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One of the most frequent questions faculty ask about the flipped classroom model is: "How do you encourage students to actually do the pre-class work and come to class prepared?" This is not really a new question for educators. We've always assigned some type of homework, and there have always been students who do not come to class ready to learn.

That work underscores the growing presence of universities and colleges as advertisers in the media. Their goals include selling themselves to prospective students and the parents of those students, seeking donations from alumni, recruiting faculty members and improving their standings in various surveys.

this is the faculty report thing we should sign up for

Although there's some disagreement as to whether distance education is more susceptible to academic dishonesty than other forms of instruction, what isn't up for debate is the fact that for as long as there's been exams, there's been cheating on exams. The online environment simply opens up a different set of challenges that aren't typically seen in traditional face-to-face courses.

"I once heard class discussions described as "transient instructional events." They pass through the class, the course, and the educational experiences of students with few lingering effects. Ideas are batted around, often with forced participation; students don't take notes; and then the discussion ends-it runs out of steam or the class runs out of time. If asked a few days later about the exchange, most students would be hard-pressed to remember anything beyond what they themselves might have said, if that. So this post offers some simple suggestions for increasing the impact of the discussions that occur in our courses."

"There's only one first day of class. Here are some ideas for taking advantage of opportunities that are not available in the same way on any other day of the course. "

the desire not to seem like a crank; misconceiving of the work of the university as "service" rather than governance; deciding to focus on your disciplinary colleagues elsewhere (or online) instead of your institution; a healthy human hatred of meetings-all of these add up to a sort of despair that the faculty can make a difference.

I've long said that professors who want to explore teaching with technology should begin with a social media tool rather than a Learning Management System. Web 2.0 tools are simple to use, invite student collaboration, and are usually less administratively clunky and complex than an LMS.One of the easiest and most powerful tools is the regular old wiki. Wikis are simply web pages that can be edited by their users. Instead of only carrying content from the administrator, they harness the power of crowdsourcing to create a powerful communal resource.

In this article, we have described an approach to teaching adolescent development through the use of popular film. We focus on The Breakfast Club, an extraordinarily rich and contemporary film, and highlight some of the many developmental issues portrayed. Although identity-formation and the role of the peer group are central, myriad other discussions can be generated from this film. Residents and faculty have enjoyed this approach to teaching and learning. In a future article, we will discuss the use of other films, such as Boyz in the Hood and The Wonder Years, to teach about other aspects of adolescent development.

A Graphic Syllabus Can Bring Clarity to Course Structure

"Students perform poorly in our courses for a variety of reasons. Here are some students you've likely encountered over the years, as well as a few ideas on the type of feedback that best helps them turn things around. "

Google Apps Education Edition is a broad IT solution that schools can use to bring communication and collaboration tools to the entire academic community for free. Google manages all the technology details, so you can focus your time, energy and budgets on teaching your kids. Students, teachers and staff can share ideas more quickly and get things done more effectively when they have access to the same powerful communication and sharing tools. Google Apps Education Edition lets tech administrators provide email, sharable online calendars, instant messaging tools and even a dedicated website to faculty, students and staff for free. There's no hardware or software to install or maintain, since everything is delivered through a standard web browser -- anytime, from anyplace.

Words Matter: "The process of having students engage in some activity that forces them to reflect upon ideas and how they are using those ideas. Requiring students to regularly assess their own degree of understanding and skill at handling concepts or problems in a particular discipline. The attainment of knowledge by participating or contributing. The process of keeping students mentally, and often physically, active in their learning through activities that involve them in gathering information, thinking and problem solving."

This has interesting points about active learning!

Conveniently, I was able to watch faculty from the Memorial University of Newfoundland present a study on Students' Perceptions of Effective Teaching in Higher Education at Wisconsin's 26th Annual Distance Teaching and Learning Conference. Researchers had asked their students this question: What characteristics are essential for effective teaching from the student perspective? Analyzing and combining reasonably synonymous characteristics, researchers isolated the top nine for online and for face-to-face students.

Essential characteristics for effective teaching from a student perspective!

Respect your students.