Started in the 1950s as part of a radio program by Edward R. Murrow, the This I Believe project was created with the idea of publishing stories about life. The book is a compilation of essays written by people from different walks of life expressing their philosophies and ideas about life. Some of the contributing authors of essays in the book include Bill Gates, Colin Powell and Isabel Allende. A sampling of titles in the book are: “Be Cool to the Pizza Dude,” written by an English professor, and “Finding Prosperity by Feeding Monkeys,” by an attorney. Dr. Carney Strange, a professor here at BGSU, is one of the many authors who has had his This I Believe essay used by NPR.

The first discussion between students and BGeX faculty is Sunday, August 23rd. Please listen to a podcast, by Azar Nafisi, from This I Believe (audio control panel is near top of page). We invite people to post their reactions to the book, podcast and/or discussion.

Essentially, the Common Reading Experience brings together the BGSU community by providing a common discussion source. Prior to the beginning of classes, faculty, staff, and incoming first-year students read the same book. A committee chooses the book each year with input from different groups on campus, including the college deans. When classes begin in the fall, students across different disciplines and backgrounds will share in the “BGSU community” discussion. Some instructors and departments also integrate the Common Reading into their curriculum. While maintaining an academic tone, the Common Reading allows first-year BGSU students to become part of a communal, discussion environment.

During the fall semester the CTL’s Interact at the Center blog will have weekly posts dedicated to this year’s Common Reading, This I Believe. Faculty, administrators and students will be “guest bloggers.” They will present their reactions to the book, along with sharing their own “This I Believe” statements. Our blog will also have postings titled “Classroom Highlights” and “On Campus,” which will offer insight into how different classes and departments incorporate This I Believe. Each week we will provide audio samples of essays from the book, as well as resources to help you integrate the Common Reading into your course discussions.

For more information concerning BGSU’s Common Reading Experience, including books selected in the past and other background questions, please visit: http://www.bgsu.edu/colleges/library/infosrv/cre/. You are also invited to visit NPR’s “This I Believe” website http://www.thisibelieve.org, which includes podcasts and curriculum guides.

Here are some highlights (quoted here, not “lifted”)

Irish student hoaxes world’s media with fake quote

DUBLIN -

When Dublin university student Shane Fitzgerald posted a poetic but phony quote onWikipedia, he said he was testing how our globalized, increasingly Internet-dependent media was upholding accuracy and accountability in an age of instant news.

His report card: Wikipedia passed. Journalism flunked.

The sociology major’s made-up quote — which he added to the Wikipedia page of Maurice Jarre hoursafter the French composer’s death March 28 — flew straight on to dozens of U.S. blogs and newspaper Web sites in Britain, Australia and India.

A full month went by and nobody noticed the editorial fraud. So Fitzgerald told several media outlets in an e-mail and the corrections began.

“The moral of this story is not that journalists should avoid Wikipedia, but that they shouldn’t use information they find there if it can’t be traced back to a reliable primary source,” said the readers’ editor at the Guardian, Siobhain Butterworth, in the May 4 column that revealed Fitzgerald as the quote author.

Walsh said this was the first time to his knowledge that an academic researcher had placed false information on a Wikipedia listing specifically to test how the media would handle it.

According to the author David Glenn, recall is when students put down the text or notes that they are studying and recall everything they can. Students can either write down everything they remember or day it out loud.  This active recall, such as using flashcards and other self-quizzing, is the most effective may to add something to your long-term memory.

These recall techniques, according to Dr. McDaniel, a researcher in the field of biology and teaching techniques,  “If you ask people to free-recall, you can generate a better mental model of a subject area, and in turn that can lead to better problem-solving.”

This idea of free-recall has also generated some critiques from educators.  Some professors have voiced concerns that recall is simply teaching students how to memorize instead of increases levels of higher learning and thinking.  Dr. McDaniel argues that although these techniques may aid students in the often- required tasks of memorization, the free-recall tasks actually help to give students the skills needed apply their knowledge.

Read more about this article by clicking here.

More strategies for effective learning can be found at the University of Memphis Department of Psychology’sPrinciples of Learning page. Topics include

• Prior Knowledge
• Experience Alone
• Practice at Retrieval (similar concepts as presented in Glenn’s article)
• Learning Epistemologies
• Variable Learning I
• Variable Learning II
• Avoid Passive Learning
• Process of Remembering
• Less is More

All of these topics provide concrete strategies for faculty and students to use to increase learning. Give them a try!

How do you encourage your students to use free-recall techniques or practice retrieval?

In order to understand the pedagogical implications of Web 2.0 tools, she explores three case studies: Learning Design, Openlearn and SocialLearn.

To read a related article by Grainne Conole please click here.

