When students consider majoring in the humanities or social sciences, it’s only a matter of time before they hear—or are reminded—about the comparatively dim career outlook for graduates of these programs. Many students, perhaps with a parent or trusted advisor also expressing concern about the
In the fall of 2017, Niki Bray had a problem. The University of Memphis instructor and instructional designer was tasked with redesigning and teaching an Intro to Kinesiology course that had failure rates of 43 percent on the first attempt and nearly 50 percent on
Good teaching requires a special blend of the personal and the professional. Although there’s a fine line between revealing a piece of oneself to build rapport and sharing too much information, sharing past experiences—telling personal stories —is completely justified when it furthers learning and fosters
Some courses are more difficult to teach than others, and I think we’d all agree that general education courses are among the hardest courses to teach. For one thing, most students don’t want to take them. They don’t think they need to know the content,
TED Talks have come to represent the pinnacle of effective presentations. They are concise, engaging, and memorable. They are also, increasingly, the yardstick by which speakers—including university faculty—are measured.
Chances are you have a Learning Management System (LMS) like Blackboard, Canvas, D2L, or Moodle at your school. But how do you use it? The findings from a recent survey by Pomerantz, Brown, and Brooks (2018) of U.S. learning institutions are rather alarming. Despite the
Most faculty assume that students would welcome any use of social media in a course. After all, social media use is ubiquitous among students outside of class, and many students are already surreptitiously using it during class. But instructors often find that students are far
If students don’t come right out and say they don’t want to work in groups, the nonverbal message comes through loud and clear. “Get together with those sitting near you. I’ve got something I want you to work on as a group.” Some students stretch
Active learning improves student performance and increases enthusiasm for learning. But despite its known benefits, active learning can be challenging to implement for asynchronous online learners. The most popular active learning techniques—such as think-pair-share, audience polling, and game-based learning—center around students working together in a
We often think of writing as a reflection of finished thinking, whether it be via a term paper, final exam, or other culminating project. However, writing is also a powerful tool for thinking, to help students construct meaning and to deepen their understandings of complex
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