Although group work can provide a welcome change to the regular classroom routine, the results are rarely all positive. Invariably, one or two students in
Early in my professorial career, I noticed two patterns: (1) requests for extensions on papers and forgiven absences spiked immediately prior to major breaks, and (2) dying grandparents were nearly always the explanation offered for those requests. I definitely wondered, and sometimes felt guilty, about the close correlation between expiring relatives and due dates listed on my syllabus.
Principles of Accounting has the reputation of being a “hard and boring” course. It is difficult to motivate students to invest the time and effort necessary to succeed in the course. To meet this challenge, we have assembled a list of eight simple rules for keeping students focused and motivated.
The major benefit any conscientious professor seeks in course evaluations is in gaining useful student feedback. Yet most rating instruments generate vague, unjustified student comments.
Have you tried implementing some active learning strategies in a large course only to find students resisting those efforts? You put students in groups and give them some challenging discussion questions, only to see most of them sitting silently while a few make feeble comments to which no one in the group responds.
When you assign your students to write a paper, do they know where to start? Upperclassmen surely do, but what about freshmen? Left to their own devices, they’ll likely turn to Google and Wikipedia as their main research tools, and may never even set foot in the library if they can help it.
In this, the final installment of a six-part series on strategies for building student engagement, I offer suggestions for engaging students beyond the classroom. As professors, we impact students not only during classes, but also through office hours, emails, and feedback.
In the fifth installment of a six-part series on building student engagement today’s teaching tips focus on strategies for improving classroom interactions.
In this, the fourth article in a six-part series on building student engagement, I offer specific suggestions for what to do in the classroom get your students interested and excited about your course.
In previous articles I’ve offered effective teaching strategies for building student engagement by setting the tone with the syllabus and first classes. Today we move to the general classroom atmosphere. The following suggestions will help you build an atmosphere of constant engagement, passion and learning.
