Student Engagement
My first year teaching, a literacy coach came to observe my classroom. After the students left, she commented on how I asked the whole class a question, would wait just a few seconds, and then answer it myself. "It's cute," she added. Um, I don't think she thought it was so cute. I think she was treading lightly on the ever-so shaky ego of a brand-new teacher while still giving me some very necessary feedback.
So that day, I learned about wait/think time. And also, over the years, I learned to ask better and better questions.
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Many would agree that for inquiry to be alive and well in a classroom that, amongst other things, the teacher needs to be expert at asking strategic questions, and not only asking well-designed ones, but ones that will also lead students to questions of their own.
Hindered by video screens, fluctuating schedules, and health regulations, teachers are up
against the odds this school year when it comes to getting to know their students.
VitalSource
The cost of learning materials has risen drastically—82 percent over the past 10 years. How can institutions address this burden on students?
One way is through carefully enacted inclusive access: Affordable eTextbooks are delivered to all students by the institution’s LMS on or before the first day of classes. This ensures all students, including those who would have delayed or forgone purchasing their course materials on their own due to high costs, have access to the required materials necessary to succeed in their classes.
The relationship between academia and technology is notoriously complicated. Faculty often view IT staffers as gadget-mongers eager to roll out new tech regardless of its value to teaching and learning, while technology specialists are certain they could make life easier for those on the other side — if they'd only listen!
We are a group of undergraduate and graduate students from York University connected with each other through sociology professor Cary Wu’s research methods courses. Led by Dr. Wu, we recently came together as a virtual group to discuss what makes in-person classes unique and different from online-learning. Through this productive discussion, we were able to determine what it is about in-person classes that we long for. Here, we share with you seven main themes that emerged in our conversations.
As the administrators in charge of orientation for new students in our graduate school, we were naturally apprehensive about welcoming them to a virtual campus this fall. Several months into the pandemic, everyone is suffering from “Zoom fatigue.” Glitches, awkwardness, boring content — by now, we’ve all experienced the bad side of videoconferencing. But with our campus staying virtual, our new-student orientation had to be online, too.
How can you make sure your online students take tests without cheating? It’s one of the most-frequent questions asked by new online instructors and even some experienced ones. The short answer: You can’t.
You might be tempted to join the “arms race” in cheating-prevention tools, or to adopt punitive approaches such as proctored online exams and time limits for online tests. But the reality is, students will always find new and creative ways to get around your policing
efforts. So what to do?
It comes as news to no one that 8am classes are too early for some students.
A recent study published in Frontiers of Neuroscience, and reported at NPR finds that “the ideal start time would be more like 10 or 11am.” Most traditional-aged college students just aren't wired to be awake and productive at 8am.
Over the last sixteen years, I have taught an 8am class probably about 2/3rds of the semesters.
I like 8am classes. When I taught at Clemson I had a 45 minute commute and four sections crammed into a TTH schedule. Starting at 8am meant I could avoid traffic and finish up the day at a reasonable hour.
I don’t mind getting up early and going to bed before 10pm. I’m basically worthless in terms of higher order thought after 6pm. My natural rhythms sync with 8am classes.
This is not true for many students. I became well-familiar with the research when a team of students in an 8am technical writing class tackled class scheduling for their group project. The genesis of their interest was their loathing of their 8am technical writing class, a section they felt they’d been conscripted into because of curricular requirements combined with a shortage of
sections. For several, the choice was either take it at 8am or don’tgraduate.
When it comes to the hiring and retention of faculty of color, the situation across higher education is, as the saying goes, “déjà vu all over again.” Colleges and universities seem trapped in a time loop, issuing proclamations and statements similar to those made by our predecessors decades ago with limited success. Campus activists are wondering: Can academe live up to its promises this time?
What messages do our students receive from their parents, their high school teachers, their older peers, and siblings before they enter college? When I ask my first-year students the answers are, “Now you are on your own,” or “No one will help you when you are in college!” and “You are responsible for your own work.”
Notice something here? All these messages focus on the individual’s sole responsibility to succeed in college without the help of others. You are independent now.
I was taking advantage of some down time, cleaning out some of my old files on my computer, when I ran across a great article I saved that covered student personality types. When I originally read this article, I only had several years of experience working in the distancelearning realm. Now, years later, I have seen all these student types at one time or another, and
throughout the years, noticed several others worthy of mention.
Before moving into some observations, I do need to provide some context for the environment in which I work. Our population consists of postgraduate students working in middle management positions. The classes are small, 18 students to one instructor, and progress through the year as a group. The yearlong curriculum is not self-paced. The college delivers
the content in a mix between asynchronous and synchronous modalities. Blackboard is the asynchronous platform that delivers the lesson material using a combination of computerbased instruction, online exams, and discussion board forums. We use Blackboard Ultra and/or Defense Connect Services for the synchronous portions of the curriculum, which
include delivery of student briefing products. Of course, there are the standard necessities like email, telephone, and administration that accompany facilitation.
