Teaching Strategy Resource Shelf

Three Active Learning Strategies to Push Students Beyond Memorization. Many students come to us having achieved academic success by memorizing the content, regurgitating that information onto an exam, and promptly forgetting a good portion of it. New material builds upon the material from the previous semesters, it is critical for students to retain what they learn throughout their coursework and as they begin their careers. Here is a description about the strategies and how to implement them.

(from Faculty Focus). Supporting Struggling Students Through Collaborative Problem Solving. Every semester faculty are faced with students who struggle with completing assignments, understanding the content, or just find it difficult to participate in class activities and discussions. For many, these struggles are connected to low grades, negative perceptions of the instructor and class, increased absences, and indicative of a general lack of engagement.  It is not uncommon for faculty to misinterpret these students as lazy, unmotivated, or just unprepared to do college-level work.  Faculty regularly reach out to assist, but some students are put into the university machinery of “student support,” where their worlds become more complex with emails connecting them to support services like tutoring and counseling, or notifying them that they are in danger of failing or not passing a course. Although this outreach is intended to motivate and help, there is a very real cognitive and emotional load that can be demoralizing if not debilitating. This is complicated, if not impossible terrain to navigate for all of us who genuinely want to see students succeed. Greene (2009) developed a framework for collaborative problem solving as a way to organize, support, and deeply engage students in identifying realistic ways to get back on track and succeed within the classroom. This framework has three steps that can be applied across multiple modalities.  All three steps are based on the fact that we are not merely disseminating information, but teaching human beings to think through content to build disciplinary skills, insights, and understanding. 

(from Stanford University - Tomorrow's Professor's Postings). Creating Engaging Assignments. For many years, teachers have focused on the importance of engaging students deeply in their work since we know that effort and motivation are central to learning. Here are three case studies of course assignments that led to significant engagement by students: student choice, high-stakes assignments (e.g., presenting for an external audience), and using drama as a teaching tool. Similar assignments could be incorporated, with appropriate adaptations, in many other contexts.

Establishing Rapport and Why It Matters.  It cannot be underestimated how important establishing rapport is in effective teaching and learning. Connections with students play a role in student participation, effort, and engagement with the content. Ways to build rapport and respect for your students are providing praise, nodding and smiling, using their names, and identifying prior knowledge. Additional strategies such as helping students answer their own questions are quite effective in creating rapport, while enhancing learning.

First Impressions: Activities for the First Day of Class. The old expression that you never have a second chance to make a first impression is certainly true in the classroom. Early in my career, I tried several first-day-of-class strategies, ranging from briefly introducing the course and dismissing students early to spending the entire time reviewing policies and procedures, but I began to feel that I was missing an important opportunity. Students are never more attentive than they are on the first day of class, when they’re eager to determine what kind of professor they’re dealing with, and although it is tempting to delay the real work of teaching and learning until the class list has stabilized, it can be difficult to change even the subtle norms that are established during this initial class. Here are some easy to implement strategies.

How Good Are Your Discussion Facilitation Skills? Successfully leading and guiding student discussions requires a range of fairly sophisticated communication skills. At the same time teachers are monitoring what’s being said about the content, they must keep track of the discussion itself. Is it on topic? How many students want to speak? Who’s already spoken and wants to speak again? How many aren’t listening? Is it time to move to a different topic? What’s the thinking behind that student question? How might the discussion be wrapped up?  Most of us are not trained discussion facilitators.  Here is an empirically developed instrument that can be used to more clearly identify the various skills involved in effective discussion facilitation and to gather student feedback that can help you assess yours. 

Test Anxiety: Causes and Remedies. There hasn’t been a lot written recently about test anxiety, but that doesn’t mean it’s no longer an issue for a significant number of students. Those of us who don’t suffer from test anxiety—and I’m betting that’s most faculty—can find it hard to be sympathetic. Life is full of tests, and students need to get over it. Besides, if students have studied and prepared, there’s no reason for them to feel excessively anxious about a test. Perhaps we should start by reestablishing that test anxiety is a legitimate problem. A significant amount of research says that it can affect students in kindergarten right on up through college and graduate school.  Teachers can’t cure test anxiety. But they can offer remedies that students should be encouraged to try. Information about good study strategies should be included in every course.

(from Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching). A Mountain of Grading. Now that the final exams are almost over, do you find yourself facing a large mountain of grading? And, perhaps, you wonder if you are spending more time grading than your students spent completing that assignment?  Consider the notion of “light grading” where you limit your comments or notations to those your students can use for further learning or improvement.  Here are some suggestions on how to do that.

