A FREE PUBLICATION FROM THE CREATORS OF THE TEACHING PROFESSOR

teaching and learning challenges

Teaching During a Personal Crisis

I reread Nancy Chick’s “Teaching in Times of Crisis” with depressing regularity. It’s about what to do when the horrors of the world—the mass shootings, the hurricanes, the hate marches—walk our students to class. I recommend reading the full article, which discusses practical and specific techniques in detail, but Chick also boils down her research to “acknowledge the crisis.” After neo-Nazis plastered our campus with racist recruitment posters this semester, my students echoed this take-away. As one student put it, “tell us you’re there for us, that you’re a listening ear.”

Elizabeth Barnett February 2, 2018

Reader Survey Finds Unprepared Students a Persistent Problem

Quick, what’s your biggest teaching challenge? If you said it’s students who don’t read their assignments or prepare for class, you’re in good company. For the fourth consecutive year that we posed that question in our survey, Faculty Focus readers identified students who come to class unprepared as their biggest day-to-day challenge. It was followed closely by students who are not prepared for the rigors of college. Finishing third this year was institutional budget cuts, which edged out student motivation for the first time. Technology distractions remained as the fifth biggest challenge.

Mary Bart October 3, 2016

Making the Shift from Rhetoric to Performance

Discussion of teaching and learning as an academic, scholarly endeavor has become an acceptable conversation on college campuses. A shift is beginning to take place whereby the scholarship of teaching and learning is now being taken seriously. We are making progress in higher education by making undergraduate education intentional, thus moving toward a learner-centered paradigm.

Michael Harris PhD and Roxanne Cullen PhD December 10, 2009

Understanding What You See Happening in Class

While conducting a class, even though teachers may be doing all or most of the talking, students communicate important nonverbal messages. They communicate these messages through facial expressions, body postures, and how they say what they say, as well as what actions they do or the skills they attempt to perform. Both novice and expert teachers see the same student responses, but expert teachers see in those responses something very different than novices see.

Maryellen Weimer, PhD October 2, 2009

Eight Ways to Support Faculty Needs with a Virtual Teaching & Learning Center

Teaching and learning support professionals, particularly those who must perform miracles as a “Department of One,” can have one of the most challenging jobs on campus. They not only support the course design, content delivery strategies, technology integration, and training/orientation for faculty and students in online learning programs (asynchronous and synchronous formats), but they also support all other teaching/learning needs for classroom, blended, and any other teaching environment. This professional may be an instructional designer, an educational technologist, or very often, a designated faculty member with some or all of these skills.

Kathleen MacDonald August 25, 2009

Top Teaching and Learning Challenges for 2009

EDUCAUSE, the association for information technology in higher education, released its list of Top Teaching and Learning Challenges for 2009. Voted on by the EDUCAUSE teaching and learning community, the top five challenges are:

Mary Bart January 9, 2009