Volume XXXVI, No. 17 | September 5, 2014 Using a Foreign Language to Teach Document Design Since I began teaching technical writing with computers 20 years ago, I have discovered that no matter how intelligent my students are, they still struggle to create a specified format. Part of the problem is created by [...]
Volume XXXVI, No. 5 | February 14, 2014 Promoting Critical Thinking and Active Learning by “Teaching Backwards” “Teaching Backwards” is an instructional method that explores cause-and-effect relationships by examining a series of connected events, starting with the last event first and proceeding backwards. Inspired by the movie “Memento,” this method promotes critical thinking [...]
Volume XXXVI, No. 3 | January 31, 2014 Students' Questions Open New Paths to Explore In "Mathematics for Elementary School Teachers," a course for pre-service teachers, I decided that the homework would always be the same. The students would ask three questions using the following format: "My question is…" and "I ask it [...]
Volume XXXVI, No. 1 | January 17, 2014 Time for Fun and Games? My students are engaged in a heated argument about the words "therefore," "as a result," "so," and "thus." What do the words have in common? What question can they devise to explain their relationship? More significantly, why do these [...]
Volume XXXV, No. 22 | October 11, 2013 The Digital Dilemma As higher education continues to adapt to and incorporate online technology into the curricula, several significant obstacles from seemingly insignificant areas have come to light. For instance, one of the biggest misnomers that plagues our college classrooms today is the presumption that [...]
Volume XXXV, No. 21 | October 4, 2013 Do I Have Your Attention? Introduction When teaching rigorous or abstract content, it is common for students to become disengaged from the lecturer. Frequently, instead of asking questions to dispel their confusion, students choose to mentally separate themselves from the situation. While faculty and educational [...]
Volume XXXV, No. 11 | April 5, 2013 “Playing in the Mud”: Teaching Goofy (or Otherwise) Personal Research Some years ago I read a professor’s lament that teaching geological concepts had become problematic because recent students had not played enough in the mud—experience with TV and videogames had detracted from useful intuitions into the [...]
Volume XXXV, No. 8 | March 15, 2013 Taming the Beginning-of-the-Semester Teaching/Writing Jitters You are standing at the front of a clinically white classroom facing 25 to 30 anxious faces. You fidget. They fidget. The air is thick with the smell of new books, chalk (or dry-erase pens), freshly sharpened pencils, and expectation. [...]
Volume XXXV, No. 7 | March 1, 2013 Understanding or Memorization: Teaching that Promotes Long-Term Retention Why do we remember some lessons and forget others? Is it that some are perceived as more important, exciting, or possibly just easier to comprehend? Perhaps the answer has elements of all of those in its makeup; [...]
Volume XXXV, No. 5 | February 15, 2013 The Critical Thinking Biology Final During my first five years of teaching Biology II for majors, I gave my students a typical multiple choice/ matching/short essay comprehensive final exam. The subject matter of the course focused on biological organization from organisms to ecosystems. Each year [...]