(From Inside Higher Ed). Remotely Hands-On: Teaching lab sciences and the fine arts during COVID-19. This is the COVID-19 era, in which instructors who teach fundamentally hands-on courses across fields are finding ways to make remote learning work. McGreal stated, “it’s an exciting chance for us to do some things for an online format that will make our face-to-face classes better than ever before.” Take ice carving. McGreal plans to save the videos he’s made of fish and swan carvings for his students this semester and share them with his classes going forward. That way, he said, students can watch the videos in advance of class and be more prepared to attempt their own sculptures when they meet. “They’re coming into our worlds now instead of a steel, sterile classroom, and it makes you feel more comfortable.”  For STEM: Michelle Stocker, assistant professor of geobiology at Virginia Tech, agreed that “for this semester we can make it work. I wouldn’t necessarily say we like doing this at all, though.” The upper-level course is designed to be challenging and extremely hands-on, with students handling skeletal materials for 2.5 hours at a time. Students can’t interact with the materials as they can in the lab. So Stocker asks them to interact with each other more. Students are encouraged to virtually share bones they found on COVID-19-safe walks in the woods, for example, and the class works to identify the animal and what might have happened to it.  Here is additional information for simulations and the arts.

Informal Early Feedback (IEF): A Valuable Opportunity for Just-in-Time Feedback.  Student evaluations of teaching are an important part of the feedback that instructors receive. This feedback can be especially helpful when it is collected midway in the semester. Our students can tell us if we explain clearly, are well-organized, grade fairly, and more. They may also be able to tell us if the activities we give them are well aligned with the ways we evaluate their learning. Responding to students’ comments by discussing them in class, and making changes as appropriate, can lead to increased motivation, better learning, and possibly improved end-of-semester student ratings. Here is a description of the process and sample forms for you to adapt.  Also, CITL is offering two workshops this week and next to help you design your own IEF forms. Here is the information about the workshops.

Study Strategies for a Test. Many courses have already administered quizzes and/or exams.  Often our students over-estimate or underestimate their knowledge and skills.  Also, are your students maximizing their efforts in studying for an exam?  Here is a checklist to share with your students to help them in their preparation.

(from Vanderbilt University and University of Illinois teaching centers). An Effective Syllabus to Reflect Your Course Design. A syllabus serves many functions in a class. In The Course Syllabus: A Learning Centered Approach (2008, 2nd Ed.) Judith Grunert O’Brien, Barbara J. Millis and Margaret W. Cohen identify at least sixteen elements of a learner-centered syllabus. First: a good syllabus relies on thoughtful course design. The strongest syllabi are built on a solid foundation of course design. Here are some steps to create an effective syllabus. In addition, please check out our Center for Innovation in Teaching & Learning page on syllabus design.

The Need for Balanced Feedback. In the online class environment, students enjoy many advantages, such as increased scheduling flexibility, ability to balance work and school, classroom portability, and convenience. But there are potential shortcomings as well, including the lack of student-instructor interaction and a student not understanding the instructor’s expectations. A key mechanism to convey expectations while increasing student-instructor communication is relevant, timely, constructive, and balanced instructor feedback.

Three Ways to Ask Better Questions in the Classroom. I’ve been doing some presentations on classroom interaction and thinking yet again about how we could do better with our questions — the ones we ask in class or online. Good questions make students think, they encourage participation and I think they improve the caliber of the answers students give and the questions they ask. To achieve those worthwhile outcomes more regularly, I’d like to recommend three actions that have the potential to improve our questioning: prepare questions, play with questions, and preserve good questions.

(from Berkeley University Center for Teaching & Learning). Last Day of Class. Make the last day count. Too often, the last day of a class can be taken up with housekeeping-information on the final, last minute details, and course evaluations. But as Richard Lyons, author of several books on college teaching says, "the final class is a key student retention milepost." Some suggestions are: “Thank the class” (where one professor says,  "I take some time to thank the students for their part in the course and to tell them what they did to make my job easier (e.g. worked hard, asked questions, were cheerful, etc.) and “Students' concluding remarks” (after providing your own remarks, ask for theirs). Here is a potpourri of ideas from Berkeley faculty.

