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Our 14 Most Popular Articles of 2014

As another year draws to a close, the editorial team at Faculty Focus looks back on some of the top articles of the past year. Throughout 2014, we published approximately 225 articles. The articles covered a wide range of topics – including group work, course redesign, flipped learning, and grading strategies. In a two-part series, which runs today and Friday, we reveal the top 14 articles for 2014. Each article’s ranking is based on a combination of factors, including e-newsletter open and click-thru rates, social shares, reader comments, web traffic, reprint requests, and other reader engagement metrics.

Today’s post lists articles 8-14, starting with number 14.

Mary Bart December 17, 2014

How to Communicate the Value of Your Faculty Development Center

Consider this hypothetical situation: The vice president of academic affairs has just sent you a cryptic email asking you to define the impact of your faculty development center. Could you do so? What would you say? How would you measure the impact?

Jennifer Patterson Lorenzetti December 12, 2014

Cruel Student Comments: Seven Ways to Soothe the Sting

Reading students’ comments on official end-of-term evaluations—or worse, online at sites like RateMyProfessors.com—can be depressing, often even demoralizing. So it’s understandable that some faculty look only at the quantitative ratings; others skim the written section; and many others have vowed to never again read the public online comments. It’s simply too painful.

How else might you respond? Here are seven suggestions for soothing the sting from even the most hurtful student comments:

Isis Artze-Vega EdD December 8, 2014

How to Deal with Incivility in the Online Classroom

Incivility in the online classroom can take many forms. Angela Stone Schmidt, director of graduate programs in the School of Nursing and associate dean College of Nursing & Health Professions at Arkansas State University—Jonesboro, uses Morrisette’s definition: “interfering with a cooperative learning atmosphere.” So in addition to inappropriate, rude, offensive, or bullying behaviors, Schmidt considers behaviors such as academic dishonesty, over-participation or domination and under-participation to be forms of incivility. In an interview with Online Classroom, she offered the following advice on how to reduce incivility with a proactive stance and how to address it when it does occur:

Rob Kelly December 5, 2014

Unlocking the Mystery of Critical Thinking

Critical thinking. We all endorse it. We all want our students to do it. And we claim to teach it. But do we? Do we even understand and agree what it means to think critically?

According to Paul and Elder’s (2013a) survey findings, most faculty don’t know what critical thinking is or how to teach it. Unless faculty explicitly and intentionally design their courses to build their students’ critical thinking skills and receive training in how to teach them, their students do not improve their skills (Abrami et al., 2008).

Linda B. Nilson, PhD December 1, 2014

Thinking Horizontally and Vertically About Blended Learning

Blended learning has gone from being an interesting new hybrid of traditional and online courses to being an expected part of American education. When the Sloan Consortium last studied blended learning in 2007, it found “a lot of room for growth” in the market for blended courses. It found “consumer preference for online and blended delivery far exceeds reported experience,” indicating that demand was ahead of supply at that point.

Jennifer Patterson Lorenzetti November 20, 2014

New Faculty Survey Finds More Learner-Centered Teaching, Less Lecturing

A survey of undergraduate teaching faculty has identified a shift toward more learner-centered teaching practices and a corresponding move away from lectures and other teacher-centered styles.

Mary Bart November 18, 2014

Why You Read Like an Expert – and Why Your Students Probably Don’t

A recent experience in class left me a bit rattled, and made me wonder if I’ve long been trying to teach an impossible skill. It confronted me with a fundamental question: What’s teachable, and what do students simply have to figure out on their own with the passage of time?

Pete Burkholder, PhD November 17, 2014

What We Can Learn from Unsuccessful Online Students

There are many studies that look at how online students differ from those in face-to-face classes in terms of performance, satisfaction, engagement, and other factors. It is well-known that online course completion rates tend to be lower than those for traditional classes. But relatively little is known about what the unsuccessful online student has to say about his or her own experience and how they would improve online learning. Yet these insights can be vital for distance educators.

Jennifer Patterson Lorenzetti November 14, 2014

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