February, 2006

The Teaching Professor - February, 2006 - Full Issue
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Google No More: A Model for Successful Research
By Billie E. Walker, Penn State Berks
What percentage of research papers that you now grade have only Internet citations? Yes, I know, way too many. Brace yourself, because this trend is not going to change anytime soon. Google is now the search engine of choice for many students. Left to their own devices, students collect information indiscriminately on the free Web and hand in papers and projects with works-cited pages that look like the greatest hits of Google. However, the situation is not hopeless. Faculty can insist that students base their research on what I term the resource trifecta.

Reflection in the Context of Learning
What is reflection in the context of learning, and what does being able to do it accomplish? The interest in reflection began (as did so many educational topics) with Dewey, who described reflection as a two-stage process beginning with doubt, hesitation, being perplexed, and the experience of having difficulty explaining something to oneself so that it makes sense. To resolve that dissonance, the learner seeks new ideas or experiences that will resolve the doubt, settle the perplexity, or remove the difficulty. Researchers who have studied the construct have built on Dewey, but they haven’t changed his basic depiction.

Interviews: A Module That Removes the Mystery
By J. D. Wallace, Lubbock Christian University
Students complain of being negligibly prepared for the interview process. After talking with mine, I realized that they were not missing the more technical skill sets such as resume development, dressing for success, or researching companies. They could garner those from any of a number of online vendors, books, or magazine articles. They were missing multiple experiences in an interviewing format. They desperately needed to have the mystery and uncertainty that surrounds the process removed. Practice with resume preparation or company research does not put you on familiar ground in a selection interview. So I created a micro-interview module that addresses these critical issues.

Learning for the Sake of Learning
Despite widespread concern and many attempts to address the acheivement gap, whites educationally outperform other ethnic groups, whether the measure is graduation rates from high school, SAT scores, or a host of other objective criteria. According to Mano Singham, a physics professor, good teaching can close the achievement gap.

Conversations About Grades: Realistic Expectations
What instructor has not been stressed and disappointed by a student with a grade issue? So many students seem so ready to blame their poor performances on everybody and everything else. It’s as if they have no responsibility at all for the grades they have received. And then there’s the student who debates an answer and in the process seems genuinely interested in the content. But the truth comes out as the conversation concludes: “Well, do I get credit for this answer or not?”

Capstone Courses Prepare Students for Transition
Much attention continues to be directed at those first-year experiences in college. As important as that time is during a student’s tenure in college, it’s not the only portion of a student’s career to which attention should be directed. True, seniors are no longer likely to drop out of college, but they face a transition just as compelling as the one that brings them from high school to college. They are about to depart from college to professional lives. It is a time for reflection, integration, and closure.

The Last Class: A Time for Celebration and Ritual
Lots of classes end with more of a whimper than a bang. It’s the end of semester, everyone’s tired, lots of assignments are due, there’s lots of work to grade, and final grades create stress for everyone. And so many last classes end perfunctorily. That’s how Christopher Uhl described the ending of his 400-student, undergraduate environmental science course.