Volume XXXVIII, No. 4 | February 12, 2016 Pathway to a SMILE In today’s classroom, the standard lecture-notes-quiz model gets low grades in the face of new demands for student interactivity and engagement. Our latest challenge, Generation Z, has grown up with 4G, virtual reality, streaming, and the cloud. Consequently, they expect more [...]
Volume XXXVIII, No. 3 | February 5, 2016 A Tale of Two Disciplines: Lessons in Critical Thinking Background In Daniel T. Willingham's article, "Critical thinking: Why is it so hard to teach?" (2007), he emphasized critical thinking practice and perspective by saying, "…if you remind a student to look at an issue from [...]
Volume XXXVIII, No. 2 | January 29, 2016 Just-In-Time for Success: Connecting Underprepared Students to College Resources Community colleges invest heavily in resources to support underprepared students. Examples of these essential resources include: On-campus and online tutoring and writing labs Advising and counseling services Orientation and student success courses and workshops Vendor partnerships [...]
Volume XXXVIII, No. 1 | January 22, 2016 Problem-Based Learning and Basic Public Speaking: An Innovative Approach Fire and Brimstone Several years ago, I assigned a mock debate assignment in my basic public speaking class: “Should the Ten Commandments Remain Posted in Schools and Other Public Institutions?” As I made the assignment, I [...]
Volume XXXVII, No. 29 | December 4, 2015 “We the Students”: Employing a Code of Conduct in Student Group Projects The benefits of group work have long been established. Most instructors agree that student learning is improved by sharing their experiences with their colleagues, and that there is truth to the old adage, [...]
Volume XXXVII, No. 28 | November 20, 2015 Unintentional Plagiarism: Who Should Bear the Burden? Many of the plagiarism policies that colleges and universities instruct their faculty to give to students during the first week of classes are often written in a negative context. The overall language and tone is explicitly condemning [...]
Volume XXXVII, No. 27 | November 13, 2015 We Teach Much More Than Our Disciplines More than two decades ago, a teaching and learning colleague of mine passed along a lasting nugget of wisdom. On that particular day, we shared some of the daily struggles and challenges our students faced. While we both [...]
Volume XXXVII, No. 26 | November 6, 2015 Student Engagement: Getting 21st-Century Students Hooked Into Your Instruction When I enter a class, I'm thinking about several things—getting my points across clearly, hoping that students show up willing to have relevant discussions rather than engaging with their cell phones, and hoping that my [...]
Volume XXXVII, No. 25 | October 30, 2015 Peer Revision: Build Classroom Writing Community Through Academic Conversation It is hard to teach writing in a quiet classroom because writing is a conversation. For students to be successful academic writers, they need to be successful academic conversationalists, especially in Composition II’s hallmark genre, [...]
Volume XXXVII, No. 24 | October 23, 2015 Our Students’ Soft Skills Scarcity: Why Academics Affairs Should Lead the Effort Our finest students stood nervously as our university’s president sized them up during inspection. In a few moments, these students would meet the State Chancellor for Higher Education, the Oklahoma State University system [...]
