Category Archives: Teaching

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When you lecture, take a break!

When I work with faculty on improving their teaching, one of the areas that I constantly try to get them to improve is in their lecturing. Particularly in certain disciplines, lecturing is the primary instructional approach used by professors. Lecturing is probably the oldest teaching approach and can be effective. However, lecturing can also be done very poorly as the stereotype of the professor reading form the yellowed lecture notes illustrates. I try to convince faculty to include more active learning approaches into their classes and I find the pause procedure is an excellent vehicle for this. In today’s post, I want to share an excerpt from my book on college teaching (Teaching for Learning)  that describes the pause procedure and how to use it effectively in the college classroom.

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Are college students more brilliant? The grade inflation debate

Brilliant! I loved the series of Guinness commercials that made fun of the British affinity for using the word brilliant. It is hard not to love using brilliant and I often join in after only a few days in England (resulting in much ribbing from my colleagues). Of course, the issue is that if everything is brilliant- is anything? Brilliant used to mean exceptionally good, but now it has been watered down due to overuse. All of this leads to me think of the grade inflation debate in higher education and whether today’s college students are more brilliant than in the past.

“Grades A and B are sometimes given too readily—Grade A for work of no very high merit, and Grade B for work not far above mediocrity. . . One of the chief obstacles to raising the standards of the degree is the readiness with which insincere students gain passable grades by sham work.”  — Report of the Committee on Raising the Standard, Harvard University, 1984

The grade inflation debate is not new.  

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Houston, we have a problem teaching activity

In the popular movie, Apollo 13, the astronauts are trapped with their oxygen running out.  In a classic scene, all of the NASA engineers gather in a room with all of the stuff in the spacecraft and have to figure out how to make a square air filter fit a hole made for a round filter.  Literally, the engineers have to make a square peg fit in a round hole. In today’s post, I want to share an IDEA from my book Teaching for Learning on how you can use this as the basis for a class activity.

In the Houston We Have a Problem IDEA, students are given a collection of items or information that they must use to solve a problem presented by the instructor.

The game is designed to encourage class participation, creativity, and problem solving.

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My teaching philosophy

Most of us do not give much thought to our teaching philosophy until we have to sit down and write such a document. In my role with our teaching center, I often have colleagues ask for tips and advice on how to write a statement of teaching philosophy. In today’s post, I want to share my teaching philosophy statement. It isn’t perfect and could use improvement. However, I hope it will be helpful to think about writing your own teaching philosophy.

Photo credit: University of Hull

My Teaching Philosophy Statement

As a professional field, higher education requires students to understand and apply research and theory to practice.

The development of scholar-practitioners and practitioner-aware scholars are of paramount concern.

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Teaching and learning in a market-dominated environment

As the director of university teaching center, I have been thinking a great deal recently about how to support faculty and teaching in today’s higher education climate. In today’s post, I want to share an except from an article I wrote several years ago on the topic. My thinking has changed some over the years and the market environment may be even stronger since the recession, but I still find these ideas stimulating.

Photo credit: John Williams

The question before those engaged in supporting general education is how to respond to the challenges and opportunities presented by the market.