In This Issue Current Issue Archives

June, 2008

The Teaching Professor - June-July 2008 - Full Issue PDF
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The Teaching Professor - June-July 2008 Full Audio mp3
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Class Participation Evaluated by Peers
Most instructors opt to include class participation in their courses. Many seek to promote it. Generally, students are encouraged to participate by some sort of grading scheme. But evaluating individual contributions and promoting a substantive, intriguing discussion at the same time is no small task.

Should Instructors Provide Students with Complete Notes?
Course management software programs make it especially easy for instructors to provide students with a set of complete lecture notes. It seems that more instructors are doing this, as witnessed in the regularity with which students ask that the instructor’s notes be posted. But is giving students a complete set of notes a good idea?

Saving Academic Lives
By Ike Shibley, Penn State Berks
I recently read two wonderful books on the medical profession, one by Jerome Groopman (How Doctors Think) and the other by Atul Gawande (Better). I’ve been thinking about how closely the tasks of teachers and doctors are aligned. Teachers have patients, although we generally call them students.

The Story Told by a Used Textbook
By Gretchen Aggertt Weber, Horry-Georgetown Technical College, SC
Textbooks become diaries in which students write not only matters of academic significance but also heartfelt stories of vulnerability, pain, and trust. Sometimes educators miss these stories or become inured to them. For example, let’s take the used textbook my 50-something husband purchased for an introductory health course he recently took as part of his degree program.

Teaching Philosophy Statements Prepared by Faculty Candidates
Typically, teaching philosophy statements are prepared as part of promotion and tenure dossiers or for teaching awards. However, increasingly they are being requested by those interviewing for open faculty positions. The article referenced below documents the extent to which that is happening in one discipline.

Learning Goals: Faculty and Students Don’t Agree
The findings of a recent study documenting differences between the priorities that faculty and students give to various learning goals will not come as a surprise to many. Those differences are an undercurrent that flow through most classes.

Bonuses of a Bonus Assignment!
By Tena Long Golding, Southeastern Louisiana University
My students are always asking for opportunities to earn bonus points. I offer a variety of assignments during the semester, but they still want bonus points, which they seem to think are easier to obtain than the required points. Generally, I’m opposed to bonus options because I feel that if students are struggling with the current assignments, they do not need an “extra” assignment for extra credit.

Finding the Best Method
“All too often in education, pundits, and some researchers for that matter, seem to believe that they have found the method which all teachers should use.” So writes Noel Entwistle, a noted scholar with a career of research on teaching and learning in higher education to his credit. He (and others) are concerned about the pressure that educational researchers feel to discover “what works.”

Participation: Revisiting the Basics
Student participation in college courses is an instructor expectation in most classes. That doesn’t always mean lots of students contribute or that what they say takes class discussions to new heights, but as a strategy that seeks to engage students, the use of participation is widespread. Moreover, recent years have seen a rise in more detailed and explicit criteria being proposed for the assessment of participation.

Academic ‘Speed Dating’
By Karen Eifler, University of Portland
I don’t get nearly enough sessions with my students. What with time for exams and holidays, I get maybe 24 periods to teach them everything necessary for mastering complex content, to attend to their “puzzlements,” and to build human relationships with and among them. I need strategies that make every moment count, starting with the norms that encourage interaction.