Faculty Focus

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Maryellen Weimer, PhD

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.

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Maryellen Weimer, PhD October 26, 2010

When Mentoring New Faculty, Don’t Ignore These Issues

Beginning college teachers benefit when they have an instructional mentor. That fact is well established; as is the fact that mentoring benefits those who mentor. The influx of new faculty over the past few years has caused mentoring programs to flourish. All kinds of activities have been proposed so that mentors and mentees can spend their time together profitably. Addressed less often are those instructional topics particularly beneficial for the experienced and less-experienced teachers to address. Here’s a list of possibilities.

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Maryellen Weimer, PhD October 15, 2010

Do More Tests Lead to More Learning?

Most college teachers assume that more tests are better than a few. Why? What caused us to decide on three or four unit tests followed by a final? Is there evidence that students don’t do as well in courses where there are only a midterm and a final? Why do we think that more tests might be better? And what do we mean by better? Higher grades? More learning?

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Maryellen Weimer, PhD October 14, 2010

RateMyProfessors: Is There a Lesson to be Learned?

RateMyProfessors.com needs no introduction to most instructors. The problems with the site are equally well known. There’s no guarantee that the students who select to evaluate and post the comments are a representative sample—and no guarantee that the assessments themselves are representative.

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Maryellen Weimer, PhD October 13, 2010

The Benefits of a Course Blog

Does it matter if students leave courses with a positive attitude toward the content area? Maybe successful acquisition of content is all that really matters. Maybe teachers don’t need to be concerned if students “liked” the content. As physics professors Duda and Garrett (reference below) point out, this is about more than whether or not students “liked” physics.

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Maryellen Weimer, PhD October 8, 2010

Building Rapport with Your Students

Rapport, defined as “the ability to maintain harmonious relationships based on affinity” (a definition cited in the article referenced below), is more colloquially thought of as what happens when two people “click”—they connect, interact well, and respond to each other favorably.

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Maryellen Weimer, PhD October 5, 2010

To Improve Students’ Problem Solving Skills Add Group Work to the Equation

Problem solving is “what you do when you don’t know what to do.”

What a simple, straightforward definition for something often defined in much more complex ways. But problem solving doesn’t always mean the same thing. It might be the solution to a specific problem, like those that appear on math quizzes, or it might be a collection of possibilities that respond to a complex open-ended problem. But however it’s defined, problem solving is one of those skills all teachers aspire to have their students develop.

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Maryellen Weimer, PhD August 31, 2010

Preparing Teaching Philosophy Statements

Although they are a fairly recent innovation, most faculty are familiar with teaching philosophy statements. Many have prepared them for job interviews, for promotion and tenure dossiers, for teaching awards, or for personal benefit.

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Maryellen Weimer, PhD August 20, 2010

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