Informal Early Feedback (IEF): A Valuable Opportunity for Just-in-Time Feedback.  Student evaluations of teaching are an important part of the feedback that instructors receive. This feedback can be especially helpful when it is collected midway in the semester. Our students can tell us if we explain clearly, are well-organized, grade fairly, and more. They may also be able to tell us if the activities we give them are well aligned with the ways we evaluate their learning. Responding to students’ comments by discussing them in class, and making changes as appropriate, can lead to increased motivation, better learning, and possibly improved end-of-semester student ratings. Here is a description of the process and sample forms for you to adapt. Also, CITL is offering two workshops next week (Feb. 4th and 6th) to help you design your own IEF form.

(from Faculty Focus). Starter Activities to Begin Any Class.  What can you implement in your classes that can review content, establish a foundation for the day’s topic, encourage student participation, and get students prepared for the day’s activities?  Whether you call them starter activities, bell work, or focusing activities, a predictable, formatted, content-based beginning of class activity can be used to achieve these goals.  Beginning of class activities have previously been used to gain student attention, provide accountability, review material, engage with new content, or establish routines. To gain students’ attention, class might begin by using multi-media, hands-on activities, surprising events, humor, or appealing to students’ emotions (Davis, 2009). Or class might start with a repeating set of slides, asking students to sequence steps or sketch a content-related drawing (Honeycutt, 2019). Here are some suggestions. 

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.

Classroom Assessment Techniques (CATs). Classroom Assessment Techniques are generally simple, non-graded, anonymous, in-class activities designed to give you and your students useful feedback on the teaching-learning process as it is happening. CATs can be used to improve the teaching and learning that occurs in a class. Results from CATs can guide teachers in fine-tuning their teaching strategies to better meet student needs. Here are 2 sources that provide examples of CATs techniques that one can easily implement in their teaching.

At the end of the semester it can be valuable to take a few moments and reflect on what went well in your courses, and what you might want to change the next time you teach them. One source of information is the student evaluations of teaching, available to you after you submit your final grades.

(from R. Brent and R. Felder at NC State Univ). Want Your Students to Think Creative and Critically? How about Teaching Them? Two popular targets on the list of Things These Students Can’t Do are creative thinking (coming up with innovative ideas) and critical thinking (making judgments or choices and backing them up with evidence and logic). When our colleagues complain to us that their students can’t do them, after we make appropriate sympathetic noises we ask, “Where were they supposed to learn to do it?” The answers may vary, but one we rarely hear is “In my class.” Through a lot of practice and feedback is how you acquired your skills. You were either given or voluntarily took on tasks, and with someone else’s help or on your own you learned how to do them. The more you did them, the better you got. Unfortunately, creative and critical thinking are not routinely taught in our schools, nor are they activities that students eagerly learn on their own. It shouldn’t surprise us when our students can’t magically do them on our assignments and exams.

(From Boise State University teaching center).Teaching Higher Levels of Learning at the End of the Semester. Towards the end of the semester, students and instructors alike are often worn out and tempted to take one of two avenues: 1) They may be enticed to turn on cruise control, check out mentally, and start winter break a few weeks early. This first option may be particularly attractive when final class sessions are devoted to student presentations or 2) Students and instructors may be enticed to shift into high gear, to overwork and cram as much as possible. This second option lures students who have been slacking and instructors who have fallen behind schedule. Cramming helps no one.  Here are some effective strategies to implement.

The last few days of a course are often hectic for both teachers and students, and it is easy to miss out on a final few chances to wrap up the learning that has occurred throughout the semester. As Maier and Panitz (1996) note, ending a course with only a final exam often leaves students with a feeling of dread or inadequacy, rather than with a sense of accomplishment. A better goal for teachers is to help our students leave the course with a solid idea of what they have learned and how they can carry that new knowledge and skill base into future experiences. Here are a few ideas of how you can end your semester in a meaningful way.

Ideas to Create a Welcoming, Engaging and Inclusive Classroom. The teaching-learning process is an inherently social act. Throughout the learning process students interact with the instructor, their peers and the course content, often simultaneously in a classroom setting. All of these interactions help shape their success in the course. Instructors can support student success by being mindful of the social and emotional dynamics in their course and ensuring the learning environment is one that is welcoming, engaging, and inclusive. In preparing to teach a course, consider specific actions you might take to create a positive learning experience. It can be small simple things, or more involved and mindful actions you take throughout the semester.

(from Carnegie Mellon University Eberly Center). Classroom Climate: Creating a Supportive Classroom Environment. Why is classroom climate Important? The teaching-learning process is an inherently social act, and as instructors we need to be mindful of the quality of the social and emotional dynamics in our course, because they impact learning and performance. In fact, a well-established body of research has documented the effects of a “chilly classroom climate” on some students or groups of students, in particular women and other minorities (Hall, 1982).  For example, climate regulates the circulation and construction of knowledge and engenders emotions that impact learning, among other areas. 

