Higher Education and Teaching Commons^™

Leading The Seminar: Graduate And Undergraduate, Edward Neal

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

This essay provides a framework for planning and leading effective seminars and addresses the differences between graduate and undergraduate seminar instruction.

Simulating, Experiencing, And Changing Biased Teaching Behaviors, Laura L. B. Border

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

Increased awareness of biased teaching behaviors and effects on students can motivate instructors to become conscious of and change their own biased teaching patterns. Nonbiased teaching is subsequently reinforced and students performance enhanced.

Metaphors We Teach By: Understanding Ourselves As Teachers And Learners, Mary Ann Bowman

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

Our metaphors of teaching and learning express our views of the roles of teachers and students. Becoming conscious of our own metaphors is an important first step to self-awareness and positive change.

The Phenomenon Of Large Classes And Practical Suggestions For Teaching Them, Frank Gillespie

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

Large classes are a phenomenon of higher education today. However, large does not preclude providing an effective teaching and learning environment. The environment can be analyzed, good teaching can be modeled, and practical strategies offered.

Challenges In Using Technology For The Improvement Of Undergraduate Education, G. Roger Sell

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

We may believe that access to more information will improve undergraduate education, but students conceptual foundations and critical thinking skills are essential for using information technologies and constructing knowledge.

Volume 10, Number 01, Lana Wachniak Editor

Reaching Through Teaching

Full text of Volume 10, Number 01 of Reaching Through Teaching.

Cracks In The Ivory Tower: Conflict Management In The Classroom -- And Beyond, Susan A. Holton

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

The very nature of the classroom with its power imbalance and differing expectations can engender conflict. What are the warning signs, and what might we do manage the inevitable conflict?

Teaching And Values: What Values Will We Take Into The 21st Century?, Kathleen Mcgrory

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

Our values drive our decision-making about a range of everyday concerns as professionals. This essay identifies some current values being addressed in scholarly inquiry and attempts to predict the role of values inquiry in curriculum and teaching in the 21st century.

The American Professoriate In Transition, Ronald D. Simpson, Thomas G. Dyer

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

After a brief review of the history of the American professoriate, major trends for the future, the lives and work of today’s faculty members will be discussed in terms of forces influencing the direction of higher education in our society.

The Ebbs And Flows Of Gulf War Protests, Eric Swank

Faculty Research at Morehead State University

Operation Desert Storm was not a "patriotic triumph" for many U.S. citizens. Numerous Americans silently disapproved of the war, while others defiantly created a movement of Gulf War dissenters. This reenactment of the antiwar movement will be the focus of this paper. More specifically, the paper will trace the inception, growth and decline of this oppositional movement. Methodologically, this paper studies the movement's ebbs and flows through a content analysis of newspapers and an ethnographic case study. In the end, this study reveals that the slow and steady growth of the movement during the last months of 1990 was surpassed …

They Met At Lockridge's Mill, Dieter C. Ullrich

Faculty Research at Morehead State University

In the twilight hours of May 5th 1862, a lone detachment of Union cavalry calmly dismounted for a brief rest near a small river crossing called Lockridge's Mills in Weakley County, Tennessee. Pickets were organized and sent south from the crossing on the Dresden-Mayfield road as a precaution. As the pickets departed, the rest of the troops unfastened saddles, watered horses and began to prepare supper. Three picket lines were strategically placed along the road, the furthest from the encampment being about a half mile. Not long after the final picket was organized Confederate skirmishers attacked. A line of defense …

Organizational Structures For Community Engagement, Sharon Singleton, Deborah Hirsch, Cathy Burack

New England Resource Center for Higher Education Publications

In a time of public scrutiny of higher education, there is good reason - both for the survival of the campus and the survival of the community around it -- for institutions to promote outreach. Yet even within those institutions with formal structures -- mission statements, faculty handbooks, and presidential leadership that support community service -- the practical considerations -- work assignments, evaluation mechanisms and institutional rewards -- present real challenges. Service-enclaves are structures that exist or are developed within institutions that allow faculty and staff to work collectively as they serve their communities. While individual service work is no …

