Center for Innovative Pedagogy

Good list of formal practices for classroom discussion which can get students more organized and more broadly participating in class. I was particularly taken with the URL for this page, which calls them "speaking-listening techniques".

Some interesting ideas for first day of class activities here. I was particularly taken by the "syllabus scavenger hunt" in which students are asked to list their big questions about the course and find the answers in the syllabus (or start a conversation about why they aren't there).

Good advice for advisees, colleagues, and ourselves. We talk about resilience as the process of stopping, assessing, and making a new plan - but remember that the first step really is stopping long enough to rest.

In this article, Annelise Heinz looks at ways you can use reflection, student self-reflection, and experimentation to evaluate and enrich your teaching.

As we prepare to welcome new colleagues and students, remember that even the simple gesture of showing that you're working hard to learn a person's preferred name makes a big difference.

Might be some interesting questions for advisees or majors (or colleagues or yourself) in this podcast. What did you reflect on this summer? In between courses, can you see how they relate?

The author argues that classics professors in higher ed are very productively engaged with their high school counterparts. Can that model be spread to other disciplines?

The author's review of the readership statistics for his own papers has some implications for both open access and information literacy instruction.

"Faced with the question - How much reading should we assign? - I think most instructors would agree that the best answer is: "It depends."" One way to break the tyranny of "coverage" is to deeply consider your goals for how students will make meaning with the reading you assign.

Interesting calculator for estimating the amount of time your assigned work may be taking your students, with a review of the supporting research. How does this match your assumptions and expectations?

"What if you decided that difficult times call for radical self-care? In other words, start with a basic assumption that your health is your top priority. Without it, nothing else is possible." Kerry Ann Rockquemore offers suggestions for maintaining your health in times of crisis.

Good mix of practical tips for managing your grading and pedagogical tips for helping students learn to do college-level writing.

I hear a lot of concern about our students being "fragile", and there's a lot of good effort put into helping them learn to "cope." But what are the things which we could change - in our classrooms, in our campus culture - to promote good mental health?

How could research on the psychology of cheating impact our discussions about academic honesty?

The authors describe ways in which design thinking gives students a chance to practice interdisciplinarity and engage with big questions. What if students were encouraged to bring those skills to bear on campus issues?

A new resource from Tulane University gives design tips for making syllabi more accessible and engaging. "Countless instructors complain that students don't read the syllabus. We believe students would use the document more effectively if it were designed more accessibly."

We spend a lot of time thinking about how to make course material "interesting" - what if we spent some of that time looking for ways to make it "affective"?

This is described as "a work in progress" and "current status: brain dump" (6/24 3PM), and as such there are a couple head-scratchers on this reading list. At the same time, it's a fascinating example of digital collaboration as teachers work toward classroom discussions of current events.

NPR's new podcast Code Switch examines whiteness and the way the concept is taught by colleagues at Clemson and Beloit. Well worth a listen.

Do you allow rewrites or makeup exams? David Gooblar argues that these can be important opportunities for students to learn from their errors. (Also some good examples, alternatives, and disagreements in the comments.)