(from Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching Excellence). Increasing Inclusivity in the Classroom. Drawing from the literature on inclusive teaching in higher education, the first section in this teaching guide considers the importance of increasing inclusivity and is framed by two overarching issues. The first issue is that of student belonging in their classrooms and in the broader campus culture. Most students struggle to transition into college, but students of less privileged and more marginal backgrounds face even greater challenges as they enter what they can perceive to be an unwelcoming or even hostile environment (Carter, Locks, Winkle-Wagner, & Pineda, 2006; Kalsner & Pistole, 2003). To help students overcome challenges integrating into college life, teachers can work to cultivate a sense of belonging among their students. Section Two of this teaching guide provides resources for teachers to increase the sense of belonging in their classrooms.

The goals of this teaching guide are threefold: 1) to discuss the importance of inclusivity in the classroom, 2) to present examples of teaching more inclusively, and 3) to provide additional resources for further guidance.

What’s an Empowered Student? When students are empowered, they learn more and learn better. Some things that instructors can do are to provide accurate descriptions of those actions learners must take in order to succeed. Create authentic assignments and delineate the tasks and steps to achieve and support student efforts through coaching. In this article, Weimer provides more strategies. 

(from Faculty Focus). Is My Teaching Learner-Centered? It’s hard to say—we have no definitive measures of learner-centeredness or even mutually agreed upon definitions. And yet, when we talk about it, there’s an assumption that we all understand the reference.

My friend Linda recently gave me a beautifully illustrated children’s book that contains nothing but questions. It reminded me how good questions, like beams of light, cut through the fog and illuminate what was once obscured. And so, to help us further explore and understand what it means to be learner-centered, I’ve generated a set of questions. For the record, these questions were not empirically developed, and they haven’t been validated in any systematic way. However, they do reflect the characteristics regularly associated with learner-centered teaching.  Questions like these can be useful in helping us to confront how we teach. They produce the most insights when asked sincerely and answered honestly. For most of us, there’s a gap between how we aspire to teach and how we actually teach. Given the less-than-objective view we have of ourselves as teachers, it’s easy to conflate aspirations with actualities. 

A syllabus is more than a contract... “Whether it is intended or not, the quality of the syllabus is a fairly reliable indicator of the quality of teaching and learning that will take place in a course.” (Woolcock, 2003).  How does your syllabus rate? Read this article to learn more about constructing your course and its syllabus. 

Increase Student Learning in Only 3 Seconds. I credit my husband as the inspiration for this article. He is a writing professor who is exceptionally good at waiting. He has a unique ability (and probably disturbing to some) to ask his students a question and then wait…wait through the awkward silence, wait through the students’ sideways glances and shifting in desk chairs until a brave student decides to volunteer and answer his question. His willingness to wait inspires me and has challenged me to use this technique with my own students. Interestingly, there is a lot of research on teacher’s use of waiting in the classroom and the positive effects it can have for student engagement and learning. The best news of all? Improving student learning only takes 3 seconds.

Is Your Syllabus a Boring One or a Promising One?  Rather than read aloud your syllabus on the first day, how do you lively up a boring syllabus?  Clip art? More jokes? Perhaps even just one joke? A better method would be to adopt the idea of the "promising syllabus," a concept developed by Ken Bain, whose book (What the Best College Teachers Do, 2004). He doesn't claim to have originated the idea of the promising syllabus -- he discovered it, he said, from his review of the syllabi of outstanding college and university teachers, in which he found a common approach and some common features. "The promising syllabus," Bain wrote via e-mail, "fundamentally recognizes that people will learn best and most deeply when they have a strong sense of control over their own education rather than feeling manipulated by someone else's demands." A promising syllabus contains three key components.

Five Ways to Promote Student Autonomy in Online Discussions. “Write an initial post and then reply to two of your classmates.” These are the standard requirements for students participating in online course discussions. Discussions in an online course play a vital role in creating substantive interactions, aiming to capture the spirit of discourse in face-to-face settings. This, however, can look and feel like busy work, making the purpose of online discussions unclear to students.  The standard blueprint is safe but has been exhausted. “Initial posts” can be counterintuitive—in essence, they require students to complete small writing assignments individually before giving other students feedback on their work (Liberman, 2019). How can we think outside of the box of posting and replying when it comes to these discussions? One way is to use online discussions as an opportunity to promote student autonomy and ask students to be active participants not only in how they respond to class discussions, but how they initiate them. Here are five considerations for promoting student autonomy while also breaking the online discussion mold.

