Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Commons^™

Volume 09, Number 01, Richard F. Welch Editor

Reaching Through Teaching

Full text of Volume 09, Number 01 of Reaching Through Teaching.

Volume 08, Number 03, Richard F. Welch Editor

Reaching Through Teaching

Full text of Volume 08, Number 03 of Reaching Through Teaching.

I'D Like To Use Essay Tests, But..., Marilla Svinicki

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

The "Writing Across the Curriculum" movement of several years ago urged instructors in all departments to help their students learn to write more coherent prose, whether it be in papers or essay tests, not just to improve student writing but to encourage more complex thinking. Having to explain an answer in prose format requires more from the student in the way of deep processing of the material than is usually the case on objectively scorable exam questions.

Many instructors across campus subscribed to these ideas enthusiastically, but were stymied when it came to putting them into practice in their classes. …

Mentorship In The Classroom: Making The Implicit Explicit, Deanna Martin, Robert Blanc, David Arendale

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

The "under-prepared student" once something of an oddity on American campuses, now seems omnipresent. And not only in undergraduate institutions, not only in America. The government of Great Britain ordered a 25% increase in university enrollment. Black South Africans will occupy a majority of the places in previously white and apartheid universities. The Association of American Medical College will triple minority representation in medical schools in their 3000 x 2000 campaign, drawing heavily on the urban areas that have been on the receiving end of the wrenching body blows of poverty, unemployment, and despair, the areas that have provided many …

In The Name Of The Student... What Is Fairness In College Teaching?, Rita Rodabaugh

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

If we remember our own college days, most of us can think of at least one professor who was less than ideal. All of us have had professors who fit one or more of the following descriptions: dull, boring lecturer; confusing and hard to follow; too easy and presents no challenge; and so on. Yet if you describe your worst experience as a student, more than likely it was one in which you were treated unfairly.

For the past two years, much of my research has focused on college students' perceptions of fair practices in the classroom. From this research, …

Mistakes And Other Classroom Techniques, Harriet C. Edwards

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

As teachers, we wish to do more than present to our students the established ideas and facts of our fields. We want to give them a sense of how one thinks and creates within the discipline, to impart the tools of scholarship. In my field, mathematics, this concern has led to an increased focus on the teaching and learning of problem solving. Researchers have directed much attention to the executive functions and metacognition involved in problem solving, that is, the solver's awareness of thinking processes and of progress toward a solution (Schoenfeld, 1985). In addition to these procedural matters, attitudes …

Helping First-Year Students Study: Part I, Bette Lasere Erickson

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

In preparing to write Teaching College Freshmen, we heard negative sentiments echoed many times. Faculty complained about students' lack of motivation, their neglect of their studies, and their refusal to assume any responsibility for their learning. At the same time, freshmen told us the pace in most courses was far beyond them, it was not humanly possible to do all the work, they frequently felt overwhelmed, and their professors seemed neither to notice nor to care whether or not they learned.

What sense are we to make of these conflicting stories? For starters, freshman descriptions of "humanly impossible" work loads …

What Did I Do Right In One Freshman Seminar? What Did I Do Wrong In Another? What Will I Do Next Time?, Richard L. Schoenwald

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

An essay from a university instructor answering the questions: What did I do right in one freshman seminar? What did I do wrong in another? What will I do next time?

Emerging Trends In College Teaching For The 21st Century, Milton D. Cox

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

After national calls for the reform of undergraduate education were made a decade ago, students, parents, and legislators began to apply pressure to reestablish the importance of student learning. More recently, central administrators have begun to change reward structures. University-wide community is beginning to be built around teaching. New disciplinary journals that publish the scholarship of teaching are being started, and established ones are gaining respect. National teaching conferences and journals that provide a forum for the scholarship of teaching are expanding. With these emerging opportunities, faculty are going public about their interest in teaching and learning. Over the last …

Helping First-Year Students Study: Part Ii, Better Lasere Erickson

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

Few freshmen can keep pace with their courses if they study only an hour between classes and if their only study activities are reading, highlighting, and copying over notes. Faculty expect more, and those who teach freshmen play an important role both in making expectations about college work explicit and in helping freshmen develop their study skills. What, then, might we do to get students to spend more time studying and to study in more productive ways?

Volume 08, Number 02, Richard F. Welch Editor

Reaching Through Teaching

Full text of Volume 08, Number 02 of Reaching Through Teaching.

Volume 08, Number 01, Richard F. Welch Editor

Reaching Through Teaching

Full text of Volume 08, Number 01 of Reaching Through Teaching.

Volume 07, Number 03, Richard F. Welch Editor

Reaching Through Teaching

Full text of Volume 07, Number 03 of Reaching Through Teaching.