Whatever the budget or maturity level of a given educational institution, there is a trend toward putting assessments online. With this comes new opportunities, but also new challenges. In a recent webinar hosted by edWeb.net, administrators from the Hampton
Township School District in Pennsylvania point out that there is a wrong way to do online assessments. Here are a few of their top tips for making sure you do them the right way.
By this point in the Covid-19 transition to remote instruction, you’ve probably had a few sessions on Zoom. You’ve taught a few classes, met students for office hours. No doubt more than once, you’ve seen a lot of students staring blankly at you after you pose a question. (Insert crickets-chirping sound.)
Faculty members are getting a crash course in Zoom and finding it can be supremely awkward, at least at first. One reason for our collective uneasiness: Most of us are not well acquainted with the "hidden curriculum" of Zoom — all the unwritten rules and
expectations that you’re supposed to know but none of us have been taught. Faculty members and students together are diving into a new tool with little to no experience with it, technically or culturally.
Motivating students to be enthusiastically receptive is one of the most important aspects of mathematics instruction and a critical aspect of any curriculum. Effective teachers focus attention on the less interested students as well as the motivated ones. Here are nine techniques—based on intrinsic and extrinsic motivation—that can be used to
motivate secondary school students in mathematics.
AAUP sessions center on faculty members' role and responsibilities regarding classroom conversations about race.
If we believe in the active-learning classroom — that the only way to bring about real learning is to engage students in ways that help them revise and broaden their thinking — then student participation is a nonnegotiable part of the equation. Learning does not happen without the student actively taking part.
Oddly, however, given its importance, our own definition of “student participation” is often quite limited. In the scholarship on teaching and learning, that term is almost always defined narrowly as the degree to which students take part in class discussions. And while discussion is obviously an important component of an active-learning classroom, it’s not the only component. There are many other ways in which students participate in class: writing, researching, and contributing to small group activities are just a few. If we want to accurately assess and reward participation in our courses, we need to expand our definition to include more than just the amount of times that students raise their hands.
In recent years, there has been a vigorous cottage industry of websites and publications (most but not all on the political right) trying to generate controversy about college professors who say or believe things outside the rather narrow mainstream of public opinion.
The Daily Caller, The Washington Times, Campus Watch, The College Fix, Breitbart, and College Insurrection, among others, devote themselves with some regularity to policing faculty speech, and then presenting it — sometimes accurately, mostly inaccurately — in order to inflame public outrage and incite harassment of academics who expressed verboten views. Because American law gives very wide latitude to malicious speech for partisan political ends, there is little legal recourse for faculty members subjected to such harassment. But we may still ask: How ought colleges and universities respond to these (often orchestrated) onslaughts against professors?
Over the years, academic freedom has been both recognized and constrained, based on the particular historical context.
Academic freedom, like freedom itself, is not absolute. There are conditions and qualifications around both the theory and exercise of this pivotal university concept. Some of these constraints pertain to particular historical circumstances and are no longer germane or legitimate. Other limitations are understandable and defensible. How do we know which is which? History, I think, can be our guide.
There has been substantial discussion, research, and debate about the role of academic freedom within higher education, primarily centered on the university model. Not as well documented or understood is the issue of academic freedom within colleges and institutes in Canada. In this paper, we exam- ine the current state of academic freedom in colleges and institutes using a historical analysis of two Canadian provinces, British Columbia and Ontario. Beginning with an overview of academic freedom within universities, we then examine the development and evolution of colleges and institutes and discuss how or if academic freedom applies to them. We consider issues of collegial- ity, faculty engagement, and governance as they impact the concept and practice of academic freedom within these institutions. We also discuss the different origins, intents, roles, and governance models of universities in contrast to colleges and institutes, which are generally representative of the broader Canadian higher education landscape.
How do successful academics write, and how do they learn to write? What are their daily routines, their formative
experiences, their habits of mind? What emotions do they associate with their academic writing? And where do they
find the “air and light and time and space”, as the poet Charles Bukowski put it, to get their writing done? These
were among the questions that I asked as part of a research project that eventually took me to 45 universities in 15
countries.
Feedback from more than 1,300 academics, PhD students and other researchers from across the disciplines
revealed that successful writing is built on a complex and varied set of attitudes and attributes, including behavioural habits of discipline and persistence, artisanal habits of craftsmanship and care, social habits of collegiality and collaboration and emotional habits of positivity and pleasure.