New CTL Workshop: WTF: Way(s) to Fail
Are your students paralyzed by being wrong? Do they not take risks in the classroom for fear of getting a bad grade? The science of learning tells us that we learn best from our mistakes. How can we develop a culture of supportive failure for our students to enhance their learning?
Please join the CTL for a virtual workshop on embracing the pedagogy of failure in your classroom, WTF: Way(s) to Fail. This interactive workshop will be led by Lydia Eckstein, Amelia Finaret and Lisa Whitenack of Allegheny College on Wednesday, March 20 at 4:00 pm (Eastern).
The goal of this workshop is to offer specific strategies for incorporating failure into teaching, course activities and mentoring. In advance of the workshop, please identify a particular course in which you already incorporate elements of a pedagogy of failure or in which you want to try it. At the end of this workshop, you will have actionable strategies to incorporate some of these practices into your specific class.
Here is a brief primer to prepare you for this engaging workshop: WTF: Way(s) To Fail! A Primer (or read the full article: Teaching the Inevitable: Embracing a Pedagogy of Failure).
Sign up here for this online event (a Zoom link will be sent the day before).
Teaching and Learning
A New College Lesson Plan for Improving Executive Functioning (Ana Homayoun, Inside Higher Ed, March 15, 2024): Many students are coming to college with difficulties in basic tasks and life management skills, resulting in an inability to, for example, prioritize tasks effectively and get to class on time. The author offers four ways higher ed can support these students.
Tackling Stale Discussion Posts, Poor Reading Skills, and Other Challenges (Beth McMurtrie, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 14, 2024): Responses from readers on these topics.
Disembroiling HOT Moments in the Classroom (Rebecca Petitti, Amanda Irvin, and Soulaymane Kachani, Inside Higher Ed, March 14, 2024): How to respond when things get HOT (heater, offensive, tense).
Use Engagement Strategies Student Enjoy in Class (Ashley Mowreader, Inside Higher Ed, March 12, 2024): Discussion of student-submitted activities faculty members have employed in class to promote active learning and participation.
With Confidence in Higher Ed Plummeting, Colleges Must Recommit to Teaching (Holden Thorp and Buck Goldstein): The best way to rebuild confidence in higher ed is to focus on teaching.
Can This University Change Its Teaching Culture? (Beckie Supiano, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 8, 2024): The University of Georgia is making a push to adopt active learning. It could serve as a model. [And, as background, an earlier article from the Chronicle, 5 Ways to East Students Off the Lecture and Into Active Learning (Jeremy T. Murphy, July 18, 2023).]
How Does Retrieval Improve New Learning? (Althea Need Kaminske, The Learning Scientists, March 7, 2024): Retrieving already-learned material not only helps you to remember that material, it also helps you to learn new material. While this effect (called the forward testing effect or test potentiated learning or retrieval potentiated learning) has been well established, what is less well-understood is how retrieval facilitates new learning.
All Things AI
There and Back Again: Traversing the Python Landscape for Mathematical Applets (Lew Ludwig, Mathematical Association of America, March 12, 2024): The author shares how to create cool visuals using ChatGPT, even if one has no programming experience.
Responsible Use of AI in Education (Carolina Kuepper-Tetzel, The Learning Scientist, March 14, 2024): Generative AI is not going anywhere and so it is vital for educators to reflect on how to best use it and to instruct their students on how to navigate this new development responsibly. The author has curated five different articles to provide guidance on how to do this.
Uncharted Territory: Artificial General Intelligence and Higher Ed (Ray Schroeder, Inside Higher Ed, March 13, 2024): Imagine a time in the not-too-distant future in which AGI is firmly established in society and higher education faces the pressing need to reconfigure and reinvent itself.
When It Comes to Critical Thinking, AI Flunks the Test (Gary Smith and Jeffrey Funk, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 12, 2024): Large language models fail to live up to the hype.
Why We Must Resist AI’s Soft Mind Control (Fred Bauer, The Atlantic, March 8, 2024): When the author tried to work out how Google’s Gemini tool thinks, he discovered instead how it wants him to think.
Free Speech and Academic Freedom
The New Campus Fanaticism (Robert S. Huddleston, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 12, 2024): Exclusion, scapegoating, and extremism are taking over.
The Hate-Speech Problem in Campus Protest (Len Gutkin, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 11, 2024): when it comes to extramural faculty speech, an uncouth manner shouldn’t matter — and when it comes to speech protected by the First Amendment, it can’t matter.
DEI Issues
Civil Rights Groups Push Back Against Wave of Anti-DEI Bills (Ryan Quinn, Inside Higher Ed, March 15, 2024): So far this year, at least five state legislatures have passed bills seeking to curtail diversity, equity and inclusion in higher education. This year’s batch may seep more into the classroom.
