Teaching and Learning
Retrieval Practice in Undergraduate Medical Education (Cindy Nebel, Learning Scientists, April 12, 2024): More evidence on retrieval practices, this time among undergraduate pre-med students.
More on How – and Whether – to Develop Students’ Study Skills (Beth McMurtrie, April 11, 2024: Faculty weigh in on the question of whether it is advisable to spend part of a class teaching students how to take notes or study for an exam.
What Does an A Really Mean? (Beckie Supiano, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 10, 2024): We asked professors, students, and high-school counselors.
The Courage to Piece Back the Broken Paradox in Higher Education (Long Le, Faculty Focus, April 10, 2024): Our inner work can change the outer world. As Parker Palmer argued, when you begin to work on your inner life, you become aware of a “tragic gap” between your integrity and the way your university operates.
Beyond One-Size-Fits-All: Harnessing Assignment Menus for Student Choice in Learning (Michele Poulos, Faculty Focus, April 8, 2024): Assignment menus are a type of differentiation strategy that can be used for whole class assignments and projects as well as individual assignments. They allow students to make decisions about how they will meet the assignment requirements. By offering built-in choices, students take a more active part in learning.
A New Look at an Old Question: Does Active Learning Beat Lecture? (Michelle Miller, R3-Substack, April 1, 2024): Not on its own, but when it’s timed in the right way, the combination of the two is best of all.
All Things AI
How Open Should Teachers Be About Using AI? (Steve Baule, Inside Higher Ed, April 11, 2024): A lot has been written about the impact of AI on student work, but relatively little has focused on the role it should play for instructors.
Higher Education Is Most Trusted Source to Handle AI (Lauren Coffey, Inside Higher Ed, April 9, 2024): Nearly half (49 percent) of respondents said they trust higher education institutions “somewhat” or “a lot” to use AI responsibly—identical to the share that said the same about healthcare organizations. They inched out law enforcement, which 45 percent cited as responsible users of AI. [Not to editorialize, but one could equally report that a majority of those who responded in this survey don’t trust any institution to handle AI responsibly – sv]
What’s Off Limits From AI? (John Warner, Inside Higher Ed, April 9, 2024): Are we together on this, or is it just anything goes?
Three Recent Studies on Student Learning with Generative AI (Derek Bruff, Agile Learning, April 1, 2024): The author examines AI’s effect on student agency, creativity, understanding of storytelling, and writing self-efficacy.
Free Speech and Academic Freedom
Jewish Faculty Reject the Weaponization of Antisemitism (23 signers, Columbia Spectator, April 10, 2024: “As faculty, we dedicate ourselves and our classrooms to keeping every student safe from real harm, harassment, and discrimination. We commit to helping them learn to experience discomfort and even confrontation as part of the process of skill and knowledge acquisition—and to help them realize that ideas we oppose can be contested without being suppressed.”
DEI Issues
Why I’m a Convert to Diversity Statements (Suzanne Penuel, Inside Higher Ed, April 10, 2024): Diversity statements proved surprisingly helpful to our red-state university search committee, according to the author. [You might want to read this along with Mandatory DEI Statements Are Ideological Pledges of Allegiance (Randall Kennedy, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 3, 2024), who argues that “many, many academics hate them.”]
Standardized Admissions Testing
Following Yale and Brown, Harvard Returns to Requiring Standardized Tests (Francie Diep, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 11, 2024): The university makes similar arguments as its peers about how standardized-test requirements help disadvantaged applicants.
Future Imperfect…
The Lunacy of Indiana’s ‘Intellectual Diversity’ Law (Eric Sentell, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 10, 2024): How does a professor foster “a culture of free inquiry, free expression, and intellectual diversity” while also satisfying the requirement to teach “a variety of political or ideological frameworks”?
Louisiana Bill Would Allow Governor to Select Higher Ed Board Chairs (Natalie Schwartz, Higher Ed Dive, April 9, 2024): The proposal comes as lawmakers across the nation look to gain more power over college governance.
Extra Credit Reading
‘I Cannot Even Buy a Used Car’: Readers Weigh In on Higher Ed’s Compensation Practices (Chronicle of Higher Education, April 10, 2024): Stagnant salaries, opaque raise processes, and other indignities.
Campus Conundrums (Steven Mintz, Inside Higher Ed, April 9, 2024): Critical reflections on some of higher ed’s hottest topics.
The Gutting of the Liberal Arts (David C.K. Curry, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 8, 2024): At public comprehensive universities like SUNY-Potsdam, the humanities are being hollowed out.
Liberals Must Answer the Right’s Attacks on America’s Colleges (Perry Bacon Jr., Washington Post, April 8, 2024): Over the past decade, the Republican Party has become even more fixated on what’s happening on campuses. Bashing colleges and enacting policies to constrain them weren’t hallmarks of being a George W. Bush-era Republican politician.
Latinos in Higher Education: 2024 Compilation of Fast Facts (Excelencia in Higher Education): Includes fact that 81% of Latino students work 20 hours or more per week to help pay for college.
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)