October 2003
Thursday 30 October 2003
- Reading to Class - Since it's the day before Halloween, today I read my own writing to my poetry writing class. I'm not the typical English teacher; I'm an actively publishing writer of "horror" fiction and poetry so whenever I do readings like this, it always opens some eyes. The students were very interested,... (17:55 | 0 Trackbacks | 4 Comments)
Monday 27 October 2003
- Remembering The Objective of Learning Objectives - Although every college should have a mission, and every class a series of desired outcomes, I sometimes feel that the way learning objectives are utilized can stultify a course: sometimes they lead to boggy syllabi (or other documents) brimming with academic jargon; at others, they dogmatically drive a course's direction... (00:23 | 0 Trackbacks | 3 Comments)
Sunday 26 October 2003
- Cognitive Theory in Practice - I was reading through a special issue of Research & Creative Theory on the Scholarship of Teaching, and found a nice feature on a teacher named Claude Cookman called Looking for Insight into Teaching. In this essay, Cookman's application of cognitive theory in self-analysis papers is outlined. It gave me... (21:24 | 0 Trackbacks | 0 Comments)
- Quizzes Work - The New Media Journalism at SHU blog today uncovered an article on the effectiveness of pop quizzes (from OSU Research News), suggesting that evaluating students over shorter intervals of time produce better-prepared students. I don't think anyone who teaches would disagree. Sadly, in some ways quizzes are the only... (17:59 | 0 Trackbacks | 0 Comments)
Friday 24 October 2003
- Grade Inflation - A year ago, Seton Hill U conducted a statistical analysis of grades on campus to examine the issue of grade inflation. We learned that our school, like many others across the country, has been giving students higher and higher grades on average over the past seven years -- particularly in... (10:43 | 0 Trackbacks | 15 Comments)
Wednesday 22 October 2003
- Suing your Professor - My colleague, Dennis Jerz (who runs the great Literacy Weblog) passed along a fascinating Yahoo news story this morning about a student who sued his professor for getting a B- on a test. The suit actually stems from a grade change that was made during a conversation in the prof's... (11:07 | 0 Trackbacks | 11 Comments)
Monday 20 October 2003
- King in the Classroom - Our campus technology committee has discussed -- only in theory so far -- the possibile integration of laptops in the classroom at Seton Hill. In my research for this I found something that surprised me: Stephen King, advocating for them, and volunteering to do distance learning to teach a middle... (12:50 | 0 Trackbacks | 0 Comments)
Saturday 18 October 2003
- Our Purpose, Revisited - Today I returned to Inventio online and read a very good paper: Hugh Sockett's essay, "Creating a Culture for the Scholarship of Teaching", from Spring 2000. Sockett essentially looks at the purpose of the scholarship of teaching, which is to engage with a community and not simply expand the boundaries... (17:12 | 0 Trackbacks | 1 Comments)
Thursday 16 October 2003
- When the Book is Wrong - Revising the test continues even after I've handed it back to the students. One student raises her hand to ask why I marked her short answer (to a question about the difference between a shot and a scene) wrong: she reads her written answer, then directly cites the glossary in... (22:39 | 0 Trackbacks | 0 Comments)
Monday 13 October 2003
- Grading as Revision - Yesterday I graded thirty midterm exams from my Art of Film course. I actually enjoyed composing this test, by not only incorporating material from the textbook (and the book's online study guide) and the lectures, but also frame captures (off the DVD) from the films that we've screened this term.... (11:54 | 0 Trackbacks | 5 Comments)
Saturday 11 October 2003
- Three Rules of Two - It's fall break at Seton Hill U, which means that students are given an extended weekend to recharge their batteries and teachers are given a little extra time to finish marking papers so they can turn in midterm grades. I find that if I have a little time leftover, I... (10:59 | 0 Trackbacks | 1 Comments)
Thursday 9 October 2003
- Multitasking Millenials - So I'm giving a lecture about rhyme scheme today near the beginning of Poetry Class and I suddenly realize that virtually every student in the room is assembling their portfolios (to turn in at the end of class) while I'm speaking: binders are CLACKing, papers are shuffling, pages are riffling.... (22:30 | 0 Trackbacks | 14 Comments)
Wednesday 8 October 2003
- The Student's Predicament - I once wrote of the teacher's predicament when blogging. Today academic advice colunist Mrs. Mentor at the Chronicle reports of the student's predicament. The lesson? Venting in public is a form of publishing evidence that can be used against you. Seems like common sense, but students tend to err on... (22:41 | 0 Trackbacks | 0 Comments)
Tuesday 7 October 2003
- Square Peg, Round Hole - Sometimes facilitating class discussions is not a matter of getting students to talk, but of moving the furniture out of the way. Organizing furniture resources is a key component to designing a class. The problem is sufficient enough that I actually woke up today, still wrestling with it, which means... (09:39 | 0 Trackbacks | 2 Comments)
Sunday 5 October 2003
- Pleasure University - In Jacuzzi U? A Battle of Perks to Lure Students (@ NY Times -- link may expire) we learn about the extravagent bastions of pleasure (or "wellness") that campuses are constructing as a way to attract young people into their folds. Because campuses compete, an "amenities race" is leading to... (14:19 | 0 Trackbacks | 6 Comments)
Saturday 4 October 2003
- The Children of Theory - Students today, he asserts, are engaging neither with history nor with post-structuralism. "What is sexy instead is sex," he announces, in the first chapter, on "The Politics of Amnesia": "Quietly spoken middle-class students huddle diligently in libraries, at work on sensationalist subjects like vampirism and eye-gouging, cyborgs and porno movies."... (09:27 | 0 Trackbacks | 0 Comments)
Friday 3 October 2003
- Preconceptions... - A humble reminder to self: When I teach about the history of the recent past, I tell my students that one of the greatest dangers is that they think that they already know what happened and why. Similarly, in approaching the scholarship of teaching, we have to rid ourselves from... (00:59 | 0 Trackbacks | 0 Comments)
- More is Less - Do small class sizes increase your chances of having weak teachers? Joanne Jacobs found a report from a Canadian newspaper that suggests so. The logic goes like this: if you lower enrollments, you've got to add extra classes, so then you need more teachers to staff them. And the more... (00:07 | 0 Trackbacks | 1 Comments)
Thursday 2 October 2003
- How Not to Teach I - #1: Don't force the fish heads. #2: Avoid Halftime for Hitler #3: No Murder Word Problems... (01:50 | 0 Trackbacks | 1 Comments)
Wednesday 1 October 2003
- Homework Unloaded - Maybe not. Maybe homework loads are larger than ever? Maybe homework is disrupting families, overburdening children and limiting learning? Maybe homework has taken the place of true school reform? Um...maybe. But, my gut tells me that something else is going on here. Parents want educators to do everything, and do... (22:52 | 0 Trackbacks | 4 Comments)
- Homework Loads - Newsflash?: Stories are breaking across the news today that students study less than an hour a day (I learned that a Brookings Institute study is responsible from Dennis Jerz' Literacy Weblog). I'm not surprised by this; a number of entering freshman in my experience often seem to either lack basic... (09:37 | 0 Trackbacks | 0 Comments)