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The author argues for thinking of students as a vehicle for communicating core course content (not just the related material which is most often covered in student presentations). He has two reasons - student presenters do not have "expert blind spots", and peer-to-peer interaction has a differently engaging dynamic.

The author argues for thinking of students as a vehicle for communicating core course content (not just the related material which is most often covered in student presentations). He has two reasons - student presenters do not have "expert blind spots", and peer-to-peer interaction has a differently engaging dynamic.

This article came up at yesterday's discussion of neurodiversity, as we considered the emotional support needs of our students. It provides a couple of specific examples of language a faculty member can use to help students get the help they need, while still preserving appropriate teacher-student boundaries.

Our discussions about writing often come around to whether students actually read (and internalize) the comments. Sometimes we hear about students not knowing how to turn on Track Changes or the GradeMark panel in Turnitin, so at the most basic level electronic comments do introduce friction for some students. What do you think of the research project proposed here - do students actually approach electronic feedback differently?

This professor uses an online forum to give students who are uncomfortable speaking in class a space where they can contribute their thoughts. Students report that it's useful and the professor reports that all students who used the forum did eventually speak in class. (It occurs to me that Moodle's "anonymous" and group-based forum options might help mitigate some of the social pressures.)

This study examines the Internet sources higher education students use in their written work and the implications of their choices. It is based on an analysis of over 112 million content matches from more than 28 million student papers submitted to Turnitin between July 2011 and June 2012. Included are recommendations for educators on how to improve student research and citation skills.

The author discusses a report on the value of having students evaluate their peer's presentations in the political science classroom. Being required to evaluate their peer's presentations using the same criteria as the instructor uses, students report a greater understanding of the expectations for the presentations and gain more knowledge from the content of those presentations than they would have otherwise.

Asking students to do work in public can lead to powerful learning, but we should talk to students about how it impacts their work and public identity. In this blog post, Jade Davis gives a description of the readings and release forms she uses in her classes with digital media projects.

I noticed a number of tables at yesterday's Celebration of High Impact Practices where students were displaying their work on small laptop screens. How can we improve this experience for the next celebration - and what other venues for showcasing student work could we be using?

A qualitative study on the ways students use print and ebooks differently for personal reading and academic work. While the researcher admits that the study is self-selected and not generalizable, it presents interesting evidence about student preferences and decision making in reading generally.

Concrete suggestions for teaching students how to have a discussion with each other, instead of each student serially talking with the professor.

"Our real goal is to improve how students integrate new information. We want to change them. While what we have to teach our students may get them a first job, it will not on its own get them a second job-especially one that may not yet even exist. We want our students to be able to learn new things, analyze new knowledge, integrate it into their thinking, and change their minds when necessary." Jose Bowen argues that we should treat both technology and disciplinary content as tools, in pursuit of the larger cognitive changes we try to create in the liberal arts.

This will be an interesting topic to watch. How can we help students learn the habits of complex thinking, and unlearn the habits of shallow thinking? If the best practices of effective study become automatic, the student will be more able to focus on new ideas.

Students tend to hate cumulative exams - partly because they're harder (which is good and proper) and partly because they may not feel prepped for them. This article suggests some teaching strategies which you can use to help students integrate material across the semester.

This course redesign "formula" may not work for all courses, but perhaps it can work for you. The article describes what amounts to a course redesign that results in a blended classroom, using the technology available through the text publisher as the source of outside data. The six guidelines they propose can be boiled down to: (1) guide students in active learning; (2) enforce deadlines to keep students on task; (3) reward students for real effort, which translates into real learning; (4) provide regular assessment (immediate feedback via technology, if possible); (5) accommodate varied learning styles; and (6) keep on students to do their work (again, technology can help with this).

Interesting list of prompts which ask students to reflect on their learning process and preferences. Some of these might make good course evaluation questions. How do you help students reflect on their time at Kenyon?

This chapter from a University of Virginia handbook gives specific suggestions which can make the classroom more welcoming to people from all backgrounds. Some of the "suggestions" look more like probing questions for reflecting on your own teaching - which is also a good thing! Also available as a PDF at http://trc.virginia.edu/resources/420-2/teaching-a-diverse-student-body-handbook/

I'm actually a big fan of pop quizzes - I think they motivate students to keep up, and provide useful diagnostic information to the teacher. However, in-class quizzes chew up valuable face-to-face time, require manual grading (which slows their utility), and as this article points out, are deeply unfair to students with some disabilities. This article suggests other ways to hold a "pop quiz" which are equally accessible to all students (and potentially provide information faster to the faculty member). Hat tip to Erin Salva for the link.

While aimed at younger students, these techniques for reading images and discussing the ways that some images become "iconic" are great prompts for college students as well.

This study takes the novel approach of comparing course evaluations for courses and follow-up courses and finds that "teacher effectiveness is negatively correlated with students' evaluations." Except for higher performing students, those who did better in follow up courses, indicating greater learning in the earlier courses, gave worse evaluations.

There are many benefits to having students present work in public. How do you engage students with the issues of privacy and public representation around that work?