CTLT and Friends

Like many of the conversations we have here at HASTAC, this project focuses on learning through collaboration, experimentation, and pleasure. For example, rather than applications or tools, each program is called an activity and runs at full-screen, two design choices that derive from this pedagogical orientation. Collaboration is also assumed by the OS; you can invite friends to just about any activity (like writing, painting, web browsing), and everyone who joins will see the same thing.

without measures of learning—education’s primary bottom line—there can be no real market discipline.

Instead, colleges can raise prices with relative impunity— and spend the extra money on everything but their students’ education. They can compete for fame and glory and stick students with the bill.

At an alternative high school in Newark, students will make presentations instead of taking tests and receive written progress reports instead of grades. They will use few textbooks and divide their school weeks between the classroom and an internship,

September 2, 2009 Assumptions about Setting the Right Classroom Climate By: Maryellen Weimer in Effective Classroom Management   SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: "Assumptions about Setting the Right Classroom Climate", url: "http://www.facultyfocus.com/articles/effective-classroom-management/assumptions-about-setting-the-right-classroom-climate/" });ShareThis For quite some time now I’ve been interested in a widely held set of assumptions faculty make about the need to assert control at the beginning of a course. The argument goes something like this: When a course starts, the teacher needs to set the rules and clearly establish who’s in charge. If the course goes well, meaning students abide by the rules and do not challenge the teacher’s authority, then the teacher can gradually ease up and be a bit looser about the rules.

If all potential challenges to authority are headed off at the pass, then the teacher can devote full attention to the content, and isn’t that where the teacher’s expertise really shines? And so the classroom becomes a place that showcases teaching more than learning? My suspicion is that most teachers overreact to potential threats.

Doctoral Students Think Teaching Assistantships Hold Them Back By Peter Schmidt A new survey of recent Ph.D. recipients has found that more than four out of five of those who received paid teaching assistantships believe that having them prolonged their doctoral education, though not enough to keep them from completing the programs in a timely manner.

I have found that faculty members sometimes conflate quiet compliance with proficiency. That sends the message to students—female students in particular—that the path to success is acquiescence rather than achievement.

I have found that faculty members sometimes conflate quiet compliance with proficiency. That sends the message to students—female students in particular—that the path to success is acquiescence rather than achievement.

aculty duties and expectations have diversified and become more complex, but there clearly has not been a concomitant change in the traditional expectations for faculty performance.To take one example: at many institutions, assessment programs have added substantial burdens to faculty members, who must both plan and execute them. I suspect, though I do not know, that such additional burdens are heavier at teaching-oriented colleges and universities that also have higher standard teaching loads than more research-oriented institutions. There's also increased pressure on faculty members to involve undergraduate students in research, an initiative that takes various forms at various institutions but that is prevalent across institutional types.

One-hundred forty-six assessment examples were sent to us, and we used all of those in one way or another in the book. I think it’s a pretty fair sample of what’s going on in higher education assessment. Yet most of the programs that we looked at had only been underway for two, three, or four years. When we asked what the long-term impact of doing assessment and using the findings to improve programs had been, in only six percent of the cases were the authors able to say that student learning had been improved.