Articles

A Simple Trick for Getting Students to Ask Questions in Class

Your students have questions, but they rarely ask them—especially at the beginning of the semester. They feel awkward or embarrassed, or maybe it’s just inertia. Whatever the cause, the vast majority of student questions go unasked. For teachers, this is wildly frustrating because we can’t answer the questions they don’t ask (though some questions can be anticipated). In many cases, the unasked questions represent anxieties and uncertainties that negatively affect students’ performance in class and inhibits their learning. This is a particular problem in the sophomore composition class I teach. It has a reputation as a difficult class, so many students arrive intimidated and nervous.

Meriah L. Crawford October 13, 2017

Designing Developmentally: Simple Strategies to Get Students Thinking

I continue to be concerned that we don’t design learning experiences as developmentally as we should. What happens to students across a course (and the collection of courses that make up a degree program) ought to advance their knowledge and skills. Generally, we do a good job on the knowledge part, but we mostly take skill development for granted. We assume it just happens, and it does, sort of, just not as efficiently and extensively as it could if we purposefully intervened.

Maryellen Weimer, PhD October 11, 2017

Moving from Silos and Burnout to Community and Engagement

“Do more with less.” Wherever this phrase is expressed—at a private liberal arts school facing declining enrollments, a large research institute facing decreased support from state budget appropriations, a large corporation facing decreasing fourth quarter profits, or a government entity facing budgetary cutbacks—in each case, the underlying force is tightening fiscal resources. What invariably follows is that employees are asked to be more creative or productive in the face of those declining resources, causing an increase in demand on one’s time and, often, feelings of burnout. While increasing workload is one factor that exacerbates the prevalence of burnout, there are several others.

Scott Gabriel, PhD October 9, 2017

Tips for Addressing Social Loafing in Group Projects

Group work is a valuable learning device that teaches teamwork skills which students will use no matter what profession they enter. It is perhaps even more valuable in online classes, as more and more organizations are using distributed employees who need to coordinate their work from a distance.

But group work also brings with it the danger of social loafing, those one or two students who do not contribute their fair share to the project. Not only does it undermine the quality of the project, but it creates frustration among other group members who see it as unfair to have team members not pull their own weight. This can have a dampening effect on the motivation and thus performance of other members of the group.

John Orlando, PhD October 6, 2017

Student Entitlement: Key Questions and Short Answers

What is student entitlement? Ask a group of teachers to define student entitlement and their answers will strike similar themes. A definition often used by researchers categorizes student entitlement as a “tendency to possess an expectation of academic success without taking personal responsibility for achieving that success.”

Maryellen Weimer, PhD October 4, 2017

Incorporating Principles in Cognitive Psychology to Improve Student Learning

At the 2017 STEM FIT Symposium at Washington University in St. Louis, Mark McDaniel, PhD, Professor, Psychological & Brain Sciences, co-director of CIRCLE, and co-author of Make it Stick: The Science of Successful Learning (2014), presented a plenary address on how research in cognitive psychology can support effective teaching practices and improve learning. Supported by laboratory and field experiments, many of the techniques McDaniel presented from the book can be applied to most academic subjects in order to promote student learning.

Henry L. Roediger, McDaniel’s co-author, previously grouped many of these same techniques into three general principles to enhance educational practice (Roediger & Pyc, 2012). Each principle offers an opportunity to consider how to incorporate research-supported practices for sustained learning. Brief summaries of the three general principles are listed below. I have also included a few examples found within the literature of how you may incorporate these principles into your teaching:

Christopher Grabau, PhD October 2, 2017

How to Make the Most of Your First Year of Teaching

Crowdsourcing advice for new faculty

This fall, thousands of new college teachers walked into their very own classrooms for the first time. They’ve ignored the butterflies, handled the inevitable technical malfunctions with aplomb, and learned to successfully navigate both the campus web portal and the faculty parking lot.

But there’s so much to learn, and none of it has to do with course content. They’ve had some real affirming moments, but most days feel like a race to stay a step ahead of the students. They feel like imposters … worried that their students, their colleagues, and, worst of all, their department chair will discover that they really don’t know how to teach.

Mary Bart September 29, 2017

Examining the Helicopter Professor Label

Here’s a comment that’s got me thinking.

Kristie McAllum writes in Communication Education, “We have created a system that simply replaces helicopter parents with helicopter professors. . . . Through our constant availability to clarify criteria, explain instructions, provide micro-level feedback, and offer words of encouragement, we nourish millennials’ craving for continuous external affirmations of success and reduce their resilience in the face of challenges or failure.”

Maryellen Weimer, PhD September 27, 2017

Creating a Culture of Excellence for Graduate Teaching Assistants

A colleague at another institution, “Bill,” recently contacted me with a problem. Bill’s program is under fire for low exam scores and cognitive learning achievement in one of its largest general education courses. Campus administrators had generated a variety of theories: Test items were biased against non-white students, the reading level of the required textbook was too high for this school’s population, classes were too large. Most upsetting to Bill was the speculation that his department was unqualified to teach the course!

Jennifer H. Waldeck, PhD September 25, 2017

Tips for New Online Faculty Deans: A Faculty Perspective

We know that strong leaders empower and genuinely care for those whom they lead. That empowerment and care is not expressed by the words they speak, but by their everyday interactions with the people around them.

In academic settings, leaders serve as models for how faculty can more effectively empower students. If these leaders are simply calling it in, then their faculty, especially new faculty, may experience dissatisfaction in the workplace and may eventually follow those negative examples. In the online world where facial expressions and body language are not visible, it is vital that online faculty deans adopt a ‘virtual body language’ that demonstrates a genuine interest in their faculty. Here are some tips for online faculty deans that may lead to a more positive faculty experience and even stronger faculty engagement and performance.

Noura Badawi, EdD September 22, 2017

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