Volume XXXIX, No. 24 | October 19, 2017 Educating the Whole Student: Bridging the Counselor/Class Divide As college instructors, we spend a lot of time before each semester preparing the academic content for the class. The last few weeks of my summer are routinely spent updating syllabi, researching authors, reading texts, and [...]
Volume XXXIX, No. 23 | October 12, 2017 Teaching Techniques: Beyond Lectures As the dynamics of education change, so does the way students learn and respond to classroom strategies. The traditional way of teaching through lecture is no longer sufficient or effective. Today’s students prefer learning through a combination of lecture and [...]
Volume XXXIX, No. 22 | October 5, 2017 Teaching for Transfer in a First-Year Writing Course Recent work by scholars within composition studies—most notably the work of Kathleen Blake Yancey, Lianne Robertson, and Kara Taczak—suggests that the transfer of knowledge from English 101 to other courses and contexts may be possible if [...]
Volume XXXIX, No. 21 | September 28, 2017 The Place of Reading in the Freshman Composition Class Immediately before the beginning of student debates in my second semester freshman composition class, a student announced, “This is a writing class. I see no point in doing oral things like debates.” Admittedly, she was [...]
Volume XXXIX, No. 20 | September 21, 2017 As I Watch My Students Leave As I watch students leave my classroom after their final exam, it is with sadness that I realize I will never see many of them again. I have been an educator for 26 years, including as a middle [...]
Volume XXXIX, No. 19 | September 14, 2017 Elevating Your Educational “Hotness”: Achieving Teaching Excellence Recently, my colleagues and I facilitated a National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development (NISOD) webinar titled, “Bird by Bird: Creating a Culture of Teaching Excellence.” The webinar focused on creating a culture of teaching excellence through [...]
Volume XXXIX, No. 18 | September 7, 2017 Capitalizing on Social Presence in Online Course Design: Five Strategies That Work How can we create a more effective, efficient online-course experience for students and instructors? One thing we know: social presence matters. Social presence, briefly defined as the connectedness between and among students [...]
Volume XXXIX, No. 17 | August 31, 2017 Using Icebreakers to Build Community It’s the first day of class, and students nervously find their seats. They may or may not know anyone in the class. Tension of the unknown is palpable. Students are unsure what to expect: What will this course be [...]
Volume XXXIX, No. 16 | May 4, 2017 Teaching Community College Students the Soft Skills Demanded by Employers Many of us in community colleges work with employers and students. Therefore, we seek to understand what employers need in future employees, then we prepare students to fill those roles. This process is relatively straight [...]
Volume XXXIX, No. 15 | April 27, 2017 Raise Your Hand if You Have Questions In traditional face-to-face classes, it’s easy to know when students have questions. Typically, we don’t even need to wait for students to raise their hands because we see a sea of blank stares and bewildered faces. In online [...]
