Teaching first-semester freshmen presents some unique challenges. You are teaching them not only your subject, but also how to be college students. One of the best strategies I have found is to begin with a collaborative project that asks them to research their new home: the campus.
Your students have questions, but they rarely ask them—especially at the beginning of the semester. They feel awkward or embarrassed, or maybe it’s just inertia. Whatever the cause, the vast majority of student questions go unasked. For teachers, this is wildly frustrating because we can’t answer the questions they don’t ask (though some questions can be anticipated). In many cases, the unasked questions represent anxieties and uncertainties that negatively affect students’ performance in class and inhibits their learning. This is a particular problem in the sophomore composition class I teach. It has a reputation as a difficult class, so many students arrive intimidated and nervous.
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.
I’ve been following, with something like exasperation, the discussion over Harvard University’s new study on teaching. Not
surprisingly, the study found that physics students performed better on multiple-choice tests if they were taught via active learning
strategies than by lecture alone. Yet it also found that students tended to feel they learned more from listening to a
polished lecture.
About two years ago at my university, I designed a minor in the medical humanities. At its core was a class that introduced students to medical topics from the perspectives of the humanities and social sciences. When it came to designing assignments that would show how well they understood such varied concepts, I decided to go out on a pedagogical limb.
If they preferred, students could write a traditional research paper for their final project. Or they could "write" about their topic in a different way — via a 45-minute podcast, a 10-to-15-minute video, a website, or an interactive, digital essay (on a blog or a Word document) that used embedded videos, photos, and audio to help the reader understand their topics.
Academe has plenty of its own clichés, but one that we’ve eagerly adopted from the business world is "thinking outside the box." You’ll see that phrase again and again in administrative-job postings and in applicants’ cover letters. But what does it really mean in higher education?
More important, however good you are at thinking outside the box, is it possible to act on your outside-the-box ideas once you’re on the job as a chair, dean, provost, or president?
This month the Admin 101 series on-campus leadership explores some of the reasons why leaders encounter resistance in carrying out unconventional proposals, and what you need to know before you jump outside the box.
Let’s start by acknowledging the truth: Course evaluations are incredibly biased, and aren’t an accurate measure of an instructor’s
effectiveness in the classroom. Too often, students’ perceptions of your appearance, demeanor, or pedigree prevent them from writing a fair and relevant review of your actual teaching. Yet despite dozens of studies demonstrating their unreliability, course evaluations continue to be used in hiring, tenure, and promotion decisions by most colleges and universities.
We professors like to, well, profess. We aren’t always great at listening. Yet when we move into administration, practically every hiring profile calls for a “great listener.” And, accordingly, almost anyone who seeks a leadership post in higher education lists “strong listening skills” as one of their signature attributes.
For me, as for many others at Cardiff University, the recent news coverage of Malcolm Anderson’s suicide has been a real blow. I did not know the accounting lecturer personally. The thing that was so shocking about reading the articles was just how familiar many of the details felt. I have heard numerous stories from colleagues who feel like they are barely holding on. People are struggling with unmanageable workloads and feel as though they are constantly failing.
Scholarly reading is a craft — one that academics are expected to figure out on our own. After all, it’s just reading. We all know how to do that, right?
Yes and no. Scholarly reading remains an obscure, self-taught process of assembling, absorbing, and strategically deploying the writing of others.
Digital technology has transformed the research process, making it faster and easier to find sources and to record and retrieve information. Like it or not, we’ve moved beyond card catalogs, stacks of annotated books and articles, and piles of 3x5 cards. What hasn’t changed, however, is the basic way we go about reading scholarly work.
After reading and hearing about the physical and mental benefits of meditation, I decided to take up the practice several years ago. This led to some discussions with colleagues at work, which eventually morphed into the idea of using mindfulness in the classroom. Mindfulness is a way to pause and reflect on the here and now. To be fully present in what is happening in the
present, without worry about the future or past. The idea is that teaching this philosophy and using activities and practices in the classroom should allow students to release tension and anxiety so they can focus on the material in the classroom. Rather than coming to my biology class lamenting over the test they just took in another class, worrying about the homework, or
making a check-list of “to dos”, the student can release that tension become present with my biology course.
