Teaching & Learning in the News

Items of interest in the news focused on college and university instruction are posted here.

How Flipping the Classroom Can Improve the Traditional Lecture. --Dan Berett. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 02/19/12. As its name suggests, flipping describes the inversion of expectations in the traditional college lecture.

Using Google Docs to Check in on Students Reading. --Brian Croxall.  The Chronicle of Higher Education, 02/08/12.  With nightly reading assignments that take three to four hours, I expect students to fall behind. So I wasn’t surprised when, a few days in, I asked if everyone had done all the reading and the majority of the class avoided looking at me. Such are the occupational hazards of teaching.

Standing up for Teaching.  -- Mitch Smith. Inside Higher Ed. 01/23/12.
Johns Hopkins University asks research-oriented faculty to reevaluate their introductory science classes. Much of the blame for high attrition in STEM falls on entry-level “weed-out” classes that are still usually taught in traditional lecture settings with minimal student interaction.

A History of College Grade Inflation. --Catherine Rampell. The New York Times, Economix: Explaining the Science of Everyday Life, July 14, 2011.

Metacognition and Student Learning -- James M. Lang.   The Chronicle of Higher Education, 1/18/2012. Why do terrible singers go on "American Idol"? For the same reason that undergraduates have a false sense of their test readiness.

Casting Out Nines: 3 Things I Learned About Teaching by Taking a Short Course. — Robert Talbert.  The Chronicle of Higher Education, 1/3/2012. I’ve rediscovered three things about teaching, and about being a student, by taking an MAA short course on computational geometry at the joint meetings.

Teaching Large.  --Scott Jaschik. Inside Higher Ed., 12/07/11. Is it a case of "stacking them deep and teaching them cheap", or can large classes really work well? Students surveyed at Virginia Tech think they can work!  Their top recommendations: a clear course structure, engaging pedagogy and "know[ing] your students." 

How Technology Can Improve Online Learning. --Robert W. Mendenhall. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 11/10/2011. The president of an online university says the quality of education is largely independent of the mode of delivery. 

From Homeric Writings to Cellphone Forensics, Some Favorite Online Resources. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 11/9/2011. Professors describe some of the Web-based tools they have found most useful in their teaching and research. 

ProfHacker: Accessibility in the Digital Age. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 11/8/2011. A collection of links concerned with how to create and use digital resources that are accessible to all people. 

Why 'Digital Natives' Aren't Necessarily Digital Learners. --Brian Cowan,   The Chronicle of Higher Education, 11/8/2011. Proponents of the new learning technologies ignore the human side of using them. Just because we can use something doesn't mean we should. 

A Social Network Can Be a Learning Network. --Derek Bruff,  The Chronicle of Higher Education, 11/7/2011. When students write for one another, or even for the world, they produce authentic expressions of what they've absorbed in class.

Escalation in Digital Sleuthing Raises Quandary in Classrooms. --Marc Parry, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 11/7/2011.Technology has made finding plagiarism easier. Now students can vet their work against the same database that professors use.

Translating 7 Effective Habits for the Classroom. -- Kee Chan, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 11/4/2011. In a society where technology is constantly overstimulating our minds, it's time to add the humanistic values back to our teaching.

Teaching Carnival 5.03. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 11/1/11. A variety of links to useful blog posts on teaching tips, technology tips, tips for students and professional development.

How to Read a Student Evaluation. — David D. Perlmutter. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 10/31/11. 

Better Examples Through Peer Instruction. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 10/26/11. What students really want when they ask for “more” examples is to be more involved with the examples they get. An effective means of providing examples without relying on lecture is peer instruction.

Nudity, Pets, Babies, and Other Adventures in Synchronous Online Learning. --Marc Parry. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 10/20/11.... live video feeds are opening a debate about classroom decorum, pushing the university [USC] to create new guidelines for “Netiquette.”

ProfHacker: Accessibility in a Digital Age 1.4.  The Chronicle of Higher Education, 10/11/11. A collection of links regarding how to create and use digital resources that don’t exclude people with disabilities.

Prof Hacker: Simple Post-its for Teaching Improvement. --Heather M. Whitney. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 09/15/11. Whitney writes: This relatively simple tip has been a lifesaver to me....

Prof Hacker: Creative Approaches to the Syllabus.  --Jason B. Jones. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 08/29/11.   Related to this see also:  Graphic Display of Student Learning Objectives. --Billie Hara. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 10/19/10.

Prof Hacker: Teaching for Enduring Understanding - Prioritizing Learning Goals. --Mark Sample. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 08/11/11. As much as we might be loathe to admit it, not everything we teach is of equal value. So Wiggins and McTighe (2005) propose prioritizing learning goals.

