blog posts

• Students as Forgotten Allies in Preventing Cheating

  Mar 29, 2018 8:00 am

  Faculty are pretty much focused on preventative measures, which are essential, but there are a couple of other issues rarely mentioned in the literature or in our discussions. Students who don’t cheat usually aren’t on our side when it comes to enforcing cheating policies. In one study, almost 93% of the students said they had witnessed another student cheat, but only 4.4% said they had ever reported a cheating incident (Bernardi, et. al., 2016) Students are in a bind—they don’t want to rat out fellow classmates, some of whom may be friends. If they do and word gets out, they are labeled as “snitches” and “tattletales” — told to mind their own business and otherwise berated. With serious social consequences like these, it takes real courage to do the right thing.

• Cheating and Plagiarism on the Rise?

  Mar 29, 2018 8:00 am

  Cheating and plagiarism have received considerable press nationally, with many colleges and universities reporting that breaches of academic integrity are increasing every year. Unfortunately, we do not have accurate numbers as many faculty members may choose not report incidents to their departments, but what is known is there is an increase in sophisticated and premediated methods of cheating and plagiarism.  To discourage cheating, there are a number of strategies that you can implement.

• Learning Fundamental Principles, Generalizations, or Theories

  Mar 6, 2018 8:45 am

  How can we improve our students comprehension of basic principle? How can students show they "comprehend" a principle, generalization or theory? Bloom talks about three ways: 1) Translation: restate the principles, generalization or theory in their own words, b) Interpretation: involve the student's recognition that the communication is describing the operation of a principle, c) Extrapolation: making of predictions based on understanding of the trends, tendencies or conditions described in the communication. This article describes the teaching strategies to promote these levels of understanding, along with ways to assess their understanding.  

• Teaching Students Specific Skills

  Mar 6, 2018 8:45 am

  Sometime it is important to teach students how to do something, not something abstract like thinking, but how to execute some observable skill, such as starting an IV, writing code, or wiring a circuit. Teaching skills, much like teaching in general, shares certain similarities that are relevant across a variety of degree programs. It’s good to review these and use them to take stock of how we can better help students learn specific skills. This article describes some of those assumptions about how learners can master skills. 

• Harness the Power of Emotions to Help Your Students Learn

  Feb 15, 2018 9:30 am

  Have you thought about emotional presence in our online and face-to-face classes? There seems to be an enduring sense that emotions have no place in the lofty halls of academia. Our pursuit of knowledge should be rational, detached, unaffected by such trivialities as our emotions. But I don’t think that’s right. Our emotions are a central part of our humanity. To deny them is to deny the essence of who we are. In fact, not only should we not try to separate emotional responses from learning, but we can’t, according to recent neuroscience research.  Here are some ideas drawn from this article and the book “The Spark of Learning: Energizing the College Classroom with the Science of Emotion” by S. Cavanagh.

• Active Learning Strategies in Face-to-Face (and Online) Courses

  Feb 15, 2018 9:15 am

  As numerous research studies suggest, teachers who desire increased student learning should adopt active learning. This article explores the research, defines active learning, discusses its value, offers suggestions for implementing it, and provides six concrete examples of active learning approaches: Thinking-Aloud Pair Problem-Solving; Three-Step Interview; Think-Pair-Share; Visible Quiz; Value Line; and Send/Pass-a-Problem. Here are the descriptions for these strategies and more.

• Can Anything be Done about Students Multitasking?

  Jan 31, 2018 12:15 pm

  The amount of multitasking students do during class and while studying is alarming. Consistently, in response to surveys, more than 85% of students say they have their phones on in class, are looking at texts as they come in and during class, and between 70 and 90% say they respond to texts in class. And this is happening in courses with policies that prohibit or significantly curtail the use of electronic devices. What we’re seeing in class also happens when students study outside of class. There it is most often a case of task switching (toggling between separate tasks, attending to each independently for a short period of time). This article reviews some of the research findings on reducing students’ multitasking.

• Students’ Definitions of the College Classroom

  Jan 31, 2018 12:15 pm

  How participants in an interaction define a situation will determine what behaviors they see as appropriate for that context (Goffman 1959; McHugh 1968). The college classroom is no exception. Students’ satisfaction with a course and their willingness to engage in certain activities will depend in part on how well the instructor’s definition of what is and ought to be happening in the classroom aligns with their own. An important part of the process is defining the roles, the expectations for behavior, of both the instructor and students. This posting looks at how students define their own and the instructor’s responsibilities in class and what impact this has on student learning.

• Don't Be Alone during Office Hours

  Jan 3, 2018 3:30 pm

  As part of a series on creating conditions for student success, there was a student panel addressing a group of faculty about their experiences thus far at Berkeley. The students talked about their favorite classes, what made them so valuable, and what their professors had done to engage them so effectively in learning. When one faculty member brought up the topic of office hours, the students became relatively silent. When asked how many on the panel had gone to office hours, none raised their hand. It was surprising in some ways to hear about so many transformative experiences that all centered around student-faculty interaction, yet an opportunity like office hours was not being capitalized upon. Why not? Heading into a new semester is a good time to give some consideration to how you can increase the use and effectiveness of your office hours - for your students, and for you. 

• Students and instructors have different expectations about classroom etiquette

  Jan 3, 2018 3:30 pm

  While some behaviors would be considered rude and offensive in any context, others are a matter of individual interpretation. For example, some instructors are bothered if students wear hats, eat in class, slouch, etc. while others are not. Moreover, what is considered appropriate (or rude) classroom behavior can vary strikingly from one culture to another. For example, members of one culture might be comfortable addressing professors by first name, while members of another find this disrespectful. Finally, standards of courtesy vary from discipline to discipline and department to department. To complicate matters further, even in the context of a single class the boundary between appropriate and inappropriate behavior can be subtle and difficult to navigate. Here are some strategies in navigating diverse expectations.