Category Archives: All

Redesigning My Intro Course

This post is a continuation of my thinking over (at least) the last two posts.  The focus is on how I plan to incorporate high impact practices into my introduction to macroeconomics course this Fall to improve on last year’s … Continue reading

Posted in Teaching and Learning, The Experiment, Uncategorized | 3 Comments

The Tyranny of the Contact Hour (or is it the Tyranny of the Text?)

I am in involved in a project to develop online courses in the liberal arts & sciences, and I’ve run into an interesting question, a variant on something I’ve written about since the beginning of this blog: What defines a … Continue reading

Posted in Teaching and Learning | 2 Comments

High Impact Learning

It’s the time of the year when I start thinking about redesigning my courses for the coming academic year.  Last year at this time I was preoccupied planning for my new job as director of our university teaching center.  As … Continue reading

Posted in Teaching and Learning, The Experiment | 3 Comments

The College Course as an Experience (or set of experiences)

In my previous post I explored mastery-learning which implies a specific body of content to be learned.  In this post, I want to look at the opposite extreme.  Can a  legitimate college course be an experience or set of experiences, … Continue reading

Posted in Teaching and Learning, What is Education? | 1 Comment

What kind of teacher are you?

Yesterday’s Washington Post had a column by Steven Pearlstein that caught my attention.  Pearlstein makes an argument that won’t be new to many of you:  that the internet has the potential to be a disruptive technology in education, that instructional … Continue reading

Posted in Assessment & Grading, Teaching and Learning | 5 Comments

Race to Nowhere

Do you have children?  Do you care about our children?  Are you a teacher? If your answer to any of these questions is yes, you must watch Race to Nowhere, an independent film on what’s wrong with school with parenting … Continue reading

Posted in Teaching and Learning | 1 Comment

What should grades include?

Now that Martha has shown me up, I figured it was time for me to blog again. 😉  I have four posts in the pipeline right now that I need to publish–really, I do.   This post began as a link … Continue reading

Posted in Assessment & Grading | 2 Comments

Rethinking Assessment

Our school is engaging in a major effort to revamp and improve institutional assessment.  Like many schools, we have been “doing” assessment for about 15 years.  Or I should say, we’ve been going through the motions.  Assessment was viewed as … Continue reading

Posted in Assessment & Grading, UMW Teaching Center | 1 Comment

An interesting message for students?

Registration for our first year students began this week, and with it,  my interest in enrolling students in the First Year Seminar I teach who really want to be there.  For an FSEM to reach its potential to be more … Continue reading

Posted in First Year Seminar, Teaching and Learning | 1 Comment

Engagement vs. Grades

I am still surfing on the wave of energy I picked up from attending the Educause Learning Initiative 2010 Annual Meetings last week. As Gardner Campbell has said, faculty development is not a frill, but rather the oxygen academics need … Continue reading

Posted in Teaching and Learning, What is Education? | 3 Comments