Professors Cede Grading Power to Outsiders - Even Computers. Chronicle of Higher Education, 08/10/11. -- Jeffrey R. Young. The best way to eliminate grade inflation is to take professors out of the grading process: Replace them with professional evaluators who never meet the students, and who don't worry that students will punish harsh grades with poor reviews. That's the argument made by leaders of Western Governors University, which has hired 300 adjunct professors who do nothing but grade student work.

Wikipedia's Co-Founder on Academic uses, and Limits, of Popular Open Enyclopedia. (Tech Therapy Podcast).  Chronicle of Higher Education, 08/04/11.  -- Jeffrey Young.  Wikipedia has recently reached out to colleges to help improve the quality of its entries. The Tech Therapy team talks about the future of the open encyclopedia, and replays its interview with Jimmy Wales, a co-founder of Wikipedia, about ways to use the online encyclopedia in teaching and research.

UCSB Teaching and Learning in the News!
Final Projects in Engineering 2: The Lego Robo Rat Festival  (Courtesy of KEYT News, 07/28/11).  The students designed and developed autonomous robots made from Legos, DC motors, microcontrollers and a variety of sensors compete for foam blocks of “cheese” against one another.  The final competition is chaotic and fun to watch. Instructor: Casey Hare.

Just Showing Up: Educators Focus on Attendance to Help Students Succeed. --Tushar Rae. Chronicle of Higher Education, 06/07/11.

ProfHacker: Planning a Class with Backward Design. Chronicle of Higher Education, 06/01/11. An introduction to the idea of “backward design,” from Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe’s book “Understanding by Design.” 

Smartphones on Campus: the Search for "Killer" Apps. --Jeffrey R. Young. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 05/10/11. If everyone on a college campus had a smartphone, could that change higher education?

ProfHacker:  Using Google Docs Forms to Run a Peer-Review Writing Workshop. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 05/05/11.

ProfHacker: Putting Your Work Within Reach. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 05/02/11.  Accessible-document design is what allows people with disabilities—as well as people without—to be able to access your content. Creating accessible documents is not hard, but you have to know what you’re doing. These tutorials can help. .

ProfHacker: Challenging the Presentation Paradigm with the 1/1/5 Rule (for PowerPoint Presentations).  --Mark Sample. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 04/19/11.  ...you must have at least one image per slide, you can use each exact image only once, and you should add no more than five words per slide.

ProfHacker: Students, Reading and Writing. --George Williams. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 04/16/11.  [A]re the early results from this project an indication that we have a problem with students plagiarizing? No. We have a problem with students not understanding the material they’re incorporating into their own writing.

ProfHacker: Making Files Accessible to Everyone. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 04/13/11.Check your Office documents for accessibility when sharing with students, co-workers, or on the Web. 

ProfHacker: Improving PowerPoint-Style Presentations. --Jason B. Jones. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 03/18/11. As is so often the case, the problem isn’t necessarily the tool, it's how you use it. 

ProfHacker: Tips for Discouraging Plagiarism.  The Chronicle of Higher Education, 03/18/11. Administrators are often the ones who see the most plagiarism cases, and there might be something we can all learn from that perspective. 

TED Talks and University Lectures: "Ted Conference Turns Professors in to Stars":  --Jeffrey R. Young. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 03/07/11. Some theories of education argue that lectures are not that good at conveying complex information, and that they are best suited to inspiring students to care enough about the material to do the hard work of learning on their own time.

Electronic Portfolios for Student Learning?  The Chronicle of Higher Education, 03/02/11. A starter discussion on the use of e-portfolios for student learning and assessment.

ProfHacker: Converting Files With Primo PDF. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 02/21/11.  Primo PDF is a Windows program that will convert various different kinds of documents to PDF: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and several others. 

Classroom Flops. -- Heather M. Whitney. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 02/17/11.  Total Fail: It Happens.

A Teaching Practice to Borrow From Physics Instructors. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 02/10/11. Concept inventories are a useful tool for measuring student knowledge before and after instruction. Learn about their use in physics education and consider how they might be useful in other disciplines. 

Absent Students Want to Attend Traditional Classes Via Webcam.  -- Jeffrey R. Young.  The Chronicle of Higher Education, 02/02/11.  E-mail from a student: "I can't make it to class. Can you beam me in by Webcam?" Professors across the country are facing similar questions.

ProfHacker: Using Social Technologies in the Classroom. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 01/26/11.The guest authors Derek Bruff, Dwayne Harapnuik, and Jim Julius discuss ways to encourage faculty experimentation with technology on the campus at a time of drastic change in higher education. 

ProfHacker: How to Run a Group-Authored Blog. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 01/24/11. Independently of each other, a small number of people have recently asked about the workflow involved in publishing a group-authored blog like ProfHacker. Here are the basic details of how we go about publishing 3 posts a day, 5 days a week. 

