A FREE PUBLICATION FROM THE CREATORS OF THE TEACHING PROFESSOR

instructional change

Start Small, Finish Big

You’ve just returned from a Teaching Professor Conference or read of an innovative teaching strategy in a book you devoured. You desperately want to incorporate the innovations you’ve learned into your own courses, but at that exact moment, you feel your energy drain when you imagine hearing unsupportive administrators utter their stern objections “to keep things the way they are.” You pause to look around, seeing older colleagues who have more teaching years behind than ahead of them—“I tried that once . . . “—knowing that they never received the administrative nod for their innovations.

Gary R. Hafer, PhD April 19, 2019

Trying Something New? Seven Things that Boost Success Rates

So, the fall semester is about to begin and you’ve decided to try something new in one or more of your courses. Maybe it’s a

Maryellen Weimer, PhD August 10, 2016

Refresh Your Course without (Too Much) Pain and Suffering

See if this sounds familiar.

You’re scheduled to teach a course you have taught before that desperately needs revision. The content and pedagogy go back for a decade or more and are both sadly obsolete, or the grades have been abysmal and the students are threatening to revolt, or someone (the department head, a faculty committee, or you) has decided to offer the course online, or maybe you’re just bored and dread the thought of teaching it again.

Rebecca Brent EdD October 19, 2015

Becoming a Better Teacher: Principles That Make Improvement a Positive Process

These principles don’t propose breathtakingly new insights, but they offer a context for improvement that should make efforts to teach better more successful…All teachers can improve; most should. Don’t base efforts on premises of remediation and deficiency. Positive premises work just as well. You can improve your teaching just as effectively doing more of what works well as you can…

Maryellen Weimer, PhD June 6, 2013