Center for Innovative Pedagogy

Not every word of this article applies to Kenyon, and but there is a lot of good advice. We could generate a related set of suggestions by pondering what to do in case Moodle is up but there's an extended power outage in your classroom, office, and/or home.

Billed as the first peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the writing (and sharing) of excellent syllabi, this is an interesting approach to the teaching commons. Is this a viable approach to the twin problems that many syllabi have moved off professors' web pages and into the Learning Management System (a.k.a. Moodle), and that those syllabi which are on the web haven't been peer reviewed?

Short, accessible articles summarizing literature and best practices around student course evaluations.

This podcast about under-prepared students touches on the reasons we see more of them in higher education nationally, and various teaching techniques which can help students succeed.

A step-by-step guide to structure thinking about the use of electronic portfolios of student work.

Covers the adoption of clickers for instant feedback in a broad range of venues, including such diverse places as fire departments, churches, cruise ships and schools. 

A good introduction to Weiman's approach to improving science education. In spite of the title, the lack of scientific rigor in his presentation might bother some of you (especially initially). However, stick it out until the fourth page, and your patience will be rewarded.

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).

At the recent NITLE Symposium, Dan Cohen criticized the fact that the average academic conference is a "lean back" experience (i.e. sit back in your chair and let the information wash over you) as opposed to a "lean forward" experience (i.e. be on the edge of your chair, interacting with the speaker and other attendees). This post takes musician Bobby McFerrin as an example of a speaker who can get an audience to "lean forward." Given that McFerrin's specific decisions are most appropriate to the performing arts, what could we learn (and teach students) about the principles which this author draws out of his technique?

The specific rules presented here are most applicable to K-12 institutions. Still, it's an interesting example of the kind of thinking involved for anyone's social media presence.

Lots of people at Kenyon use Word's Track Changes or Turnitin's GradeMark. This post talks about ways to attach verbal comments to a document. (This idea is used by some language profs, as a way to get students some listening practice at the same time they're working on a written project.)

Seth Godin turns his attention to the purposes of education, and whether we are preparing the learners which our society and economy need. It's a dense "manifesto", but there are important considerations in it.

Shelly Wright argues that Bloom's taxonomy of learning domains is most effective when considered in reverse order.

An interesting take on a "course evaluation" form, with extensive supporting research.

The judge's decision in the copyright suit by publishers against Georgia State University has significant areas which need clarification, and it uses a mechanical principle for determining the amount of a work which can be copied as fair use, but it is generally a pro-education ruling. Of course, it will probably be appealed.

This infographic presents a brief selection of questions to stimulate critical thinking in students. It can provide a starting point for discussions of applying the skills of academic inquiry to real world situations or a reference for explaining the value of higher education to non-academics.

Clara Román-Odio's reflections on her project Latinos in Rural America is the article of the week at the GLCA Consortium for Teaching and Learning website.

This article breaks down employers' complaints about "skills gaps" in college graduates, begins to draw some boundaries between the complaints that are relevant to higher education and those that are not, and offers some suggestions for helping liberal arts students to demonstrate the broader skills they have developed in the classroom over the course of their education.

The AAUP has published some guidelines for understanding what is and is not protected classroom speech when addressing political issues and student comments.

A diverse group of students from several Portland students joined together in a community problem solving initiative. Here, they share some of their experiences and the factors that helped them to succeed.