After watching this video, do you think we must develop new pedagogies that involve Web 2.0 tools?

This past weekend our Interact at the Center blog (originally started on Blogger) just passed 10,000 visitors. Our blog started out in 2006 and less than three years later we are proud to say that our “blogging” has been successful. We make efforts to publish interesting and helpful postings and we appreciate everyone who has taken the time to read what we have had to say. Thank you! Please continue to visit, comment on our blog, or leave suggestions for future posts.

In a paper titled Student Learning Styles and Their Implications for Teaching, authors Susan Montgomery and Linda Groat discuss the importance of recognizing learning styles and offered several different ways to assess these styles.  Among the learning style models that they covered are the Myers-Briggs Model and the Kolb/McCarthy Learning Cycle. The authors also provide useful tips to engage students with different types of learning styles in your classes. These tips include using both group and independent work, requiring in-class presentations and providing less direction to students.

To read the rest of the article please click here.

How do you engage students in your classes that have different learning styles?

In an effort to provide an overview or guide of assessment practices, the National Institute for Learning Outcomes and the Alliance for New Leadership for Student Learning and Accountability are being developed, the former being led by Stanley Ikenberry and George Kuh.

The president of the Council for Higher Education Accreditation, Judith Eaton, is noted as supporting the work of these institutes, claiming that (from IHE) “better knowledge of assessment would improve the relationship between accreditors and institutions, and that a sustained commitment by higher education to accountability would preserve the principles of self-regulation for higher education.” Eaton hopes that the new effort will “strengthen the academic leadership of our colleges and universities.”

Some detractors of the higher education assessment movement have called it an oversimplified and potentially harmful mission due to concerns over using a single test to demonstrate student learning outcomes. According to one faculty member, what’s lacking is “any evidence of validity” for these single measures. Members of the NILO and ANLSLA, however, state that the intent is not to establish a single standardized test for colleges, but to offer a more comprehensive method for accountability, which Ikenberry states will most likely incorporate multiple measures.

To read the full Assessing Assessment article click here: Inside Higher Ed

Where do you stand on these assessment and accountability movements?

1. This worked for me in classes of nearly 100, N=75.  I used small groups extensively in the course. So, after forming the groups on the first day of class, I took a Polaroid picture of each group and as it “came up”, they wrote their names by their individual picture. I then posted these pictures by my desk in my office and worked on learning the names within each group.  After learning the names in the first group, I would learn a new group and review the names in the previous groups, and so on.. I took a week or two to get them all done, but I eventually did.  What seemed to work for me was: it was a lot easier to memorize 12 groups of 6 students, than it was to memorize 72 students. And students really appreciated it.

2. A math professor I knew had a very large class, over 100, and knew it would be valuable to learn their names.  So he used assigned seating, made a chart, and then each day of class, worked on memorizing a block of 6 students (3 in front and 3 behind).  Then each day when he came to class, he made a point of visiting with students in each new block and in the ones he had already learned -in addition to the class in general.

In took awhile, but again by working continuously at it, he eventually got their names all down so that even if he met them while walking across campus, he would recognize them and be able to address them by name.

The point seems to be:  You have to commit to doing this because you know it makes a difference in how students respond.  If you commit to doing it, you can do it even if it takes some time. To read more about L. Dee Fink’s book, please click here.

Here are some more ideas from the listserv and other faculty suggestions:

• Index card w/ name/contact info and 2-5 questions about them; review these early & often, especially during class discussions (call name and associate w/ their face
• Students create/use name tents each class session; some faculty have students take/bring these each class, while others collect them and use this as an attendance check (but this requires space to lay out the cards, usually alphabetical or clustered, and time to collect/organize them at the end of class). If the name tent IS collected, combine with the index card suggestion, having students answer questions on the inside for you to review.
• When handing back papers, call their name and personally hand it to each student
• Mandatory brief office visits (2-5 min.) are requested by some instructors during the first 1-3 weeks of class (which may be unmanageable for very large classes)
• Just “good ol’ memorization” of the roll sheets and then associate with faces during first classes
• Take pictures of groups of students and write their names out (be careful of the legalities of this at your school); study these groups with names/faces frequently; helps if they sit near each other in class

Do you have any creative ideas to learn the names of your students?

Please read the brief article for yourself and share your thoughts and/or comments below (just click on the COMMENTS link).

Other “Clickers” resources include:

CTL’s Clicker Resource page

http://www.bgsu.edu/ctlpage49370.html

Tom Haffie (University of Western Ontario) presents Clickers at Queens University (11/2006) 

http://sunsite.queensu.ca/vmp/clickers/index.html

If I taught something and no one learned it, what happened?
(In other words, can I say that I really TAUGHT it?)

