Teach Strats

HIGHER ED TEACHING STRATEGIES FROM MAGNA PUBLICATIONS

Articles

Should Senior Faculty Teach More Introductory Courses?

After years of service and moving up through the faculty ranks, senior faculty members often feel they have earned the privilege of concentrating their teaching efforts on upper-division courses, leaving the introductory courses to younger faculty members. It seems fair enough: If you stick around long enough, you will be able to teach the courses you enjoy most. But is it the best arrangement for students?

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Rob Kelly April 23, 2009

Experiential Learning: Bridging the Gap Between Engaged and Disengaged

Not all disengaged students fall into the stereotype of the slacker who comes late to class (if at all), or is as easy to spot as Jeff Spicoli from Fast Times at Ridgemont High. In fact there are a number of students who are masters at playing the game … doing just enough to get by … attending class but not really participating, much less engaging with the content.

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Mary Bart April 22, 2009

Incorporating Diversity-related Materials into the Curriculum

Incorporating material that addresses diversity issues in classes has positive effects on a number of learning outcomes. The success of efforts to make curricula more diverse depends to a large degree on faculty willingness to incorporate these materials because control of the curriculum remains in faculty hands—both collectively, in terms of course and program approval processes, and individually, in terms of daily decisions about what to teach.

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Rob Kelly April 17, 2009

How to Handle Helicopter Parents in College

When faculty members receive phone calls from parents about their children’s academic work, the response is often, “Our contract is with the students, not the parents,” says Marjorie Savage, parent program director at the University of Minnesota. Faculty need to keep in mind, however, that today’s parents are different than in previous generations.

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Rob Kelly April 16, 2009

Classroom Teaching Methods: Are Your Lectures Sidetracking Student Learning

Most teachers work to add interest to lecture material in an attempt to gain student attention. If they aren’t attending, they aren’t listening, and if they aren’t listening, it’s pretty hard to imagine them learning anything from a lecture. But is there a point at which the interesting details are more arresting than the content? And if that’s so, do those kinds of details get in the way of attempts to learn and apply content?

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Maryellen Weimer, PhD April 14, 2009

Creating More Effective Course Handouts

For most of us, handouts are a staple of instructional life, but as Teresa Sakraida and Peter Draus (reference below) point out, their “development is often a trial-and-error process.” (p. 326) Like so many other aspects of instruction, we take the construction of handouts for granted, their creation guided largely by intuition.

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Maryellen Weimer, PhD April 9, 2009