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Full-Text Articles in Education
Building Assignments That Teach, Mary-Ann Winkelmes
Building Assignments That Teach, Mary-Ann Winkelmes
Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives
We have come to take assignments for granted as a necessary part of undergraduate education, largely because they provide the basis for a student's grade. But assignments can accomplish much more. In addition to helping students learn course content, assignments can enable students to practice the most essential skills of a discipline. Further, assignments can offer an opportunity for students to become better evaluators of their own academic work.
Thoughtfully structured assignments offer teachers an opportunity to build students’ mastery of essential disciplinary skills alongside their content knowledge; to improve students’ ability to evaluate their own academic work; and even …
Beyond Writing: Integrative Learning And Teaching In First-Year Seminars, David H. Krause, Robert C. Lageaux
Beyond Writing: Integrative Learning And Teaching In First-Year Seminars, David H. Krause, Robert C. Lageaux
Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives
Campuses across the country continue to establish first-year seminars that promise students integrative and transformative learning experiences necessary for the twenty-first century. This trend inevitably challenges faculty members to teach in ways that transcend or subvert both their disciplinary expertise and their familiar, comfortable ways of teaching. These challenges become especially visible in the design and evaluation of assignments. At Columbia College Chicago, for example, where the majority of students aspire to careers in the arts, media, and communication, teachers have been negotiating the place of writing in a required firstyear seminar in liberal learning. These negotiations play out differently …
Role-Play: An Often Misused Active Learning Strategy, Stephanie Nickerson
Role-Play: An Often Misused Active Learning Strategy, Stephanie Nickerson
Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives
Role-play is a special kind of case study, in which there is an explicit situation established with students playing specific roles, spontaneously saying and doing what they understand their “character” would, in that situation. Role-plays differ from other case studies in the immediacy of the experience. Students find themselves in the role-play. In a case study, they read about situations and characters. One of the reasons role-play can work so well is because of the power of placing oneself in another’s shoes. This provides opportunities for learning in both the affective domain, where emotions and values are involved, as well …
Teaching, Learning, And Spirituality In The College Classroom, Allison Pingree
Teaching, Learning, And Spirituality In The College Classroom, Allison Pingree
Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives
landscape is provoking a heightened focus on spirituality and religion in the academy. For example, UCLA’s Higher Education Research Institute (HERI), best known as the administrators of the CIRP Freshman Survey for over 40 years, is conducting a major research project, Spirituality in Higher Education (https://www.spirituality.ucla.edu), drawing data from over 112,000 students and 40,000 faculty at over 420 institutions. Defining spirituality in broad strokes (as the “interior” and “subjective” aspects of our lives, that which reflects the “values and ideals that we hold most dear,” gives us “meaning and purpose,” and invokes “inspiration, creativity, the mysterious, the sacred, …
The Useful, Sensible, No-Frills Departmental Assessment Plan, Barbara E. Walvoord
The Useful, Sensible, No-Frills Departmental Assessment Plan, Barbara E. Walvoord
Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives
Academic departments from physics to philosophy to physical therapy face new demands for “assessment of student learning.” It’s hard to argue against the basic idea of assessment: when a department invests time and resources trying to nurture student learning, it should ask itself: Are they learning? Yet departments may also fear that assessment will require them to dumb-down their teaching; use standardized tests; teach alike; or compromise academic freedom. Every department wonders how it will find the time and resources for one more thing.
This essay suggests a simple, sustainable, and useful departmental assessment plan that capitalizes on what departments …
Collaboration Or Plagiarism? Explaining Collaborative-Based Assignments Clearly, Tuesday Cooper
Collaboration Or Plagiarism? Explaining Collaborative-Based Assignments Clearly, Tuesday Cooper
Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives
Much has been written about the use of collaborative learning as a pedagogical tool to enhance student learning. Collaborative learning, or group work as it is commonly known, can be defined as a structured process where students are required to work in groups to complete a common task or assignment for a particular course. It has been identified as one of the most effective ways for students to become actively engaged in classroom activities (Davis, 1993; McKeachie, 1999; Nilson, 1998).
Although there are many positive aspects of group work, there are negatives as well. One particular problem occurs when students …
Developing The Scholarship Of Teaching And Learning Using Faculty Learning Communities, Milton D. Cox
Developing The Scholarship Of Teaching And Learning Using Faculty Learning Communities, Milton D. Cox
Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives
Faculty Learning Communities (FLCs) have proven successful in producing teaching projects, as evidenced by a survey of institutions with FLCs. It follows that these groups should provide ideal conditions for a subsequent development of those projects into peerreviewed publications and presentations, or the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). This essay offers faculty practical advice for producing such SoTL products based on what started as a teaching project in an FLC. My advice is based on work with FLCs for 28 years on my campus and others (Cox, 2003).
The Right Start: Reflections On A Departmentally Based Graduate Course On Teaching, Craig E. Nelson
The Right Start: Reflections On A Departmentally Based Graduate Course On Teaching, Craig E. Nelson
Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives
Full credit courses on teaching offered by academic departments for their own graduate students and postdocs have many advantages. Many students come to graduate school because they want teaching to be an important part of their future professional life. Most who are hired in academia will go to jobs where teaching is important. Indiana University’s Graduate School noted that 95% of its PhDs who landed tenure-track positions found those positions at liberal arts colleges, smaller comprehensive universities, and urban institutions. They noted that their teaching experience at Bloomington did not necessarily prepare them fully for these jobs.
I offered a …
Getting Ready: Promoting School Readiness Through A Relationship-Based Partnership Model, Susan M. Sheridan, Christine Marvin, Lisa Knoche, Carolyn P. Edwards
Getting Ready: Promoting School Readiness Through A Relationship-Based Partnership Model, Susan M. Sheridan, Christine Marvin, Lisa Knoche, Carolyn P. Edwards
Department of Psychology: Faculty Publications
School readiness is determined by the life experiences of young children between birth and enrollment in formal education programs. Early intervention and education programs designed to promote school readiness often focus on skills a child fails to demonstrate that are believed to be of importance to social and academic success. The Getting Ready model of early childhood intervention (Sheridan, Edwards, & Knoche, 2003) recognizes the transactional nature of young children’s development and the important role parents play in pre-school readiness and school-age success. In the Getting Ready model, collaborative partnerships between parents and professionals are encouraged to promote parent’s competence …