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May, 2007

The Teaching Professor - May, 2007 - Full Audio MP3
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The Teaching Professor - May, 2007 - Full Issue PDF
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A Tree Falling in the Forest: Helping Students ‘Hear’ and Use Your Comments
By E. Shelley Reid, George Mason University, VA.
Responding to student writing is perhaps our most labor-intensive act and a terribly frustrating effort if it has no effect. Recently, I find myself being more deliberate in the ways I try to help students use my feedback to improve their writing.

Inspiration from Renaissance Beauty
By Richard A. Giaquinto, St. Francis College, NY
“Let the beauty that you love be what you do” (from Mediations from the Mat, 2002) I took this statement to heart last summer. I took 20 students to Florence, Assisi, Rome, and Pisa to share what I like to do—travel. The trip was part of a new course, Teaching Literacy through the Visual Arts. Now that I am back home, I have been asked a lot of questions about the experience. Two questions have been asked repeatedly, and answers to them motivated me to prepare this article. Why did I do this? What did I learn from the experience?

Changes in the Academic Profession
As college teachers, most of us know that the profession is changing, but we aren’t always as up on the details as we should be. According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, between 2001 and 2003 only 54 percent of the faculty hired were appointed to full-time positions, and 35 percent of all full-time appointees were not in tenured or tenure-track positions.

Mistaken Assumptions That Mislead Beginning Teachers
Lately I’ve been wondering if there’s a set of assumptions made about teaching and learning initially that inhibit instructional growth and development subsequently. I think there is, and here is list of these assumptions along with a bit about why each makes teaching excellence less likely to develop and be sustained.

A Certificate in College Teaching
Born out of a national grant project, Preparing Future Faculty, and an informal agreement between two institutions outside of Boston, a Certificate in College Teaching is now formally offered by the Colleges of Worcester Consortium. The Consortium, an organization that affiliates 13 public and private colleges and universities in central Massachusetts, describes the certificate program as “a collaborative institutional response to the ever-present challenges of promoting exemplary teaching in today’s complex higher education markets.” Seed money to fund this certificate program came from the University of New Hampshire as a result of UNH’s participation in the Preparing Future Faculty grant project. However, this certificate is unique because a consortium of institutions, rather than a single research university, sponsors it.

I Hate Groups!
By Joseph F. Byrnes, Bentley College, and MaryAnn Byrnes, University of Massachusetts Boston
Some students tell us they hate groups—as in really hate groups. Why do faculty love groups so much, they ask. I work hard, I’m smart, I can get good grades by myself, these students insist. Other students are a waste. I end up doing all the work and they get the good grade I earned for the group. Why do you, Professor Byrnes, make me work in a group. I hate groups!

Evidence against Using Crib Cards
We have published several articles proposing that students be allowed to place course content on an index card that they are then permitted to use during an exam. The principle advantages of these crib cards include their effectiveness at reducing test anxiety and the study value of selecting and organizing material for the card.