Center for Innovative Pedagogy

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.

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.

A study in the Journal of Experimental Psychology "found that after using a search engine, people were more confident in their ability to explain an unrelated topic." This poses an interesting question for the lit review component of research assignments - how do they affect students' self-perception of learning? What do you do to help students accurately assess their own ability to answer questions? Hat tip to Simon Garcia for the link.

Video is a powerful and increasingly common pedagogical tool - but what's the experience like for a student with a disability, or just one who forgot her headphones?

Our discussions about writing often come around to whether students actually read (and internalize) the comments. Sometimes we hear about students not knowing how to turn on Track Changes or the GradeMark panel in Turnitin, so at the most basic level electronic comments do introduce friction for some students. What do you think of the research project proposed here - do students actually approach electronic feedback differently?

Interesting example of games designed to provoke ethical discussions, and an example of how they can be used in class.

James Lang offers a set of strategies to get students to read the syllabus, and to actually internalize the information in it. I've recommended syllabus quizzes to many faculty members, but I'm intrigued by the way Lang suggests personalizing them with open-ended questions.

I'm actually a big fan of pop quizzes - I think they motivate students to keep up, and provide useful diagnostic information to the teacher. However, in-class quizzes chew up valuable face-to-face time, require manual grading (which slows their utility), and as this article points out, are deeply unfair to students with some disabilities. This article suggests other ways to hold a "pop quiz" which are equally accessible to all students (and potentially provide information faster to the faculty member). Hat tip to Erin Salva for the link.

A remarkably even-handed article which really does take the provocative title as a question. Design thinking might well provide a useful problem-solving mode for interdisciplinary efforts and curricular coherence.

An example assignment from the HASTAC Pedagogy Project suggests having students submit their bibliographies in process to peer review. Getting students to review one another's sources can help them think about their own, and breaking out the research step fights the tendency to write the whole paper at the last minute. (A similar collaborative feature is available in RefWorks, a web-based citation manager available through Kenyon LBIS.)

Students tend to hate cumulative exams - partly because they're harder (which is good and proper) and partly because they may not feel prepped for them. This article suggests some teaching strategies which you can use to help students integrate material across the semester.

What are your opinions on grading group work? How do you balance formative and summative comments, group and individual grades, your grading and intra-group feedback?

A list of six recent good books on teaching and learning. These are widely available in OhioLINK, and on the CIP bookcase.

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.

Interesting review of a new book on writing pedagogy. The central message of the book appears to be one which I've heard many Kenyon faculty members discuss - deliver only a few critical messages to a student per writing exercise, based on their current stage of writing development. There's a much better chance that the student will take those one or two lessons to heart than if they're hidden in feedback which bleeds red ink.

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.

Not only in science, but in all disciplines, we need to question the narratives about talent and moments of revelation and instead talk about hard, sustained work. How do you talk to students who are waiting, instead of working, for a subject to "click"?