Center for Innovative Pedagogy

This video project includes faculty members from a variety of disciplines talking about the meaning of academic integrity, and the importance of citation and originality, in their fields. A very interesting example of talking to students about the positive side of academic honesty.

Distressing findings about the correlation between mindset and prejudice. "The more existing professors think some special talent, beyond intelligence and hard work, is required to do their subject well, the lower will be the percentage of PhD students in that subject who are women" or African American. (Hat tip to Alex Wirth-Cauchon, the CIO at Mt. Holyoke, for the link.)

Instructors of introductory science classes at Kenyon face the dual challenge of historically large class sizes and the nationally low number of minority and first-gen students completing science programs. This article reviews research that makes a strong case for active learning as a more effective way to engage students in larger classes and to significantly improve the performance of disadvantaged students in those classes.

For many of us, teaching will expand to fill the time available. This article includes tips for protecting and making best use of your writing time.

This site provides a simple template for re-building or re-designing a course that already exists, but it could be used to craft an entirely new course too. Technically this site is all about blended learning, but the steps are not meaningless if one is not blending. Go ahead and apply them to a more traditional pedagogical approach!

This excerpt from Dee Fink's book "Creating Significant Learning Experiences" argues for using both "scoreboards" - clear and reliable grading criteria - and "applause" - praise for accomplishments - to motivate students. I was particularly taken with the exercise at the end of the section in which students and a professor collaborate on a letter to thank the student's previous teacher for contributing to the student's development.

Students will ultimately perform better if we focus on effort and process (things which anyone can change) instead of talent and output (which can seem immutable).

When your colleagues and students Google you, do they find what you want them to find? This article points out that "If you don't manage your online presence, you are allowing search engines to create it for you." The laundry list of recommendations may seem daunting; remember that you could probably make good progress just by adopting a few of them.

This website offers a suite of online and offline (Excel) grade calculators. It can do calculations based on letter grades, which is a frequent request at the CIP!

This 2008 blog post from a mathematician at Dickinson College is the best summary of my thoughts on curving grades that I have ever come across. Other than the fact that there is more math in here, this is what I think of whenever my students ask me "Do you curve your exams?" Moreover, his discussion on assigning grades includes formulas that can be pasted into either Google Docs or Excel that will generate letter grades based on splits that you can set to your liking. (Note: I have my own blog post about this where I explain these formulas in a bit more detail. Just copy and paste the following link into your browser: https://cip.kenyon.edu/hells-bells-not-question-again-and-formulas-assigning-grades.)

A great set of resources on finding and effectively reading the scholarship of teaching and learning.

A fun and fascinating interactive activity that shows how small biases lead to substantial segregation. (Hat tip to Bob Milnikel for the link and annotation!)

It seems early for this, with a week of classes and a week of exams left to go, but perhaps these tasks are good mental breaks from all the grading. They also might form the technical side of good reflective practice.

While written primarily for a K-12 audience, this pamphlet includes good specific techniques for assisting a student suffering from concussion symptoms (including tips on recognizing students who might not have disclosed a problem to you).

Written for school teachers (as in grade school, middle school, etc.), this article is not 100% relevant to pedagogical discussions in higher ed. However, the article got me thinking about how I still learn; what gets me intellectually excited; and what diverts me away from other activities in the interest of pursuing an idea. Could I turn one of these instances into an example for my students in order to show them my thought processes and how I go about exploring new pedagogical possibilities? Just et al. (2014) (http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0102976) shook the biology/paleobiology world when the discovery of two strange deep-sea species hinted at the possibility of a new phylum. I spent hours reading various accounts of this discovery, including a number of trusted blogs. I compared the article's figures of these enigmatic organisms with other figures in old references I pulled old off my shelves. I referred to dusty old descriptive texts to refresh my memory of basic taxonomic classifications. I drew diagrams. Letting my students see this process could be beneficial. Developing a project that might force them to perform similar procedures and then defend their actions, might be difficult, but it could teach them quite a lot about how learning continues.

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/

"What is the intended learning goal for participation?" And how do students know what "good" participation looks like? By sharing a clear, positive ideal for class participation in rubric form, you can help students learn the social skills you're encouraging with a "class participation" grade.

In the summer of 2015, from July 26 to August 2, a partnership of 23 liberal arts institutions will host ILiADS, the Institute for Liberal Arts Digital Scholarship, at Hamilton College in Clinton, New York. ILiADS offers participants two ways to engage the community of liberal arts practitioners and pedagogues: a team- and project-based approach and a more traditional conference structure.

Greg Rosenbaum, K'10 and producer of the SXSWedu conference, used this Prezi during his talk at Kenyon next week. (The video will be on the CIP's YouTube channel soon.) It's a good outline of the many factors we're juggling in education; it's also a fine example of the way Prezi can make the structure of an argument apparent.

An interesting page of resources from DePaul, mixing resources for health and counseling with some classroom approaches which can help students process the learning components of their late-semester stress.