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Category Archives: Teaching and Learning
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
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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?
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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
The most important job of a university teacher is designing the learning environment
What does a teacher at the university level do? This is a question I’ve pondered for some time, as I’ve been following changes in higher education, for example, the growth in the for-profit sector, and the growth in on-line learning. … Continue reading