The university reward structure has traditionally placed greater value on individual research excellence for tenure and promotion, influencing faculty’s allocation of time and definition of worthwhile labour. We find gender differences in Canadian natural sciences and engineering faculty’s opinions of the traditional criteria for measuring academic success that are consistent with an implicit gender bias devaluing service and teamwork. Most women recommend significant changes to the traditional model and its foundation, while a substantial minority of men support the status quo. However, this comparative qualitative analysis finds more cross-gender similarities than differences, as most men also want a more modern definition of success, perceiving the traditional model to be disproportionately supportive of one type of narrow research scholarship that does not align with the realities of most faculty’s efforts.
Thus, this study suggests a discrepancy between traditional success criteria
and faculty’s understanding of worthwhile labour.
Of all students who started college in fall 2016, 73.9 percent persisted at any U.S. institution in fall 2017, while 61.6 percent were retained at their starting institution. The persistence rate is the percentage of students who return to college at any institution for their second year, while the retention rate is the percentage of students who return
to the same institution.
Student Evaluations of Teaching (SET) have been the most consistently administered tool, and they are still extensively used in higher education institutions to assess teaching effectiveness. The purpose of this study was to explore how SET are used by administrators in the teaching evaluation process at a large, research-intensive Canadian university. A basic qualitative
research design was used in this project, and semi-structured interviews were used to obtain administrators’ experiences. The research question that guided this study was: How are SET (and other tools) used in the evaluation of teaching at this university? Findings showed that although participants mostly utilized a couple of SET statements as indicators of effective teaching,
they were certainly aware of the intrinsic issues concerning these tools, and that they are continually seeking to obtain more evidence if SET results are below their benchmarks.
Internationalization continues to be a priority within many Canadian universities. While it is imperative to attend to the ethical dilemmas that accompany the intensification of internationalization, different ethical frameworks operate according to different orientating assumptions. In this paper, we seek to pluralize and deepen conversations about the ethics of internationalization
by illustrating how three global ethics approaches address questions of international student mobility, study and service abroad, and internationalizing the curriculum. We conclude by emphasizing the need for both scholars and practitioners to engage in multi-voiced, critically-informed analyses, and dissensual conversations about complex ethical dilemmas related to internationalization.
At most colleges and universities, summer offers a blessed break from the regular meetings of the academic year. It’s a relief to have a few months’ free from having to jockey for air time, listen to long-winded people opine on matters they know little about, navigate petty factional skirmishes, or shore up colleagues whose ideas are routinely shot down.
Now that it’s September, the prospect of returning to meeting-heavy days may seem enervating. But what if we made 2019-20 the year in which we change the traditional dynamics of our meetings? Could we find ways to make them more productive, less
contentious, and more open to voices that usually get muffled or silenced?
You wait with anticipation. You receive the email: Course assignments are posted. You click on your Course Assignment. And—you’re assigned to teach a course that you have never taught before. Maybe you feel excitement, maybe you feel anxiety, or some mixture of the two. Emotion aside, how do you plan a new course?
I’m sitting in the university cafe, playing with my phone, when my graduate-student advisee appears. My heart begins pounding wildly as she weaves through the tables. She’s going to want my advice on something. Is this the moment when I’ll be revealed as a know-nothing?
Imposter syndrome is, by now, a well-known term used to describe that feeling many scholars get that we are frauds in our particular field and about to be exposed at any moment. This "syndrome" has been known to affect researchers of all ages and ranks, from graduate students to department chairs. At its mildest, impostor syndrome can entail persistent and discomforting
feelings of self-doubt. At its worst, it can cripple careers.
"I feel like I am going crazy and need to run some things by you," said an administrative colleague. When we met, he began to describe a series of unsettling incidents. He wondered: Were they intentionally designed to signal that he was no longer wanted? Aimed at making him and the people in his program feel nervous and disoriented?
Each new semester as I walk down the hallway to my classroom, I am a little nervous, even after 27 years of teaching experience…and I’m okay with this. I think when I get to the point where I don’t feel this anxiety, I won’t be as effective a teacher. After all, I will be walking into that classroom for the next four months and it’s important to make a good first impression.
Below are 10 tips to help you get off to a great start.