Volume XXXIX, No. 3 | February 2, 2017 Navigating a Topsy-Turvy Classroom “The only constant is change.” In fact, even that well-known saying was altered from the original: “Change is the only constant in life.” Either way, as educators, it’s safe to say we’re familiar with change. Often, the hardest adjustments—decisions made by campus [...]
Volume XXXVIII, No. 29 | December 1, 2016 Using a New Tool in a New Way Many students find studying difficult, perhaps because they’ve never been taught how to study. There is ample evidence that shows repeated exposure to course material, especially in different contexts, helps move course material into long-term memory (Baddeley, [...]
Volume XXXVIII, No. 28 | November 17, 2016 Teach Students HOW to Learn: Metacognition is the Key! “Miriam, a freshman calculus student at Louisiana State University (LSU), made 37.5 percent on her first exam, but 83 percent and 93 percent on the next two exams. Robert, a first-year general chemistry student at LSU, [...]
Volume XXXVIII, No. 27 | November 10, 2016 Close Reading With Open Eyes Learning to read a text closely and carefully is a practical skill that serves students in any discipline—and introductory literature is no exception. Every semester of my English 1302 course begins with an introduction to tragedy and the ancient Greeks, [...]
Volume XXXVIII, No. 25 | October 27, 2016 Using Dilemmas and Case Studies to Promote Critical Thinking and Interpersonal Skills “Education is not the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think.” – Albert Einstein For many of us, our student populations are diverse—military, veterans, fathers, mothers, grandparents, siblings, caretakers, [...]
Volume XXXVIII, No. 23 | October 14, 2016 Peer Review and Cultural Diversity “People teach each other, mediated by the world, by the cognizable objects which in banking education are ‘owned’ by the teacher.” – Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed “Why do we need to peer review? It seems to be an [...]
Volume XXXVIII, No. 19 | September 15, 2016 Helping Students Value Challenge and Hard Work In postsecondary classrooms, we should help students move beyond the “empty vessel” model of learning to a model that encompasses self-directed, strategic learning. For many years, I struggled to identify ways or approaches that help students to see [...]
Volume XXXVIII, No. 18 | September 8, 2016 Outside the Classroom and Beyond the Campus: Community-Based Experiential Education Expanding the Experiential Concept After years of incorporating a combination of field trips, active learning, and flipped classrooms, I decided to design a radically flipped course in which I would leverage technology to craft class [...]
Volume XXXVIII, No. 15 | May 6, 2016 Economics: The Not-So-Dismal Science Economics has a reputation for being a dismal science. You can make the argument that any subject matter is dismal, and that how it’s taught is what makes all the difference. I think economics is anything but dismal. Economics is the [...]
Volume XXXV, No. 15 | May 3, 2013 Thought for the Week Wednesdays: Making Connections in Minutes Can five minutes of classroom time once a week really make a difference? I set out to answer this question as I sought to improve retention and student success in my pre-curriculum reading classes. I [...]
