You’ve heard it a million times: being in school isn’t the “real world,” and the longer you’re in school, the less you know about how that “real world” functions. The laws that govern everything and everyone else, especially in the working world, haven’t been applying to you. And you -- the coddled, brainy, time-wasting human being who dares to think that intellectual pursuits are worth valuable years of your life -- you are in for a loud wake-up call. Just wait and
see.
Contrary to popular and judgmental opinion, however, your doctoral experience is some of the best working world experience you can get. The clearer you are about why that is the case, the more it can help you survive -- and sometimes thrive -- both in graduate school and in whatever jobs or careers come later.
Several years ago, I served as the acting dean of Michigan State University’s College of Arts and Letters -- one of
our institution’s three core colleges with 20 departments, programs and centers, 250 faculty members, and a mix of
graduate and undergraduate offerings. It was a wonderful opportunity to get to know another part of the university
and experiment with running a college with a very different structure. At the same time, knowing the appointment
was for just a single year made me approach it rather differently than my usual (and concurrent) gig as the dean of
Lyman Briggs College, a residential undergraduate science college with 2,000 students and no formal sub-units.
Abstract
Informal mid-term feedback processes create opportunities for students and academics to have a dialogue about their progress and to make any necessary or reasonable mid-stream corrections. This article reports on an action research project designed to see what impact mid-semester feedback might have on the classroom experience. The underlying motive for the study was to generate institution-specific “proof” which might encourage other academic staff to conduct informal mid-semester informal feedback exercises with their students.
End-of-semester data shows that both students and lecturers found the exercise to be a positive
experience. Students appreciated being able to voice their problems and opinions at a time when
mid-course corrections were possible. Lecturers felt there was an improvement in
the lines of communication, resulting in a friendlier teaching and learning environment.
Audio, visual, textual—most people are willing and eager to identify themselves as a certain type of learner. And it follows pretty quickly that they learn better and faster when teachers approach a lesson in their “style.” Based on that logic, many school districts have poured money into training and materials to help teachers tailor their lessons to the various learning styles of their students. But haste makes waste, write Harold Pashler of the University of California, San Diego; Mark McDaniel of Washing-ton University, St. Louis; Doug Rohrer of the University of South Florida; and Robert A. Bjork of the University of California, Los Ange-les. There just isn’t sufficient evidence to support customizing education in this way.
Much of our work as educators consists of designing and delivering experiences in which students can develop their understanding and application of concepts and skills in our disciplines. Given that we have only 16 weeks with our students, we need various ways for deepening and expanding these formative experiences in our field. Visiting experts can be a wonderful way of developing expertise, and leveraging online tools like Skype and Zoom can open up powerful possibilities for new collaboration and conversation.
We often hear that peer review is an excellent opportunity for reciprocal student learning. In theory, this makes sense. Since an instructor can only dedicate a certain amount of attention to each student, peer review allows students to receive more feedback and engage more frequently in the content they are learning. Research shows this benefits both the students who receive and provide feedback.
One of the biggest challenges to face universities in an era of globalisation is the increased reliance on part-time instructors. Recent PhD graduates are less and less likely to find full-time, permanent work and are forced into casual teaching positions with low salaries and no benefits.
Putting Students In Charge of Their Learning
Through inquiry, Wildwood works to ignite passion, inspire relevance, and develop ownership in their students. Using student inquiries and questions as guidance, teachers develop lessons that engage and excite, teaching their students to be active thinkers rather than passive learners.
Purpose: Our study uses Remillard’s framework for characterizing and studying teachers’ interactions with curriculum materials specifically in the context of GBL. We believe that exploring the dynamic relationship between teachers and a GBL curriculum may help those involved in supporting teachers in implementing GBL to gain a deeper understanding of the complexity of the teacher/GBL curriculum relationship. This research examined teachers' GBL implementation experiences in order to answer the following research question: How do we describe and characterize teachers’ interactions with GBL curriculum materials?
The Government of Ontario’s Reaching Higher plan was a visionary document that provided needed funding to Ontario’s postsecondary system. However, it was not sufficient to overcome the long history of university under-funding in our province. Its impact was also eroded by unanticipated increases in enrolment and the current economic downturn.
