April, 2007

The Teaching Professor - April, 2007 - Full Audio MP3
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The Teaching Professor - April, 2007 - Full Issue PDF
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The Virtue of Restraint in Virtual Education; or, Why I Refuse Student Emails
By Ronald A. Davidson, California State University, Northridge
With respect to the communications revolution made possible by the personal computer and the Internet, our duty as college teachers would seem perfectly clear: don the gloves and goggles, strap into our desktop workstations, boot up, and roar down the information superhighway. The more road we chew up with online chats and discussion boards, Web-based field trips, online classes, and other Internet-related tools, the better. The word “restraint” has, for now, an odd ring to it when used in discussions of technology and education. This is understandable: as educators it is our duty to make appropriate use of the new technologies so that our students are prepared to face the future.

Who’s Playing First in My Course?
By Bob Eierman, University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire
This past fall I attended a symposium about teaching projects on our campus. One group of faculty presented a set of projects they had done that involved giving students control over course design issues. The projects had grown out of a reading group that studied When Students Have Power by Ira Shor. The faculty presenters said that they let students design the syllabus and that the students typically created a rigorous course that was enhanced by the student ownership. I think I’m a student- and learning-centered teacher, but I’m also a teacher who has determined essentially all the course structure. So a few days before classes started, I decided NOT to spend my last few hours before the opening of the semester organizing, selecting, and deciding on syllabus issues, but to step (off a cliff?) into a world where students have power. Would chaos ensue if I gave students power in my general chemistry class?

Taking an Online Course: What Influences the Decision
Increasingly, students are able to decide whether they will take a course online or in the traditional classroom setting. Robinson and Doverspike (reference below) were interested in why a student might choose one of those environments over the other. Obviously, their results are of special interest to those who advocate online learning and can be of use to those who design online learning experiences.

Leaders with Incentives: Groups That Performed Better
Faculty who regularly use group work are always on the lookout for new and better ways of handling those behaviors that compromise group effectiveness—group members who don’t carry their weight and the negative attitudes students frequently bring with them to group work. A faculty team at the U.S. Air Force Academy reports positive results from a unique approach that involved making group leaders partially accountable for their group’s success while at the same time giving those leaders some power to reward or penalize individual members based on what those members contributed.

Student Comments on Course Ratings: A New Lens
Who hasn’t been hurt, depressed, and otherwise provoked by student responses to those open-ended questions routinely included on course rating forms? Often the comments carry emotional messages, and often faculty respond with an equal amount of feeling. Hodges and Stanton (reference below) challenge us to consider how some student comments may “give us valuable insight into intellectual challenges common to novice learners in our field.” (p. 280) They suggest we view student comments differently—that we bring to the analysis of them a “scholar’s eye” (p. 280) that might help us better understand the learning challenges student face in courses.

Faculty Self-Disclosures in the College Classroom
By Sarah M. Ginsberg, Eastern Michigan University
While interviewing university faculty for a study about classroom communication, Jim,* a professor of history, made this comment about a colleague he had observed teaching: “I was really amazed, when I saw him teach, how little of his personality you see.” This starkly contrasted with his perception of his own teaching style, about which he said, “I try to use humor a lot. My dad says I just think funny, you know, and I do; it’s hard for me not to joke around.” This comment started me wondering about how much of ourselves we let our students see.

A Brain-Friendly Environment for Learning
By Davie Davis, University of Central Missouri
Thanks to new technologies of brain imaging and major breakthroughs in cognitive research, neuroscientists now know more about the functioning of the human brain than ever. This new knowledge should help us revolutionize our teaching methods, but what about those of us who can’t tell a hippocampus from a hippopotamus? As an English professor whose gray matter has frequently proved more or less impervious to scientific discourse, I decided to tackle this challenge head-on, so to speak. Here are some of my findings, along with their implications for teaching and learning.