(from Georgetown University The Teaching Commons). Ending the Semester. A semester is a marathon effort, and, by the time you reach the end of it, it’s quite possible that everyone—you and the students both—will be exhausted, and perhaps very ready to leave the course behind. But one last thoughtful push can ensure that the course’s conclusion is meaningful in its own right. Think about a) looking back, b) gathering feedback, and c) looking forward regarding this semester's courses. 

Three Ways to Engage Students In and Outside the Classroom. When students become directly engaged in the learning process, they take ownership of their education. The following learning activities have helped me to engage students in and outside the classroom. The strategies also help keep my teaching relevant, fresh, and creative. They are: a) get real, b) see a show, and c) breathe fire.

About a third of the students who started college in 2009 have since dropped out, joining the millions of young adults who never entered college in the first place. Several years into a massive push by both the federal government and states to increase postsecondary graduation rates, education policymakers across the country are asking what else they can do to get more students to and through college. There’s one seemingly simple solution according to David Yeager, an assistant professor of psychology at the University of Texas at Austin: Tell students they belong in higher education. However, they caution, the oft-used term growth mindset – the self-belief that a student’s abilities can grow through hard work and effort – doesn’t mean just praising kids for trying. Here is a description of the important student toolkit that focuses on qualities like grit, persistence, and learning from mistakes.

(from Faculty focus). Could Your Assignments Use a Tune-Up?  How do students think about assignments? A lot never get past the idea that they’re basically unpleasant things faculty make them do. What does interest a lot of students is finding out what the teacher wants in the assignment, not so much what the assignments asks but more seeking insight as to what the teacher “likes.” Discover that and there’s a better chance of a good grade, or so the thinking goes. Unfortunately, very few students look at an assignment and think, now there’s an interesting learning opportunity. And how do faculty think about assignments? With multiple courses and lots of other work besides, with each new assignment developed there’s a tendency to first consider the amount of grading that will come with it. Assignments are what students ride on their way to learning. Our responsibility is to provide good vehicle maintenance and recognition when it’s time for a trade-in. 

Courses That Are Hard, but Not Too Hard. Finding the Sweet Spot. Courses need to be challenging, but when they become too hard, students stop trying and little learning results. So how do we find that sweet spot between hard and not too hard? More importantly, how do we create that sweet spot in our own courses through the decisions we make about content, assignments, and exams? Finding that perfect balance is not particularly easy or straightforward. Based on research, students do not prefer easy courses, but ones that are “Challenging”, but not “too difficult.” Here are some ways in which to find the line of demarcation of hard and not too hard.

Active Learning for the College Classroom. The past decade has seen an explosion of interest among college faculty in the teaching methods variously grouped under the terms 'active learning' and 'cooperative learning'. The majority of all college faculty still teach their classes in the traditional lecture mode. Some of the criticism and hesitation seems to originate in the idea that techniques of active and cooperative learning are genuine alternatives to, rather than enhancements of, professors' lectures. We provide below a survey of a wide variety of active learning techniques which can be used to supplement rather than replace lectures. We are not advocating complete abandonment of lecturing; the lecture is a very efficient way to present information but use of the lecture as the only mode of instruction presents problems for both the instructor and the students. There is a large amount of research attesting to the benefits of active learning.

Test Construction: Some Practical Ideas.  Majority of our courses include some kind of final exam.  This guide from the University of Texas at Austin presents a very thorough method for constructing tests that accurately assess students' learning.  Here is the guide.

As the semester is coming to a close, when all is still fresh in your mind, it’s the perfect time to review, reevaluate, renew, and recycle. Here is a short checklist of things you can do now to make things easier, more efficient, and more productive next semester; e.g., review your syllabus, update your lesson plans and review your assignments and exams.

Getting Students to Act on Our Feedback. “I’m still pondering why students don’t make better use of the feedback we provide on papers, projects, presentations, even the whole class feedback we offer after we’ve graded a set of exams. Yes, we do see improvement as we look back across a course, but we also see a lot of the same errors repeated throughout the course.”  Learn how to improve your comments to help your students develop an action plan based on your feedback for the next assignment.

