Year: 2010

This is a brief introduction to seven research-based principles for smart teaching in the book: How Learning Works. I summarize an email news letter from Tomorrow’s Teaching and Learning.

What is learning?

• Learning is A process not a product
• Learning involves change in knowledge, beliefs, behaviors, or attitudes.
• Learning is not something done to students but rather something students themselves do.

Seven principles of learning?

1. Student’s prior knowledge can help or hinder learning.
2. How students organize knowledge influences how they learn and apply what they know.
3. Students’ motivation determines, directs, and sustains what they do to learn.
4. To develop mastery, students must acquire component skills, practice integrating them, and know when to apply what they have learned.
5. Goal-directed practice coupled with targeted feedback enhances the quality of students’ learning.
6. Students’ current level of development interacts with the social, emotional, and intellectual climate of the course to impact learning.
7. To become self-directed learners, students must learn to monitor and adjust their approaches to learning.

Tools for teaching by Davis, B.G., Jossey-Bass

Here is the table of contents.

Getting Underway

• 1.    Preparing or Revising a Course
• 2.    The Course Syllabus
• 3.    The First Day of Class

Responding to a Diverse Student Body

• 4.    Academic Accommodations for Students with Disabilities
• 5.    Diversity and Complexity in the Classroom: Considerations of Race, Ethnicity, and Gender
• 6.    Reentry Students
• 7.    Teaching Academically Diverse Students

Discussion Strategies

• 8.    Leading a Discussion
• 9.    Encouraging Student Participation in Discussion
• 10.   Asking Questions
• 11.   Fielding Students’ Questions

Lecture Strategies

• 12.   Preparing to Teach the Large Lecture Course
• 13.   Delivering a Lecture
• 14.   Explaining Clearly
• 15.   Personalizing the Large Lecture Class
• 16.   Supplements and Alternatives to Lecturing: Encouraging Student Participation
• 17.   Maintaining Instructional Quality with Limited Resources

Collaborative and Experiential Strategies

• 18.   Collaborative Learning:  Group Work and Study Teams
• 19.   Role Playing and Case Studies
• 20.   Field Work

Enhancing Students’ Learning and Motivation

• 21.   Helping Students Learn
• 22.   Learning Styles and Preferences
• 23.   Motivating Students

Writing Skills and Homework Assignments

• 24.   Helping Students Write Better in All Courses
• 25.   Designing Effective Writing Assignments
• 26.   Evaluating Students’ Written Work
• 27.   Homework: Problem Sets

Testing and Grading

• 28.   Quizzes, Tests, and Exams
• 29.   Allaying Students’ Anxieties About Tests
• 30.   Multiple-Choice and Matching Tests
• 31.   Short-Answer and Essay Tests
• 32.   Grading Practices
• 33.   Calculating and Assigning Grades
• 34.   Preventing Academic Dishonesty

Instructional Media and Technology

• 35.   Chalkboards
• 36.   Flipcharts
• 37.   Transparencies and Overhead Projectors
• 38.   Slides
• 39.   Films and Videotapes
• 40.   Computers and Multimedia

Evaluation to Improve Teaching

• 41.   Fast Feedback
• 42.   Watching Yourself on Videotape
• 43.   Self-Evaluation and the Teaching Dossier

Teaching Outside the Classroom

• 44.   Holding Office Hours
• 45.   Academic Advising and Mentoring Undergraduates
• 46.   Guiding, Training, and Supervising Graduate Student Instructors

Finishing Up

• 47.   The Last Days of Class
• 48.   Student Rating Forms
• 49.   Writing Letters of Recommendation

The Brain Science Podcast, hosted by Ginger Campbell, MD, is a must-have podcast for brain scientists. Dr. Campbell interviews brain scientists including medical doctors, neuroscientists, computer scientists, students, and business persons as well.

You can listen to this. But the best thing is that you can also ‘read’ this podcast since the website provides episode transcripts.

http://docartemis.com/brainsciencepodcast/

http://chronicle.com/article/Tips-for-New-Teachers-at/48003/

Take-home-messages from the article.

• Appear confident. “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and, doggone it, people like me!”
• Be consistent
• Don’t take yourself too seriously
• Keep your distance. Neither too close nor too far.
• Dress professionally.
• Remember whom you are teaching

Ten simple rules to combine teaching and research from Tomorrow’s Professor Mailing List.

• Rule 1: Strictly budget your time for teaching and for doing research
• Rule 2: Set specific teaching and research goals
• Rule 3: Don’t reinvent the wheel
• Rule 4: Don’t try to explain everything
• Rule 5: Be shameless in bringing your research interests into your teaching
• Rule 6: Get the most in career advancement from bringing your research into your teaching
• Rule 7: Compromise, compromise, compromise
• Rule 8: Balance administrative duties with your teaching and research workload
• Rule 9: Start teaching early in your career
• Rule 10: Budget time for yourself, too

Good advice to new faculty!

http://chronicle.com/article/The-5-Characteristics-of/48374/?sid=oh&utm_source=oh&utm_medium=en

This was written for new faulty in two-year colleges, but most advice here is still valuable to new professors in universities.

1. Be humble.
2. Be willing.
3. Be organized.
4. Be collegial. Be friendly, open to sharing ideas and materials, and willing to help out a colleague in need. Your collegiality must extend not just to other faculty members but also to everyone else on the campus, including librarians, admissions counselors, and custodians.
5. Be low-maintenance.