Some of the key points the group discussed during the session were the nature the science of learning and importance of faculty knowing about the implications for their courses and the students they teach. Halpern encourages faculty to think about the big ideas of their course (Ten years after your course, what do you want students to remember or be able to do?); be clear about learning outcomes, and encourage/foster a learning environment that allows for practice at retrieval of knowledge and establishes challenging learning opportunities that addresses and transforms their mental models.

Furthermore, it’s important for students (and faculty) to realize that learning is “effortful,” yet rewarding – often most difficult initially, then easier with more efforts and practice… like most things in life. The diverse group of participants provided and discussed examples from foreign languages, musical performance, and the sciences.

Later, participants reviewed Halpern’s list of 25 principles (full list with citations available here or as MS Word file) and selected individual principles that are essential for student success, such as:
• Perceptual motor grounding
• Testing effect
• Spacing effect
• Stories and Example Cases
• Discovery Learning

One concern brought up in Halpern’s address as well as in this discussion session that is an important question for all teachers – (paraphrased) “So, if these methods lead to better, durable learning, don’t these take up more time in the class? What goes and how do we choose?” A great question for all instructors, department chairs, and deans as well!

Halpern suggests focusing your planning on students’ lives today and in the future – What are or will be their needs? What skills and knowledge will best prepare them for a world that doesn’t exist yet? These questions will continue to be explored and certainly more will be generated as additional findings emerge from the “learning sciences” discipline, as well as from the cognitive and neurological sciences.

For the BGSU community, to view this keynote, visit the DVSS (digital video streaming server), log in, and search for “Halpern” — the video is approximately 70 minutes.

Kevin Carey, a research and policy manager for a major think tank in Washington, describes some of the history and previous experience with reactions to the ‘Measuring Up’ report. Carey also expresses some thoughts on how serious higher education institutions should consider the report and why it may have so many detractors.

Go ahead and read Carey’s article and feel free to tell us what you think.

In a recent article in T.H.E. Journal titled “e-cheating: Combating a 21st Century Challenge,” Kim McMurtry provides us with a list of 8 suggestions to combat this type of plagiarism:

• Take time to explain and discuss your academic honesty policy

• Design writing assignments with specific goals and instructions

• Know what’s available online before assigning a paper

• Give students enough time to do an assignment

• Require oral presentations of student papers or have students submit a letter of

transferal to you, explaining briefly their thesis statement, research process, etc

• Have students submit essays electronically

• When you suspect e-cheating, use a free full-text search engine like AltaVista or

Digital Integrity

• Consider subscribing to a plagiarism search service, like Plagiarism.org or

IntegriGuard

Read the entire article by clicking here

How have you dealt with e-cheating in your classes?

Google Books allows you to search through a wide variety of books and even provides access to the content of those books.  This means that you can read whole books online, although some authors and publishers only allow a few pages to be read.  Google books categorizes books into subject matter, has a great searching capacity and even allows you to create your own library where you can recommend books and write reviews.

The topics that can be found within the archives of Google Books are vast. A simple search of books on teaching pulled up 131,582 results.  This could be a tool that may help in your research and something that may help your students in your classes as well.

What do you think about Google Books?

• Make sure students understand the who, what, when, why, and how of the assessment BEFORE the group project begins.
• Create a peer evaluation tool that is specific to the purpose, goals, and tasks of the group project.
• Be the “guide on the side” as a resource to students and to ensure whole group participation.
• Ensure content of the quantitative peer evaluation form is measurable to discourage popularity points.”
• Use formative (mid-process) evaluations not as a grading device, but to keep the group on track and to resolve problems as they occur.
• Use summative evaluations that allow students to evaluate their own role in the group as well as each of their group members.
• At the conclusion of the group project and evaluation process, seek students’ input to assess the overall experience.

Gueldsenzoph and May also include a peer evaluation form that can be adapted and used with your group assignments.

If you would like to learn more about creating effective group projects in you classroom, the Center is hosting a discussion titled, Designing Effective and Meaningful Group Projects on Friday, January 9 from 10-11:30.  Register for this workshop here.

Gueldenzoph, L. E. & May, L. G. (2002). Collaborative peer evaluation: Best practices for group member assessments. Business Communication Quarterly, 65(1), 9-20.

How do you design group projects?

For example, you’re writing an article with the intention of getting it published. This wiki can help with the publication process. DiRT offers a platform to share your work with other researchers, compare resources, help contribute to a collection, or help you organize your research tools.

Take a look for yourself and invite other people to visit DiRT.

