Category Archives: First Year Seminar

I know this is kid stuff for many of you, but I’ve never done it before, which is part of the reason I’ve managed to procrastinate for so long. Here at long last are the audio and the powerpoint (below) … Continue reading →

Shannon posts some insightful reflections on the first year seminar last semester. This is exactly what I was trying to accomplish. (I wonder how many other students ‘got it.’)

In the previous post, I mentioned that the seminar was given a two day introduction to library research skills, including on-line bibliographic databases and effective search techniques. The students had two reactions to this introduction. First, they found the information … Continue reading →

There were a lot of things that worked really well in the first year seminar and I plan to blog about them over the next month or so. For now, though, I want to mention some things that went wrong, … Continue reading →

Another thing I did in the First Year Seminar on Tuesday was to show them Gardner’s APGAR post. I asked the students to answer the questions for themselves. I had set up a spreadsheet on the classroom computer and asked … Continue reading →

I spent a fair amount of time last weekend thinking about what went wrong in the first year seminar on Thursday. I didn’t realize until today that I was looking too far afield. My first thought was to be disappointed … Continue reading →

The other week, I blogged about my students backchanneling during my class via IM. Martha suggested we try to formalize that arrangement on the course website. She and Jerry (or was it Jerry and she?) installed a chat box on … Continue reading →

Recently, I’ve been writing about reality intruding on my First Year Seminar, where students are beginning to worry about their grade in the course rather than their learning, and where I fear some students may be using the freedom the … Continue reading →