Meanings Underlying Student Ratings Of Faculty, Carolyn Ridenour, Stephen J. Blatt

Educational Leadership Faculty Publications

The purpose of this study was to examine how undergraduate students interpret the items on a faculty evaluation instrument. Most research on faculty evaluation is quantitative (Marsh and Bailey 1993). Our first study was also quantitative. After we produced a profile of quantitative ratings of faculty by students across all departments in our university in an earlier study, we wanted to go beneath the numbers to their meaning. We designed the present qualitative study to investigate what the items on that form meant to students.

Volume 09, Number 02, Richard F. Welch Editor

Reaching Through Teaching

Full text of Volume 09, Number 02 of Reaching Through Teaching.

Integrating Research And Undergraduate Teaching, Anne Bezuidenhout

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

I would like to describe some of the benefits and difficulties I have encountered in my attempt to integrate my research and teaching in an introductory logic course. My introductory logic students work in groups on semester-long research projects. The research that these students are involved in belongs to the scholarship of integration, rather than the scholarship of discovery (Boyer, 1990). It is highly unlikely that most instructors will ever teach a student who will break new ground in their field. However, what most students can begin to do is to think about what role one body of knowledge or …

Students' Reactions To Performance-Based Versus Traditional Objective Assessment, Anthony L. Truog

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

In summary, the struggle to obtain more performance-based evaluation goes on. The results to date support the idea that more student involvement is better. The issue of cost-benefit analysis must be continually addressed, while not losing either the vision to make assessment intrinsic to the learning process, nor the efficiency of objective detachment. The really exciting aspect will be the personal growth of the students and their instructor.

Transactional Analysis Of The Creative Process, Donna Glee Williams

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

Teachers of the creative process understand intuitively that different types of students need different types of teaching. The art students who splash paint with abandon over miles of canvas but have no interest in craftsmanship or self-evaluation need a different sort of intervention than the young artists who are so bullied by their own self-criticism that they can hardly bear to make a mark. The music students who by dint of excessive practice produce music-box accuracy--completely without fire--need a different sort of help than their sloppy but passionate colleagues. Our task as instructors is to understand our students’ needs and …

Honoring The Process For Honoring Teaching, Laurie Richlin, Brenda Manning

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

Few ideas are as appealing on the surface as encouraging professors to gather and reflect on materials that best represent their teaching excellence. Indeed, developing a teaching portfolio, or dossier, has become a popular faculty development activity in many departments and on many campuses. To create a portfolio, faculty select syllabi, tests, student work, and student evaluations about one or more courses, and add a reflective statement, usually called a teaching philosophy, about their teaching goals. In almost all cases, reports from the field state that professors find reaffirming the teaching portfolio process and the opportunity to reflect on their …

Active Learning Beyond The Classroom, Edward Neal

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

Attending class is akin to regular religious observance: The ritual or sermon is less important for what it teaches directly than for its motivational impact on what believers do between services. Lowman, 1984, page 165

Even carrying a full course load, students spend a relatively small proportion of each week in class, typically about 15 hours, and research has shown that most undergraduates spend only a few hours a week studying outside of class. How do they occupy their time? According to a national survey of college students (Boyer, 1987), almost 30 percent of full-time students work 21 or more …

The Analysis Of Methods Of Instruction In College Algebra And Trigonometry Courses In The Langston University Department Of Mathematics, Cristie L. Bostic

McCabe Thesis Collection

In 1978, a recurring effort was made to remedy the constant decline of test scores in the area of mathematics around the country (Milhalko, 1978). At this time educational methods of "back-to-basics" and "competency-based" programs were seen as the solutions to the drastic decline in test scores and the decrease in interest among students in mathematics courses. Seventeen years later, teachers of mathematics in both the secondary schools and universities (entry level courses) are confronted daily with students who possess a fear of mathematics, students who are unwilling, uninterested, and unable to learn the concepts in mathematics, and students who …

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?