How Much Do College Students Learn, and Study? -- Jacques Steinberg.  New York Times, 01/25/11.  In a new book, in an accompanying study being released Tuesday, Richard Arum (NYU) and Josipa Roksa (UVirginia) followed more than 2,300 undergraduates at two dozen universities, and concluded that 45 percent “demonstrated no significant gains in critical thinking, analytical reasoning, and written communications during the first two years of college.”

Teaching Extra Large Classes and the Role of Technology. -- Mark Sample. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 01/25/11. One of the realities of our economic hard times is that faculty are being asked to do more with less. The place where this hits many of us the hardest is our classrooms, where we’re teaching more students than ever.

Why Some Elite Colleges Give Away Courses Online -- Marc Parry. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 01/20/11. A new book, "Unlocking the Gates," takes stock of the successes and failures of those institutions as they have tried to establish an academic presence on the Web. 

The Myth of eLearning: There Is No 'There' There -- Trent Batson. Campus Technology, 01/19/11. Information technology, ironically, instead of disenfranchising the current higher education enterprise, is making it more vital. After all, we find that there was and is no revolution, just a gradual shift in emphasis toward certain kinds of existing learning experiences. Also, unexpectedly, on-the-ground colleges and universities are, if anything, better positioned to maximize their in-situ advantage than ever before. Distance education is not, and never should be considered, a replacement of traditional on-the-ground learning.

New Book Lays Failure to Learn on Colleges' Doorsteps -- David Glenn. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 01/18/11. "Academically Adrift," which blames students' lack of progress on weaknesses in the curricula, has earned fans and critics.

Scientists Fault Universities as Favoring Research Over Teaching, -- Paul Basken. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 01/14/11. The United States' educational and research pre-eminence is being undermined, and some of the chief underminers are universities themselves, according to articles this week in Science and Nature magazines.

State of Washington to Offer Online Materials, Instead of Textbooks, for 2-Year Colleges, -- Martha Ann Overland. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 01/12/11. The state is building 81 community-college courses from online materials—and learning that adapting content for students takes more than a mouse click. 

Ditching a Textbook: An update.  The Chronicle of Higher Education, 01/11/11.  Want to get students more involved in determining course content and to develop their skills finding and using sources? Consider dropping a textbook.

Online Game Teaches Citation Skills. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 01/10/11. BiblioBouts challenges students to build a better bibliography than their classmates.

College 2.0: 6 Top Smartphone Apps to Improve Teaching, Research, and Your Life.  The Chronicle of Higher Education, 01/07/11. Professors elaborate on the mobile programs that have made their work lives easier to handle.

ProfHacker: The Latest Thoughts on Pedagogy in Higher Education. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 01/04/11.Teaching Carnival 4.5 starts the new year with a great list of teaching-related posts. 

Using Google Fusion Tables to Visualize Data. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 12/20/10.If you’ve ever wanted to represent your data visually but weren’t sure how—well, it’s easier than you might think.

Is Your Psychology 102 Course Any Good? The Chronicle of Higher Education, 12/15/10. Here are 22 ways to measure course quality - but some of these measures have quality issues of their own.

Student Learning Outcomes Come to GradSchool,  The Chronicle of Higher Education, 12/02/10.  At some institutions, there is (...) talk of defining a set of “foundational outcomes” for all graduate students—that is, a set of learning goals that would be analogous to general-education goals for undergraduates.

Exam Questions—Outsourcing vs. Crowdsourcing. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 11/30/10. It turns out that there’s a world of difference between outsourcing and crowdsourcing your exam questions. Here are some reasons to draw students into the exam-writing process. 

Cross-Disciplinary Grading Techniques.   The Chronicle of Higher Education, 11/23/10. Using a clear and simple rubric—similar to those used in the humanities—to grade her students’ work in a physics class leads this professor to wonder about other assessment techniques that could be shared across disciplines.  

Professors of the Year Put Students in Charge of Learning.  The Chronicle of Higher Education, 11/18/10. The four national honorees share an ability to engage students in teaching themselves the subject at hand. 

Cheating and the Generational Divide, Inside Higher Education, 11/17/10.  The revelation that hundreds of University of Central Florida students in a senior-level business class received an advance version of a mid-term exam has exposed the widening chasm in what different generations expect of each other -- and what they perceive cheating to be.

More Professors Give Out Hand-Held Devices to Monitor Students and Engage Them. New York Times, 11/15/10.  Clickers:  Though the technology is relatively new, preliminary studies at Harvard and Ohio State, among other institutions, suggest that engaging students in class through a device as familiar to them as a cellphone [...] increases their understanding of material that may otherwise be conveyed in traditional lectures.

Students Lack Basic Research Skills, Study Finds. The Chronicle of Higher Education, 11/10/10. ...the findings show that college students approach research as a hunt for the right answer instead of a process of evaluating different arguments and coming up with their own interpretation.

