A survey of full- and part-time students, recently graduated from a variety of professional programs in engineering, construction, business, health sciences, textiles, and design at a university in Hong Kong, contained some results that seemed to dispute this widely held belief.

Learning from Dandelions
By Karen E. Eifler, University of Portland, Oregon
I pulled the first of many dandelions from my front yard today. For once I took a closer look at this pernicious weed that consumes so much of my scant gardening time and was struck by a number of lessons I could apply to my work as a teaching professor.

Student Success after the First Year
As college educators, we have been slow to recognize those developmental issues that have been linked to success in college. To our credit, mostly at the behest of our administrators, we have come to realize the importance of the first year, the first semester, even the first few weeks in those decisions beginning students make about staying at or leaving college.

Compulsive Teaching Syndrome
By Gary Poole, University of British Columbia
I am a compulsive teacher. This might sound admirable, but it has its pros and cons. For example, if I am visiting a totally unfamiliar city and am approached by someone for directions, I will take out my map and direct the person. I don’t even want to think about some of the places I have sent people.

Teaching Professor Conference 2006: Call for Proposals
In May 2005, more than 600 faculty gathered near Chicago for the second annual Teaching Professor Conference. Like the first conference, the centerpiece activities of this two-and-a-half-day event were the many programs presented by faculty participants in the conference.

Can You Make a Lecture Too Interesting?
Most teachers work to add interest to lecture material in an attempt to gain student attention. If they aren’t attending, they aren’t listening, and if they aren’t listening, it’s pretty hard to imagine them learning anything from a lecture. But is there a point at which the interesting details are more arresting than the content? And if that’s so, do those kinds of details get in the way of attempts to learn and apply content?

Using the Syllabus to Lay Down the Law
“You will submit three projects.” “I expect regular participation.” “You must attend class.” “Students bear sole responsibility for ensuring that papers…submitted electronically to the professor are received in a timely manner.” The “arrogant tone” and “imperial commands” (p. 51) are an all-too-familiar part of syllabi for college courses, writes Mano Singham in the article cited below. Edits like these even appear in the course outlines of gentle, kindly faculty members.

What’s Bad about Good Practices?
By Larry D. Spence School of Information Sciences and Technology, Penn State
The Socratic questioning strategy described in the article appealed to me. I could see how it would cut down on quizzes, grading, and the whole sad enterprise of writing multiple-guess questions that dulled students’ thinking. I made some adaptations and expectantly implemented it in my introduction to political theory course.