Volume 07, Number 02, Richard F. Welch Editor

Reaching Through Teaching

Full text of Volume 07, Number 02 of Reaching Through Teaching.

Teaching Goals, Assessment, Academic Freedom And Higher Learning, Thomas Angelo

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

In this brief essay, I'm going to try to convince you that examining our teaching goals carefully--and balancing them against our students' learning goals and colleagues' teaching goals--can help us become more effective, and perhaps even excellent college teachers.

The Why Of Teacher/Student Relationships, Richard G. Tiberius

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

I heard it again last week, "Yeah, she has a good relationship with her students, but can she teach?", as if the two were completely separate entities, like the icing and the cake. But a teacher's relationship with learners is not icing. It is an essential component of the teaching and learning process. Plumbers and computer technicians may be able to perform useful services on sinks and computers without entering into relation with them or with their owners but teaching simply cannot happen without teachers entering into relation with their students. Moreover, the teacher's success in facilitating learning is directly …

Teaching For Cognitive Growth, Barbara J. Duch, Mary K. Norton

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

The Perry Model

The theme of Perry's work is that no matter how unclouded our message or lucid our meaning, students make their own meanings from their own cognitive structures. Our students come to us naive epistemologists, replete with mistaken views of the nature of knowledge and its acquisition. Perry charts their odyssey from naiveté to maturity through stages where these restrictive cognitive chrysalises are outgrown for increasingly more subtle structures. Briefly, the journey involves the following.

Learning A Lot Vs. Looking Good: A Source Of Anxiety For Students, Anastasia S. Hagen

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

Many teachers have observed that some of their best students also appear to be the students with the greatest amount of anxiety towards school. Teachers have often asked themselves, "Why is this bright, capable student feeling so anxious about what they will be asked to do in my course?" This article is an attempt to provide some insight into this situation with respect to the way students set academic goals.

Changing Priorities In Higher Education: Promotion And Tenure, Robert Diamond

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

A recent study involving over 23,000 faculty chairs, deans and administrators at research universities indicated that even those most directly involved with the present reward system feel that the balance between research and teaching needs to be modified. Most significantly, the results indicate that an effort to modify the system to recognize and reward teaching would be supported by a majority of those surveyed. It may be the time to propose a change in the system.

What They Don't Know Can Hurt Them: The Role Of Prior Knowledge In Learning, Marilla Svinicki

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

Discusses prior knowledge and current learning, and using prior knowledge in instruction.

The lesson we take from the research on prior knowledge is simply this: students are not blank slates on which our words on inscribed. The students bring more to the interpretation of the situation than we realize. What they learn is conditioned by what they already know. What they know can be as damaging as what they don't know.

"If You Can Fake That...": A Reflection On The Morality Of Teaching, David A. Hoekema

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

How can we identify a professor who is genuinely open and honest in the classroom? What are the traits of an instructor who both earns and deserves students' trust? Included are suggested, potential answers to these questions.

Of Gurus, Gatekeepers, And Guides: Metaphors Of College Teaching, Mary K. Norton

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

From what the students tell me, in their experience there are three common metaphors of the college teacher. (Of course there are many more.) While we may disagree that these are the images that guide us, the students' viewpoint is nevertheless instructive, if only to remind us of the difference between what they perceive and we intend. My purpose here is to look through the students' eyes to explore what these metaphors reveal, especially in terms of their "collateral lessons," as Dewey called them: the implied concomitant messages students may draw from them: Guru, Gatekeeper, and Guide.

Volume 07, Number 01, Don Forrester Editor

Reaching Through Teaching

Full text of Volume 07, Number 01 of Reaching Through Teaching.

Volume 06, Number 03, Don Forrester Editor

Reaching Through Teaching

Full text of Volume 06, Number 03 of Reaching Through Teaching.

Volume 06, Number 02, Don Forrester Editor

Reaching Through Teaching

Full text of Volume 06, Number 02 of Reaching Through Teaching.

Risky Business: Making Active Learning A Reality, Charles C. Bonwell

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

Much has been said about the power of active learning as an instructional model. But moving from theory to practice may need some careful thought and timely advice.

Disciplinary Cultures And General Education, Sheila Tobias

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

Is there an unspoken culture that pervades the teaching in a discipline? How does an intelligent outsider recognize its assumptions and mores?

But How Do We Get Them To Think?, Carol A. Weiss

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

We hear this question constantly from faculty these days. This article will describe strategies for motivating and teaching students skills in this area.

The Four Cultures Of The Academy, William H. Bergquist

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

How do the cultures of the academy affect the teaching and learning which is so central to its mission?

Power In College Teaching, Linc. Fisch

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

Teachers carry a lot of power to influence students in both good and bad ways. An awareness of this fact is a blessing and a curse.