Assignments are one of those ever-present but not-often-thought-about aspects of teaching and learning. Pretty much every course has them, and teachers grade them. The grade indicates how much the student learned by doing them. But is this learning something that students recognize? Too often students
College textbooks are expensive, and prices continue to rise. The Bureau of Labor reported a 600 percent increase in textbook costs between 1980 and 2012. The average 2015 American college student graduated with over $35,000 of student debt, a portion of which came from textbook
I’ve been retired, as in not teaching undergraduates, for almost a decade now. I miss the students. I miss some of my colleagues. But what I miss most is the beginning of the school year. It’s a new start—new students, sometimes new content, a few
Elvis (the other one . . . Costello) was right: “Radio, it’s a sound salvation. Radio, it’s cleaning up the nation.” Radio didn’t die; it was just sleeping. Podcasting and ubiquitous audio tools have brought radio back to life and into the classroom in a
The literature on teaching and learning has improved so much over the years. Researchers are now covering important aspects of both in depth, analyzing with creative designs and exploring for practical and theoretical implications. One case in point is a 2015 syllabus review published in
“Our overall conclusion is that, within the confines of our study, both male and female students can and do grade their homework honestly” (p. 57). That’s not an expected conclusion, or one most faculty would hold about their students. If the homework counts in final
A number of faculty are now using Twitter in their classrooms, with positive effects. Here are two examples using different approaches.
A syllabus provides students with information about a course and its requirements, but it also conveys messages about the instructor’s personality and hints as to how the course will be conducted. It used to be that the instructor handed out the syllabus on the first
What’s the best way to learn complex skills, like problem solving, for example? Looking at the way homework problems are typically laid out in textbooks and often assigned by teachers, the answer would appear to be by giving students problem sets that focus on one
Many faculty consider the syllabus a contract for learning that they set up for students. However, there continues to be suggestions in the literature and among pedagogical experts that this is a troublesome perspective. The language used in syllabi modeled like contracts sets a tone
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