(from Faculty Focus). Lighting the Path: Making Connections Between Classes and Careers. Students can have a hard time seeing how general education requirements and foundational classes help them achieve their goals. Students, especially adult learners, want to make measurable progress toward their degrees right out of the gate. Actually, want might be too weak a word. As they balance jobs, families, an income gap, and student debt that grows weekly, they need to make progress as a tangible achievement to keep them going. What I want to focus on are potential solutions, or at least actions we can take toward solutions. If we view a student’s educational journey as a continuity, as a process with incremental progress, how do we put the imprint of this journey on individual classes? We can do this in part by creating a context for the learning in our courses and through instilling a sense of direction by infusing reflection in the classroom. The online classroom is a dynamic space for having amazing interactions with our students. Sometimes it’s text, sometimes video or audio—there are dozens of ways to connect and dozens of potential locations for this interaction to take place: gradebook feedback, inbox, the discussion board. The key is to have meaningful conversations with our students, a dialogue, not a sermon from the mount but an interchange—a back and forth.

(from Harvard University The Christensen Center for Teaching & Learning). The Art of Cold Calling. If you are looking to better engage students in the classroom, cold calling can be a great way to spark discussion and foster an inclusionary environment. Yes, this method can be used to set the tone for class expectations, but it isn’t about shaming the unprepared. Done right, cold calling can serve up meaningful dialogue while also allowing a variety of students a chance to contribute, whether it’s by offering a deserving nod to an oft-prepared student or highlighting another’s expertise and background. Unsure how to properly use cold calling in your classroom? Let’s explore the why, who, and how.

(from Faculty Focus). Boosting Student Motivation Through Connected Reflection. Universities are mandated to be the ultimate “learning culture,” powered by faculty who embody lifelong learning. We know that reflection is essential to learning; it’s the foundation of “continuous improvement,” that ceaseless cultivation of our skills and spirits as we work in the world. And this year, our reflection comes in time of global crisis—all the more reason to reflect on what matters most in our lives and our students’ lives, in our communities, and in our teaching and learning within our courses. Here are seven ways to facilitate motivation, metacognition, and a learning community.

Are Happier Students Better Performers? The importance of student happiness cannot be underestimated as a determining factor in academic performance, especially in the context of today’s universities. However, teachers can be empowered in their roles as holistic educators and become positive mentors for their students, providing understanding, empathy and encouragement. Furthermore, they can also train students in developing their emotional resilience. This should be given particular emphasis in this day and age, where students are increasingly vulnerable to the negative effects of boredom, stress and frustration in their university courses. So, teachers have an increasingly important role as contributors to student happiness.  It can be said that a truly happy student is likely to excel in his academic pursuit.

Unleashing the Power of Examples. College teachers often enter their classrooms with thousands of hours of experience in their chosen field, and they typically face students who have little to no experience with that field of study. In this setting, teachers may take for granted all that they know and are able to do. One of the joys of teaching is finding ways to take complex topics and present them in such a way that students begin their own journey of discovery. Generally speaking, students learn through explanation, example, and experience (Maxwell, 1978). Examples and illustrations are powerful ways to broaden and deepen student learning. One of the challenges facing teachers is selecting the most effective examples and knowing when and how to best use them. Here are some ways to implement powerful examples.

"She Didn't Teach. We Had to Learn it Ourselves"  A faculty member had received on her student ratings this comment: "This teacher should not be paid. We had to teach ourselves in this course." I remember another faculty member telling me about similar feedback, which was followed later with a comment about how the course "really made me think." Two possible reasons for these comments are students being overly dependent on the instructor for their learning and no rationale is provided for a specific assignment or action. This article shares ways in which to reach a balance between student and faculty goals.

Learning Students' Names. Research indicates that knowing students' names makes for a better semester for you and your students.  Here are several strategies on how to remember their names and learn more about them.  Click here to read them.

An effective test can accurately measure what students know but also the kind of knowledge and the depth of that knowledge.  It can also provide you with key information regarding alignment of the learning objectives stated at the beginning of the course with what is being assessed in your exam. Implementing key testing principles and making good decisions regarding exam types, test items, and grading are ways to ensure that student learning is accurately measured. Here are some tips from our Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning. You can also register for our CITL workshop on Oct. 4th (Improving Our Testing and Grading of Student Achievement) to learn more.

Getting the Most out of Guest Experts Who Speak to Your Class. Inviting guest speakers into your classroom is a classic teaching strategy. Welcoming other voices into the classroom provides students with access to other perspectives, adds variety to the classroom routine, and demonstrates that learning is a collaborative enterprise. At the same time, however, presentations by guest experts are often plagued by a variety of design flaws that hinder their educational effectiveness. Here are five things you can do to prepare for an optimal experience.