Center for Innovative Pedagogy

How are you storing your research data, and how are you sharing it? Funders are starting to require formal data management plans, including open accessibility, as part of grant applications. Are you talking to your students about these issues?

Syllabi have to include clear policies, but Ed Cunliff says "I have yet to see a policy on syllabi that demands they bore the reader!" By addressing writing style, formal structure, and graphic design, Cunliff tries to make his syllabi lively, engaging documents. What do you do to get students interested in the syllabus?

How do you look at a map, and understand it as an argument about data? And how do you recognize common holes in those arguments? This might be a useful reading for courses with a mapping (or map-reading) component.

You say "any questions", 5 seconds of total silence follow... what then?

"What do students need to know from their major in order to meet their civic obligations at work and in their local and global communities?" This report from AAC&U provides an intriguing framework for a department exploring how its majors are (and aren't) exposed to the public aspects of the discipline.

So you've decided to "free up" some class time by using technology differently in your class. What then? This article gives interesting examples of increasing group work in a "blended" classroom, and the kind of environment which supports independent but collaborative learning.

Many faculty members struggle with how (and whether) to address current events in the classroom. Chad Williams used social media to build a categorized reading list related to the Charleston shootings. It also makes some interesting points about faculty members' potential role as public intellectuals.

One of the benefits of group work could be learning to negotiate different expectations about work styles in a group. Recognizing that up front, instead of 3/4ths of the way through the project when the wheels come off, might help students learn better in collaboration, and feel better about group work. I've seen exercises like this used in leadership or "team-building" exercises - there's no reason this activity wouldn't work with a committee or department.

This report is about a "nationally representative" survey which finds that educational attainment is one of the best predictors of high technology and information literacy skills - so I would assume that the results aren't quite as dire for those Millennials who go to college. That said, it's a good reminder that many so-called "digital natives" are not (yet) sophisticated creators and managers of information with their devices. I also want to point out that the kinds of information management tasks tested are perfectly relevant to research in the humanities, social sciences, and fine arts, not just STEM as the think tank suggests.

"In my view, the way to defend the value of college is to defend the importance of intellectual virtues and then show that the education that colleges provide is successful at cultivating those virtues." Swarthmore psychologist Barry Schwartz gives an interesting list of the habits of mind which are the components of "critical thinking."

A good research or critical thinking assignment teaches students to refine their questions as they gather and review evidence. Do we give enough attention to the process of generating those first introductory-level questions?

A group of disabilities studies scholars have released a template letter designed to convince publishers to make more books available in accessible formats. It's a good reminder that everything is negotiable, but you have to ask. (Similar to author's addenda in the open access movement, if enough people start requesting these riders, publishers will see a new reason to change their standard practices.)

The Digital Public Library of America is recruiting educators interested in curating digitized primary sources and writing teachers' guides to using those sources from grade school into college.

A degree-planning tool gives a student personalized guidance in choosing paths through the curriculum and potentially the co-curriculum. While this brief focuses on planning tools as they improve student retention, they are also powerful tools for helping students see coherent themes in a liberal arts education.

We're having a series of book club meetings (and a book club blog) on Ken Bain's book this summer. This interview is particularly interesting for the way Bain expands on his thinking since the book was published.

A number of good tips for making sure your documents are useful for people with vision impairment, color blindness, and people who use screen readers. Some require technical know-how, but anyone could go mouseless or change the default font size and ask whether their page still works right.

If you start your classes with a review of the previous class, remember that "the person who does the work does the learning." Maybe that's an opportunity for a low-stakes oral presentation!

Interesting thoughts in this article (and in the comments section!) about how we present ourselves in the classroom. I was taken by the suggestion that trying on new teaching styles ought to require a serious reflection on what we're good at (or not yet good at) as teachers. Thoughts about the "teaching persona" over time, and across different classes, also seem important.

Big issues on this episode of the Digital Campus podcast. The MLA is opening a new repository for scholarship in the humanities. Would you be more likely to use it, or Digital Kenyon, to preserve and distribute your work? The AHA has issues some guidelines about assessing digital work in history; the panelists debate what they're good for and where they don't go far enough.

Big issues on this episode of the Digital Campus podcast. The MLA is opening a new repository for scholarship in the humanities. Would you be more likely to use it, or Digital Kenyon, to preserve and distribute your work? The AHA has issues some guidelines about assessing digital work in history; the panelists debate what they're good for and where they don't go far enough.

A fun podcast conversation with Todd Zakrajsek on the ways we can learn better by paying attention to what surprises or distracts us.