Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Commons^™

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?

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.

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.

Competence: What Does It Mean In Teaching And Learning?, Ronald A. Smith

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

What does it mean to be competent in a field? Our definition of competence influences the way we teach and what we expect from students.

Ten Qualities Of Self-Renewing Faculty, Frederick M. Hudson

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

Keeping ourselves alive and motivated is a never-ending struggle for faculty, who often feel overwhelmed. This author provides some insights into specific ways to keep the creative spirit flourishing.

Teaching Controversial Issues, Suzanne Cherrin

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

There are many topics in our curriculum which are relevant to students lives, affect students personally, and frequently produce emotional responses in the classroom. This article makes suggestions for managing controversy and maximizing the opportunity for active learning.

Good Teaching: A Matter Of Living The Mystery, Parker J. Palmer

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

Good teaching cannot be equated with technique. It comes from the integrity of the teacher, from his or her relation to the subject or the student, from the capricious chemistry of it all. The author muses about how to give voice to the questions the students won’t ask but which probably lie on the cutting edge of their learning.

Making Sense (And Use) Of Written Student Comments, Karron G. Lewis

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

Student evaluations of teaching are more and more common. Many include a baffling array of student comments along with scaled items. To get the most out of these rich data requires some planning and careful analysis.

Academic Culture: The Hidden Curriculum, Maurianne Adams

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

There is an unspoken, unacknowledged set of cultural norms which govern the conduct of the players in the academy. When non-traditional students enter the academy, they may inadvertently run afoul of those norms. By recognizing them ourselves, we may be able to make the experience of these students a better one.

The Teaching Portfolio, Peter Seldin, Linda Amis

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

One of the best ideas about the evaluation of teaching to come along in recent years is the teaching portfolio, which allows the individual instructor to create a well-documented history of his or her own teaching efforts and the thinking which undergirds them.

Building Confidence And Community In The Classroom, J. Dennis Huston

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

This national award winner shares his thoughts about encouraging students to think for themselves.

Tales Told Out Of School: Women's Reflections On Their Undergraduate Experience, Blythe Clinchy

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

Where does learning really occur? In the classroom? Or out of it? The answer may be different for different learners and that has implications for our ways of teaching.

Whatever Happened To The Faculty?, Jack H. Schuster

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

Once assumed to be an enclave of like-minded scholars, the academy is becoming more and more segmented. The demographics of the students are changing as are those of the faculty. What will be the impact of those changes on the face of the academy in the next decade and beyond?

The Market For Teaching Scholars, Laurie Richlin

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

To what extent will the hiring institutions accept a candidate whose devotion is to teaching? The answer depends greatly on the type of institution.

So Much Content, So Little Time, Marilla D. Svinicki

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

The universal complaint of faculty is that there is too much content to cover in the time allotted. Rather than complaining, perhaps we should re- examine how we go about choosing the content to include in a course. We might find we have more than we really need.

Countering Common Misbeliefs About Student Evaluation Of Teaching, Robert Boice

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

In spite of all evidence to the contrary some people continue to believe that student evaluation of teaching is “nothing but a popularity contest.” How much more useful it is to recognize what the students have to offer in the way of feedback on teaching.