'Resources'
Using a framework to provide effective, impactful, and quality education is not a new concept. While grounding pedagogy in theory is important, Teaching Assistants more often are interested in how to implement educational practices that will result in student learning. Chickering and Gamson’s (1987) 7 Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education is a foundational document that offers both a framework and specific methods valuable for any instructor. Chickering and Gamson give seven suggestions, based on a review of literature, to facilitate good practice:
1. Encourage Contact Between Students and Faculty,
2. Develop Reciprocity and Cooperation Among Students,
3. Encourage Active Learning,
4. Give Prompt Feedback,
5. Emphasize Time on Task,
6. Communicate High Expectations,
7. Respect Diverse Talents and Ways of Learning.
As a Teaching Assistant, we can use this framework to plan methods that will result in student learning.
If you want more detail or would like to learn more, consider attending one of our Pragmatic Practices workshop sessions. You can still sign up for the last two: Learning Styles and Teaching Tips! Visit the Center’s webpage for full descriptions or to register, or call 419-372-6898 for more information.
February 18th, 2009
In recent years Jane Vella has become a renowned and respected figure in the adult teaching field. Vella’s 12 Principles for Adult Learners, spelled out in her known book Learning to Listen, Learning to Teach: The Power of Dialogue in Educating Adults, are highly regarded in adult education. Below are Vella’s 12 Principles.
* Needs assessment: participation of the learners in naming what is to be learned.
* Safety in the environment and the process. We create a context for learning. That context can be made safe.
* Sound relationships between teacher and learner and among learners.
* Sequence of content and reinforcement.
* Praxis: action with reflection or learning by doing.
* Respect for learners as decision makers.
* Ideas, feelings, and actions: cognitive, affective, and psychomotor aspects of learning.
* Immediacy of the learning.
* Clear roles and role development.
* Teamwork and use of small groups.
* Engagement of the learners in what they are learning.
* Accountability: how do they know they know?
These 12 Principles are actually quite helpful towards working with any learners in higher education.
February 17th, 2009
One of the leaders in online publishing is Scribd. Scribd allows people to upload documents – which can be in the form of reports, brochures, books, spreadsheets, puzzles and games, etc. – to the Internet for sharing with millions of readers. The website also allows you to discuss work that belongs to other people. And, Scribd is free for users!
As per Scribd’s FAQs:
Scribd lets you publish and discover documents online. It is like a big online library where anyone can upload. We make use of a custom Flash document viewer that lets you display documents right in your Web browser.
Part of the idea behind Scribd is that everyone has a lot of documents sitting around on their computers that only they can read. With Scribd we hope to unlock this information by putting it on the web.
Scribd would a useful website for students, especially, graduate students to get feedback on term papers, thesis or dissertation chapters, and for providing feedback to other users. For professors Scribd could prove helpful in publishing pre-publication documents for feedback or learning about what other college instructors are doing in their field or another field.
Over the past couple years Scribd has steadily grown in its users and readership. Please take a look for yourself and see what you can share or discuss.
February 3rd, 2009
A recent string of ideas came across the Lilly Conference on College Teaching listserv recently. Here is a sampling of some ideas you can try in your large lecture class to remember students’ names:
From L. Dee Fink (author of a great book – Creating Significant Learning Experiences):
…(L)earning names is extremely helpful but challenging in large classes. Here are two ideas that have worked for some:
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?
January 20th, 2009
As the semester is about to begin, it’s time to think about the most important day of the entire semester… the first day of class. The first day of class sets the tone for the entire semester. While most of us plan to simply go over the syllabus, there are other things that we can do to motivate our students. In “101 Things You Can do the First Three Weeks of Class,” the author Joyce T. Povlcs, offers helpful tips to make the first three weeks of class start off on the right foot. Among the tips offered are:
- Give an assignment on the first day to be collected at the next meeting
- Administer a learning style inventory to help students find out about themselves
- Greet students at the door when they enter the classroom
- Have students write out their expectations for the course and their own goals for learning
To read more helpful tips that can be utilized during the first three weeks of class, click here.
How do you set the tone for your classes on the first day of the semester?
January 9th, 2009
While the Internet has opened us to a world of information and sources, it can also cause problems in our classrooms. The Internet has provided our students with a wealth of websites that will sell, barter and even give away research papers, English papers and essays. How do you combat this in our classes?
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?
November 24th, 2008
Do you ever have a hard time finding books and sources to help you prepare for lectures and classes? Do you have a list of books that you would love to read, but just don’t have the time or money? Could your students benefit from free book viewing online? Well, Google has launched something that could help: Google Books.
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?
November 17th, 2008
Collaborative skills are essential skills that students must learn in order to succeed in their chosen fields. How can we teach students collaborative skills? Through group projects.
While most students grumble at the announcement of group work, there are ways to make group work more rewarding and effective. In an article titled “Collaborative peer evaluation: Best practices for group member assessments,” Lisa Gueldsenzoph and Gary May provides a useful checklist for effective peer evaluation. This includes:
- 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?
November 7th, 2008
DiRT is the acronym for a new wiki, Digital Research Tools. DiRT offers an array of resources for grad students or instructors in higher education. This wiki is a collection of resources that helps scholars do everything from manage citations, author a multimedia work, or analyze texts. There are over two dozen links to different software resources and websites that can offer help for researchers.
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
November 5th, 2008
Are you trying to find a way to make your classroom environment more engaging? In a College Teaching article, Tara Gray and Laura Madson provide the following 10 tips for engaging students:
Always
1. Maintain sustained eye contact.
2. Ask before you tell.
3. Create a structure for note taking.
4. Let the readings share your lectern.
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?
October 15th, 2008
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