Conservatives Plot Ways to ‘Take Heads’ and Defeat DEI (Katherine Knott, Inside Higher Ed, March 14, 2024): At an event sponsored by the Heritage Foundation, panelists said that they saw a chance to firmly uproot DEI policies in higher education and other institutions.
Colleges Got Comfortable Talking About Privilege. Now It’s Being Scrutinized (Erin Gretzinger, Chronicle of Higher Education, Marcy 12, 2024): The chief diversity officer at Johns Hopkins Medicine sent out an email that defined privilege. Amid blowback, she apologized. Now she has resigned.
Here Are 3 Ways That Republicans See Campus DEI Efforts as Harmful (Alecia Taylor, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 8, 2024): At a congressional hearing on Thursday, conservative critics made their case against campus diversity programs. Democrats and a DEI supporter pushed back.
Future Imperfect…
Book Bans in US Schools and Libraries Surged to Record Highs in 2023 (Erum Salam, The Guardian, March 14, 2024): Though the list is broad, many of the 4,240 books were targeted because they related to issues of LGBTQ+ communities or race.
For Global Education, the Presidential-Election Rematch Brings a Sense of Déjà Vu (Karin Fischer, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 13, 2024): What a Trump Administration 2.0 could mean for foreign students.
Low Grade? Arizona Bill Would Let Students Allege ‘Political Bias’ (Ryan Quinn, Inside Higher Ed, March 12, 2024): More details on bill reported in last week’s NOTW
At Least Seven Ohio Universities Are Reviewing Race-Based Scholarships After Supreme Court Ruling (Megan Henry, Ohio Capital Journal, March 8, 2024): The University of Akron, the University of Toledo, Cleveland State University, Kent State University, Ohio University, Ohio State University and Youngstown State University all said they are in the process of reviewing their scholarships.
More on Standardized Testing
Here’s What It’s Like to Take the New SAT (Dana Goldstein, New York Times, March 8, 2024): Try your hand at five sample questions.
Extra Credit Reading
Colleges Are Putting Their Futures at Risk (Pamela Paul, New York Times, March 14, 2024): For over a century, an understanding existed between American universities and the rest of the country. Universities educated the nation’s future citizens in whatever ways they saw fit without being subject to the whims of politics or industry. But there is a fear that universities had strayed from their essential duties, imperiling the kind of academic freedom they had enjoyed for decades. [You will certainly want to read in conjunction with Timothy Burke’s critique of Paul, Don’t Pay the Trolls, But Do Cross the Bridge, Eight by Seven, March 14, 2024).]
The Politics of College Choice (Liam Knox, Inside Higher Ed, March 14, 2024): Research shows that students care a great deal about the policies of the state in which they attend college, especially on issues like gun control and abortion.
In Economics, Do We Know What We’re Doing? (Angus Deaton, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 12, 2024): A Nobel Prize winner grows disenchanted.
The End of Disenchantment and the Future of the Humanities (Nicholas Dirks, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 12, 2024): On his father’s journey from farm to church to university.
The Most Confusing, Chaotic College Admissions Season in Years (Oyin Adedoyin and Melissa Korn, Wall Street Journal, March 12, 2024): Changes in the federal financial-aid application, testing requirements and affirmative action plunge applicants and schools into uncertainty; ‘a hot mess.’
Have the Liberal Arts Gone Conservative? (Emma Green, New Yorker, March 11, 2024): The classical-education movement seeks to fundamentally reorient schooling in America. Its emphasis on morality and civics has also primed it for partisan takeover.
On the Bookshelf
Holden Thorp and Buck Goldstein, Our Higher Calling: Rebuilding the Partnership between America and Its Colleges and Universities (University of North Carolina, 2nd. Ed 2024). How can faculty, administrators, governing boards, and other stakeholders address the challenges facing higher education today effectively?
Webinars
“Public Conversation: Does LAS Education Need to be Decolonized?” Thursday, March 21; 9:00 – 10:00 AM EDT (UTC-04:00)
Each month we will be facilitating a 60-minute in-depth discussion around a topic/concern of relevance to the state of LAS education globally. In March, we will explore whether a decolonizing project might be needed for LAS education, what this might entail, and how LAS institutions from outside the ‘Western world’ might already be engaging in decolonizing practices. Join us by registering here.
Have a short article or some news related to teaching and learning at your institution that you’d like to share with colleagues? Send your contribution along to us. Also, please email Colleen Monahan Smith (smith@glca.org) if you have colleagues who would like to receive this weekly report.
Steven Volk (steven.volk@oberlin.edu), Editor
GLCA/GLAA Consortium for Teaching and Learning
Co-Directors:
Lew Ludwig (ludwigl@denison.edu)
Colleen Monahan Smith (smith@glca.org)