Teaching and Learning
The Essential Skills Students Need to Acquire in College (Steven Mintz, Inside Higher Ed, April 28, 2023): Students don’t learn what they’re not taught.
Readying Students for the AI Revolution (Molly Vollman Makris, Nate Michelson, and Ryan Coughlan, Inside Higher Ed, April 27, 2023): Writers recommend three pedagogical practices to prepare students for coming changes in the workforce.
Whole-brain Teaching Strategies for the Diverse College Classroom (Noorina Mira, Faculty Focus, April 26, 2023): Often, educators fail to understand the crucial and circular cause-effect relationship between emotions, cognition, and academic success.
Professors Can Make a Difference in Promoting Students’ Success (Colleen Flaherty, Inside Higher Ed, April 24, 2023): How can professors support students, beyond engaging them in more active learning? This infographic offers six ideas.
Engagement: The Secret Sauce to Effective Faculty Professional Development (Dimple J. Martin, Faculty Focus, April 24, 2023): The author discusses the ten components of “engagement” that he stresses within faculty professional development scenarios.
AI, Tech, and Higher Ed
How Professors’ Tech Paranoia Hinders Higher Ed (Mark Garrett Cooper, Chronicle of Higher Education, April 25, 2023): Rejecting innovation won’t convince an increasingly skeptical society of our value.
Generative AI Is Only as Good as the Prompt You Give It (Ray Schroeder, Inside Higher Ed, April 26, 2023): It is ironic that much of the early conversation about ChatGPT had to do with the demise of writing skills when, in fact, the very success of generative-AI searches is determined by the quality of precisely written prompts.
Quick Poll Results: Adopting and Adapting to Generative AI in Higher Ed Tech (Mark McCormack, Educause Research Notes, April 17, 2019): Attitudes toward generative AI have improved over just the past few months, and these technologies are becoming more widely used in day-to-day institutional work.
ChatGPT in Education: The Pros, Cons and Unknowns of Generative AI (Suchi Rudra, EdTech, March 31, 2023): The remarkable language modeler took the world by storm late last year, but how will it really change things in education?
Artificial Intelligence, ChatGPT, and Academic Integrity: The Implications for Higher Education (Dalhousie University Faculty of Open Learning and Career Development, April 14, 2023): 90-minute video from Dalhousie faculty.
Student Mental Health
Redefining ‘Mental Health’ for Today’s College Student (Doug Lederman, Inside Higher Ed, April 25, 2023): Feeling distress isn’t itself a sign of trouble; inability to manage it is. A panel of experts discusses this and other pressing issues. 40-minute podcast.
Academic Freedom
Making the Case for Academic Freedom and Institutional Autonomy in a Challenging Political Environment: A Resource Guide for Campus Leaders (American Council on Education and Pen America, 2023): PEN America has tracked nearly 300 bills, introduced in 44 state legislatures, which have sought to restrict the teaching of such topics. Nearly 100 bills have specifically targeted colleges and universities.
The Gravest Threats to Campus Speech Come from States, Not Students (Christina Paxson, New York Times, April 21, 2023). The president of Brown University argues that many states are “mounting a direct and dangerous attack on America’s longstanding commitment to free expression, democracy and education.
On the Bookshelf
Gayle Greene, Immeasurable Outcomes: Teaching Shakespeare in the Age of the Algorithm (Johns Hopkins University Press) provides the backdrop for Johann N. Neem, The Beloved, Besieged Humanities Classroom: Education Reformers Have Killed the Joy of Learning. Let’s Recapture It (Chronicle of Higher Education, April 21, 2023).
Annie Abrams, Shortchanged: How Advanced Placement Cheat Students (Johns Hopkins University Press): Review by Scott Jaschik in A Brutal Critique of AP Courses (Inside Higher Ed, April 24, 2023).
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 Charla White (white@glca.org) if you have colleagues who would like to receive this weekly report.
GLCA/GLAA Consortium for Teaching and Learning
Co-Directors:
Steven Volk (steven.Volk@oberlin.edu)
Colleen Monahan Smith (smith@glca.org)
Charla White (white@glca.org)