Group Work that Works (Even in Large Classes!), The Chronicle of Higher Education, 11/08/10. Group work too often seems ineffective to faculty members, and like makework to students, yet it can offer real pedagogical value. Here are four practical strategies for improving group work in any class. .

Constant Curricular Change, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 11/05/10. Faculty members routinely change their courses from semester to semester, experimenting with both minor changes and major innovations, according to a national survey.

UC Readies its For-Credit Online Course Venture, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 11/05/10.

Gamifying Homework, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 11/04/10.

Preparing Professors to Teach, Inside Higher Education, 10/15/10. [Posted 11/02/10]

Re-engineering: How One Department Tinkered With Its Instructional Model, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 11/1/10.

Using Clickers to Facilitate Peer Review in a Writing Seminar, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 10/20/10.

Graphic Display of Student Learning Objectives,The Chronicle of Higher Education, 10/20/10.

As Textbooks Go Digital, Will Professors Build Their Own Books? The Chronicle of Higher Education, 10/11/10.

Classroom Pedagogy: The Reality TV Edition, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 10/07/10.

A Call for Open Textbooks, Inside Higher Education, 10/01/10.  Student Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs) - the activist group and gadfly of the textbook industry - has anointed a savior in its campaign against the high cost of course materials.

A Rubric for Evaluating Student Blogs, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 09/28/10. Thinking about introducing blogging in the classroom? Here's an overview of a simple five-point scale to evaluate those student blog posts.

Using Text-Expansion Software to Respond to Student Writing, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 09/24/10. Explore some ways in which to provide more detailed feedback on student writing without getting carpal tunnel syndrome.

ProfHacker: The Copyright Dilemma, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 09/17/10. Explore some solutions for dealing with the challenges of using copyrighted materials in your open-access course. 

5 Analog Tools I Can't Live Without (and Why), The Chronicle of Higher Education, 09/14/10

BBC Dimensions, A wonderful web based visualization tool that allows you to overlay the extent of ancient cities, natural disasters, etc, over a satellite map of your own zip code.

Prof Hacker: A Framework for Teaching with Twitter, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 08/17/10

Prof Hacker: Creating a Checklist for the Semester, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 08/12/10

No Thinkable Alternative. Times Higher Education Supplement, 08/05/10.  [Producing graduates who are critical thinkers requires teachers who can bring scholarship and leadership to the academy. It is vital that we find them, writes Paul Ramsden].

Prof Hacker: Using Grading Contracts, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 08/02/10

Prof Hacker: On Syllabus and Course Design, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 07/27/10

5 Applications I Simply Can’t Live Without (and Why), The Chronicle of Higher Education, 07/01/10

'Augmented Reality' on Smartphones Brings Teaching Down to Earth, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 06/24/10

Preventing Plagiarism, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 06/14/10

An excellent and entertaining anti-plagiarism video from the University of Bergen, The Chronicle of Higher Education, 06/09/10

Put Video Games to Good Use The Chronicle of Higher Education, 06/09/10

5 Things to Do with Evaluations Before Summer Really Starts  The Chronicle of Higher Education, 06/07/10

How to Grade Students' Class Participation  The Chronicle of Higher Education, 05/12/10

U. of California Considers Online Classes, or Even Degrees  The Chronicle of Higher Education, 05/11/10

California Dreaming: Remaking Online Education at the University of California The Chronicle of Higher Education, 05/11/10

Online Evaluations Show Same Results, Lower Response Rate The Chronicle of Higher Education, 05/06/10

Revisiting Google Docs for Classroom Use The Chronicle of Higher Education, 05/05/10

Most Professors Use Social Media The Chronicle of Higher Education, 05/04/10

No Grading, More Learning   Inside Higher Ed, 05/03/10

Can Learning Be Improved When Budgets Are in the Red?   Chronicle of Higher Education, 04/25/10

4 Ways to Help Faculty Evaluations Make the Grade  Chronicle of Higher Education, 04/27/10

Faculty Benefits from Writing Across the Curriculum  Chronicle of Higher Education, 04/27/10

Writer's Boot Camp: Using 750 Words.com  Chronicle of Higher Education, 04/23/10

A Test for the iPad: Will it Bring the Internet to the Beanbag Chair? Chronicle of Higher Education, 04/07/10

From Chalk to Bytes: The Digital Classroom  National Public Radio, 03/29/10

The Human Element (in e-learning) Inside Higher Ed, 03/29/10

How Interactive Technology Can Help Minority Students Learn, Chronicle of Higher Education, 3/22/10

Designing Effective Online Assignments, Chronicle of Higher Education, 3/22/10

A Professor Says His University Cares Little About Teaching, Chronicle of Higher Education, 03/17/10