Group items tagged

Six tips for good professional email style, framed in a kindly "dear student" letter. I've heard plenty of complaints about 2 AM emails consisting only of "hey, what's the reading for tomorrow?"... perhaps circulating this essay might help.

For better or for worse, email is a vital communication channel in Kenyon's culture, but not in pre-college teenage culture. How do you address this gap?

"Can "light-touch, targeted feedback" to students via email improve their perceptions of and performance in a class? New research says in some cases the answer is yes."

This week, we read the last chapters in Small Teaching, which focus on the emotional dimension of student experience. Here is one suggestion from an immunology professor on making personal connections with students as a way to improve their performance in your course.

"When the same source always sends bad news, or phrases messages only in the imperative case, it becomes tempting to tune it out." How do your course or departmental emails measure against that standard?

This article deserves attention for opening up a professor's iterative process in figuring out the best structure for her class's online presence. I'm intrigued by the idea of using Facebook instead of or in addition to a professor-run website or Moodle page.

What do classes look like as you move from infrequent, high-stakes assignments and exams to frequent grading of low-stakes activities? Warnock makes a number of claims, backed up by the literature - students become more confident and motivated, there's less incentive to cheat, the dialogue between students and faculty improves. I particularly like the last half of the article, where he talks about the practical elements of increasing informal writing or quizzing in a course.

Thomas Carey argues that "depth vs. breadth" is an insufficient model for understanding the possible contributions of the liberal arts. (Plus, K is for Kenyon, that's good enough for me.)

Interesting stuff in this article, from managing what can seem like a torrent of feedback, to thinking about the ways that different people respond to the same comments, to the metacognitive exercise of thinking about your own reactions. It's also worth noting that these tips come from a book that's not just for students - and the techniques might be useful for faculty and staff too.

The author discusses recent research indicating that students spend most of their study time using the least effective study techniques and speculates on what teachers can do to promote the most effective techniques.

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

The author uses a syllabus so detailed that it can function like a textbook, and offers specific tips on how she uses the syllabus every day. This is an intriguing way of making sure the syllabus is not just a contract read on the first day and referred to only when people break it. I was particularly taken with the approach Dr. Crossman uses to make students actually do the "recommended" reading.

This is a pretty good online course for introducing academics to relevant issues in copyright law. The lectures are given by experts in the field, and are appropriately accessible and detailed. It's now available "on demand"; I'm curious to see how people experience that differently than the earlier synchronous (multi-week) iteration.

An interesting description of the "peer instruction" model used to achieve active learning in large lecture classes by Eric Mazur.

We don't offer "online" courses at Kenyon, but these tips do apply to our course websites and Moodle pages. It's worth the time to think how a student with a disability would experience your resources and assignments.

First, the title of this article caught my eye. Then the "new" definition of Digital Humanites caught my attention. Finally the author's comments caught me off-guard. I think people should read this for the initial content (what's promised by the title and the leading question). Also people might want to think about whether some of Sathian's remarks cross a line into stereotyping and racism.

Lecture gets a bad rap for not being sufficiently active learning, but when is it actually the best tool for the job? The comments on this article also contain some good points.

Gadget use is an etiquette issue to be addressed formally in the syllabus. This article (and the links in it) have some interesting suggestions. Perhaps the most intriguing idea to me is the "laptop-free zone" of seating - I've noticed that I can be as distracted by the person a row or two ahead of me checking email (or worse) as by the urge to check my own.

The title of this one pretty much sums up the content completely. There is a link to some good vs. bad examples of PowerPoint slides, but they are pretty self-evident. The guidelines discussed in this article are worth exploring even if you are not developing a MOOC or a smaller online course -- for example, if you just want to flip a class or two.