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
*This article first appeared in the Teaching Professor on July 8, 2019. © Magna Publications. All rights reserved. College student mental health is currently receiving a great
Most higher education professionals are familiar with Centers for Teaching and Learning (CTLs) found within their institutions. CTLs provide professional development opportunities and coaching for
With the uncertainty in future university practices brought by the COVID-19 pandemic, one thing is certain: Helping students develop the skills to tend to their
Inclusive teaching involves creating equitable and welcoming educational environments for the diverse learners in our classrooms. Such approaches may involve, but are not limited to:
It’s the first day of class. They shuffle in, spot similar life-forms, and slip in with that group. Hipsters sporting wild hair and tats, buttoned-up and serious young scholars, middle-aged moms and dads, maybe a couple of aging hippies. One or two sad souls choose spots isolated from the others; they don’t want to identify with them for reasons of insecurity, arrogance, or something else.
Here’s a comment that’s got me thinking.
Kristie McAllum writes in Communication Education, “We have created a system that simply replaces helicopter parents with helicopter professors. . . . Through our constant availability to clarify criteria, explain instructions, provide micro-level feedback, and offer words of encouragement, we nourish millennials’ craving for continuous external affirmations of success and reduce their resilience in the face of challenges or failure.”
Students don’t generally learn well, if at all, in stressful situations. Neuroscience tells us that the cortisol released during stress makes learning extremely difficult. Setting
There are empty chairs in classrooms in Florida this week, at Valencia College, University of Central Florida, and Ana G. Mendez University, spaces left by the youngest victims of the Pulse nightclub shootings in Orlando. Most of them young gay men, most of them Latino. In the academic world, June is a time of celebration, of convocation, of inspired addresses to graduates ready to take their hard-earned degrees and all that they have learned into the real world. In the LGBTQ communities, June is Pride month, a time to celebrate hard-earned rights, to look back on how far we have come, and how far we still have to go. This year, it is a time to mourn, and as we gather to stand in solidarity, there is that old, familiar feeling of looking over our shoulders for the next threat.
Trying to support students in an online course can create an unsustainable burden on the instructor. “I’ve heard faculty members say things such as, ‘When I first started teaching online, I drowned in my course. I was making myself available 24 hours/seven days a week. If a student posted, I felt I had to reply immediately. They were counting on me regardless of time of day,’” says Dr. Laurie Grosik, assistant professor in the master in health science program at Saint Francis University. In an interview with Online Classroom, she suggested ways to support online students without creating an undue burden on the instructor.