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Aug-Sept, 2009

The Teaching Professor - August - September, 2009 - Full Audio MP3
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The Teaching Professor - August - September, 2009 - Full Issue PDF
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Teaching Strategies That Help Students Learn
By Sara J. Coffman, Purdue University, Indiana
What skills do you wish your students had prior to taking your course? Reading comprehension, time management, listening, note-taking, critical thinking, test-taking? Let’s face it, most students could benefit from taking a course in learning how to learn. But who wants to take a study skills class?

Do Students Really Know Their Academic Strengths?
By Brian A. Vander Schee, Aurora University, IL
Students focus on grades far more so than faculty would like. This is particularly true when students do not receive the grades they believe they deserve. They think that some assignments disadvantage them. I wondered how students would respond if they were given the opportunity to select the weight distribution for graded course components. The assignments would be preset, clearly described in the course syllabus and students would complete each one, but they could select the percentage of their grade accounted for by each assignment.

Three Things to Do with Cell Phones (Besides Confiscate Them)
By Karen Eifler, University of Portland
My class had just finished covering three chalkboards with a rather dazzling array of concept clusters, illustrations, and links among disparate ideas. Clearly, a lot of learning had been generated. As I picked up the eraser to clear the board, I mentioned it was too bad that Chelsea and Eric (who were absent) had missed this vibrant discussion. “Well if you promise not to bust me, Dr. E, I could take a picture of all this and send it to them,” offered Claire. She pointed at the laminated sign in the front of the room that said in huge font, complete with helpful picture, NO CELL PHONES ALLOWED IN CLASS.

One Teacher’s Story
In a recent article, Barbara Millis recounts her “odyssey” to become an effective teacher. She writes that, like most teachers, she did not start out a fully developed “good” teacher. “Most of us do not offer award-winning presentations our first day in the classroom.

Online Learning: An Update
With the advent of distance education and online learning in the ’90s, any number of experts predicted widespread changes for higher education. Have those predictions been realized? Has online learning changed the face of higher education?

A Voice Cries Out: Using the Phone in Online Teaching
By Timothy J. Haskell, Northwestern Connecticut Community College
I often teach a block of two courses for a popular online school. The courses are usually in the field of basic written communication and/or expository essay writing. Most of the students in each of the courses have not been in college for many years; most are older than I am, and most of these students approach my course, as well as online learning in general, with great trepidation. For the longest time, I struggled with how to make the students realize that I was not simply a signature line at the end of a “Main Forum” course room message.

Developing Students’ Self-Directed Learning Skills
Self-directed learning skills involve the ability to manage learning tasks without having them directed by others. They are skills necessary for effective lifelong learning and are one of many learning skills students are expected to develop in college. The expectation is that students will become self-directed learners as they mature and gain content knowledge. Here’s a study showing how students can become self-directed with explicit instruction.

Twice as Nice: Using Co-Teaching as an Instructional Strategy
By Patty Kohler and John Trice, University of Central Arkansas
As the quantity of knowledge continues to increase at exponential rates, it is difficult to be an expert in every aspect of the content that we are required to teach. Based on our experiences, we would like to recommend the use of co-teaching as a partial solution. As with any instructional approach, there are benefits to co-planning and co-delivering instruction, and there are pitfalls that merit consideration. In this article, we would like to share some of the valuable lessons we have learned.

Why Don’t My Students Think I’m Groovy?
By Christy Price, Dalton State College, GA
Ask veteran teachers if students have changed, and they typically respond with a resounding, “YES!” My interest in this new breed of students was piqued when I began to notice unrealistically high expectations of success among my students combined with an astonishingly low level of effort on their part.