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Video grading can improve your student feedback

One of the biggest challenges that I have as a professor is helping my students improve their writing.  Encouraging students to practice the art and skill of writing is one of the areas where we can have the biggest impact on our students.  I’ve always found the hardest part of teaching writing is providing feedback.  I used to struggled to provide comments to students that addressed larger issues as well as edits for style and grammar.  I also had to manage the time needed to grade in order to provide prompt feedback and protect my own sanity.  Video grading can improve your student feedback and provides the best solution for offering writing feedback.

video grading

Photo credit: Robert of Fairfax

Video grading provides many advantages for delivering student assessment and feedback.  Students have been traumatized by the dreaded red pen and often want to write the “correct” way.  Few of my students have learned the writing process before coming into my class.  My goal is to help them learn the process as much as any specific tips or advice I may have for their papers.  Video grading presents a perfect opportunity to guide students through the writing process.  It also offers many advantages over other feedback methods I have tried.

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What is institutional theory?

Organizational theory proves useful for explaining much of what happens in higher education. In particular, I find institutional theory can help provide an explanation for institutional decisions and activities. Unfortunately, students often struggle with grasping some of the basics of institutional theory. In today’s post, I want to share an excerpt from my monograph on institutional diversity that helps explain the role of institutional theory in hopes of providing a foundation for understanding the useful of the theory for higher education.

what is institutional theory

Photo credit: Lynne Hand
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Can we have class outside?

The weather has been unusually nice lately in Dallas. Students enjoy being able to move outdoors and I’ve seen them reading under trees or chatting in the sun: the quintessential college life. Of course when it is this nice, who wants to go inside to have class? No one including the professors! Some of my favorite teaching memories are taking classes outside. In today’s post, I want to share one of the IDEAS from my book, Teaching for Learning: 101 Intentionally Designed Educational Activities to Put Students on the Path to Success. In this IDEA, we share how to take advantage of the beautiful weather.

can we have class outside

Photo credit: SMU
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The ability of the federal government to influence higher education

What ability does the federal government have to influence higher education? Specifically, what policy levers exist for the federal government to punish an individual college or university? While I will not make a habit on the blog of responding to every higher education related tweet that President Trump sends out, his tweet regarding the University of California – Berkeley opens up a nice opportunity to discuss the role of the federal government in higher education and the limits of federal power over post-secondary education.

Following a series of protests that started to become violent on the Berkeley campus, the university cancelled a planned talk by Milo Yiannopoulos, a senior editor at the far-right website Breitbart News. 

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Higher education’s endangered values

I have often been critical of college presidents not standing up for political issues that directly impact our institutions. As waves of protests and condemnations of the executive order took hold over the weekend, another event occurred. College presidents seeing the order as a direct assault on the values of higher education started speaking up. One after another, they condemned the President’s action. Rather than sharing my thoughts, I want to take the opportunity to share the unanimous voices of higher education’s leaders standing up to an attack on the values we hold dear- both as higher education and as a country. The sheer number of responses shows just how united American higher education is in fighting this attack on our values.

Credit: Dallas Observer/Matthew Martinez