Introductory courses can open doors for students, helping them not only discover a love for a subject area that can blossom into their major but also feel more connected to their campus. But on many campuses, teaching introductory courses typically falls to less-experienced instructors. Sometimes the task is assigned to instructors whose very connection to the college is tenuous. A growing body of evidence suggests that this tension could have negative consequences for students.
Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology tasked with examining the future of online
education have
returned with a simple recommendation for colleges and universities: focus on people and process,
not technology.
Back in 2013, an MIT task force presented a vision of undergraduate education at the institute in which students spend half as much time on campus as they do today. Freshman year would be fully online, and instead of a senior year, students would take online continuing education courses to refresh their knowledge and add new skills. That vision leaned heavily on MIT’s work with edX, the massive open online course provider it founded with Harvard University.
Losing a faculty member always hurts, but many administrators believe they have little control over whether professors move on. A new effort seeks to provide meaningful data.
Many colleges and universities want to attract a more diverse work force and foster greater inclusivity in their faculty and administrative ranks, but don't know how. The Chronicle wants to help, so we've recast the weekly On Hiring newsletter and we're sharing stories, news, and data from around the web aimed at helping hiring managers and recruiters make better, more informed decisions about diversity hiring at their institutions and across higher education generally. Here are some highlights from this week's newsletter. If you'd like to receive the new and improved On Hiring and Diversity newsletter, sign up here.
It will not come as a surprise to most readers of this document that students are asking for a shift in Ontario’s tuition policy. Students’ concerns with tuition are so omnipresent in public debate that they have almost become synonymous with the
very notion of a student movement. This harmful perception can make it seem like the student position on tuition is simple and has not evolved over time. In turn, the student movement is sometimes viewed as overly idealistic and opposed in principle to any student-borne costs.
Engagement in a continuous, systematic, and well-documented student learning assessment process has been gaining importance throughout higher education. Indeed, implementation of such a process is typically a requirement for obtaining and maintaining accreditation. Because faculty need to embrace learning assessment in order for it to be successful, any misconceptions about the nature of assessment need to be dispelled. One way to accomplish that is to “rebrand” (i.e., change perceptions) the entire process.
We live in challenging times. Ours is an era in which evidence, intellectual inquiry and expertise are under sustained attack. The phrases ‘post truth’ and ‘alternative facts’ have slipped into common use. Agendas have displaced analysis in much of our public debate. And we are all the poorer for it.
In Australia and around the world, we’ve seen the emergence of a creeping cynicism – even outright hostility – towards evidence and expertise. We saw this sentiment in the post-Brexit declaration by British Conservative MP Michael Gove that “the people of this country have had enough of experts”.
There’s a widely circulated YouTube video you may have seen called “A Conference Call in Real Life.” To spoof the strange, stilted dynamics of conference calls, it replicates them in a face-to-face setting. Participants stiffly announce their names at the door of a meeting room, are suddenly interrupted by bizarre background noises, and find themselves inexplicably locked out of a room they were just in.
If you haven’t watched it, do. You’ll recognize the familiar awkwardness of virtual meetings, where the rhythm of conversational interaction is thrown wildly askew by technological hiccups and the absence of visual cues.
The purpose of this paper is to discuss various issues surrounding the community college baccalaureate. In 2009, President Barack Obama provided a vision to increase graduation rates for students across the nation and challenged higher education to double the number of college degrees conferred nationwide by 2020. In addition, the President urged the country’s 1,200 community colleges to be instrumental in this initiative, as they have the capacity to provide the education necessary to produce a competitive workforce. In 2011, the dialogue continues and intensifies. At the 2011 Building a Grad Nation Summit, Vice President Biden issued a call to action to boost college graduation rates across the country and help the nation meet the President’s goals. He states, “Right now we’ve got an education system that works like a funnel when we need it to work like a pipeline.”
Purpose: The purpose of this study is to determine the effects of peer-level tardiness on individual-level socio-emotional outcomes utilizing nationally representative, longitudinal data.