Here’s your link to this wiki: http://digitalresearchtools.pbwiki.com

Professor Sean P. Murphy offers an interesting view on the dilemmas involved in teaching in higher education, specifically about the dilemmas that arise after being trained in certain ways and teaching at different types of colleges or universities. One of the suggestions is that graduate programs could expose their soon-to-be instructors to working at different types of institutions which may be an emphasis on teaching or research.

Please read the article and share any comments. We enjoy hearing what readers think.

Sometimes
5. Use the pause procedure.
Pause so that students can compare and discuss notes for 2 minutes.
6. Assign one-minute papers.
7. Try think-pair-share.

Hold Students Accountable Daily
8. Quiz daily.
9. Use clickers
10. Call on a student every 2-3 minutes.

This article provides great tips and give good examples on how to apply these techniques in your classroom.
Find the entire article through BGSU’s Library. Search for:
Gray, Tara and Laura Madson. “Ten Easy Ways to Engage Your Students.” College Teaching 25.2 (2007): 83-87.
How do you engage your students?

Marty Nemko, a Guest Blogger for The Chronicle of Higher Education, offers some tips for Helping Your Procrastination-Prone Students.

CTL would love to hear from any instructor and how they try and help their procrastinating students.
How do you deal with procrastination-prone students?

Here are some of the reflections that we took from our discussion:
* Most of you appreciated that there is some kind of forum where you can talk about being a TA here at BGSU. And, you were all more than willing to share some of your experiences and insight that you have had here.

* Many of you would like to be able to hear more from other TAs. You would like to hear what other TAs are doing in their classes, how they deal with certain situations, integrating certain tools and methodologies into your classes, and some of you expressed that you would like to see about making your classes more interactive and lively.

* Some of you appreciated it when instructors are open to getting feedback from students, so some of you discussed how you do the same in your classes. In other words, you appreciate an instructor’s willingness to improve and adjust, and many of you are willing to make the same effort.

* Finally, many of like any further input you can get about teaching from any reliable source.

We are adjusting our next workshop to address and capitalize on these promising topics. We are actually thinking about having you all share different unique practices that you implement in your classes, which could only help one another, as TAs. Our next two workshops are October 14th @ 1:30p-2:30p and October 15th @ 10:30a-11:30a. These workshops will be the same format and topics. We just have added another day and time in case more TAs come and having some flexibility to work with your schedules.

Please do not hesitate to register for the Teaching Assistants are Links workshop series by e-mailing or calling us. If these next two workshops go as well as the first one, we will have a wonderful time.

What are some suggestions for TAs? What are some topics we could discuss in our next workshop? We would love to hear from current or former teaching assistants!

It was not too long ago that the idea of online courses was being argued over. People thought it was absurd to allow students to earn credit hours for a college course by them participating in a class run over the Internet. The online class format, obviously, has prospered and there are students in colleges all over the country who are enrolled in them.

There are still people who disagree with online education and firmly believe that “in-person education” is so much better. In a recent editorial, Jane Arnold makes a worthy argument in revealing how online classes aren’t all that their cracked up to be and have serious downsides to them.

We would enjoy hearing from anyone who has a reaction to Arnold’s piece or want to make a comment concerning how they feel about online versus in-person education.

The Center for Teaching & Learning would love to hear what some of BGSU’s graduate students or former graduate students may have to say about Lang’s advice and commentary. Please leave us a short comment about what you think.

Kim Mooney’s recent article on insidehighered.com asks professors to examine the ways they approach teaching. She asks whether professors are asking the right questions, teaching effectively and willing to adjust to their students’ needs. Ultimately, Mooney asks if professors and universities are using approaches and materials with their students that are in-line with the world their students live in now and will inherit in the future. Mooney provides readers with interesting questions, anecdotes, and examples of what some institutions are doing to better accommodate their learners. Please read the article and see what other professionals are saying beneath the article.

http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2008/08/01/mooney

“Tucked away in a 1,200-page bill now in Congress is a small paragraph that could lead distance-education institutions to require spy cameras in their students’ homes.

It sounds Orwellian, but the paragraph — part of legislation renewing the Higher Education Act — is all but assured of becoming law by the fall. No one in Congress objects to it.“

Many instructors and students may not realize the impact this act may have on them. We would like to hear what some people say. Please read Foster’s article or get some more facts on the Higher Education Act and give us a comment on what you read.

Link to Foster’s article:

<http://chronicle.com/free/v54/i46/46a00103.htm?utm_source=pm&utm_medium=en>

The Center is aiming to start this series of workshops in late August, with the next workshop to come around mid-October, and a final workshop towards the end of fall semester. The exact times and dates for the workshops will be forthcoming. Please see the Center’s website for further details in the near future.

Below are two short reactions to Carr’s popular article.

Reaction #1