Teaching and Learning
Working the Gardens of Our Classrooms (Bonni Stachowiak, Teaching in Higher Ed, August 1, 2024: 42-minute podcast featuring James Lang reading his article, “Working the Gardens of Our Classrooms.”
Rethinking Student Engagement (Mary C. Kern and Terri R. Kurtzberg, Inside Higher Ed, July 31, 2024): Students have changed, and instructors should reconsider their assumptions about what engagement means.
Can College Students Learn to Debate Without Getting Heated? (Kate Rix, Higher Ed Dive, July 30 2024): Argument mapping helps students visualize other points of view. Some professors are using the technique to help them build critical thinking skills.
How Colleges Can Become ‘Living Labs’ for Combating Climate Change (Caroline Preston, Hechinger Report, July 30, 2024): Professors are increasingly combining classroom instruction with efforts to ‘green’ campuses.
Academic Freedom in the Classroom: Results from a New Survey of Faculty Members (Ess Pokornowski and Ioana G. Hulbert, Ithaka S-R, July 25, 2024): Most instructors do not feel unsafe teaching sensitive topics.
How to Create a Syllabus: Advice Guide (Kevin Gannon, Chronicle of Higher Education): There’s never a bad time to re-examine and rethink how to write your syllabus. This guide walks you through everything you need to know, with specific tips and strategies, to craft an effective syllabus. Central takeaway: AI is everywhere, you can’t neutralize it, so lean in.
Six Strategies for Effective Learning: Materials for Teachers and Students (The Learning Scientists): Download materials on spaced practice, retrieval practice, elaboration, interleaving, concrete examples, and dual coding.
All Things AI
When AI Is Everywhere, What Should Instructors Do Next? (Beth McMurtrie, Chronicle of Higher Education, August 1, 2024): McMurtrie reports on the “Teaching and Learning With AI” conference organized by the University of Central Florida. Here are some resources cited at the conference and elsewhere:
“AI Hacks for Educators: Practical Tips to Save Time by Using GenAI,” an open-source, downloadable guide written by Kevin Yee, Laurie Uttich, Eric Main, and Elizabeth Giltner of UCF.
Teaching With AI: A Practical Guide to a New Era of Human Learning, by José Antonio Bowen and C. Edward Watson. You can also find AI prompts and further detail on AI tools on Bowen’s website.
“Teaching Repository for AI-Infused Learning.” This UCF project is just getting off the ground. If you’d like to submit a project, see the website for details.
“Generative AI Product Tracker,” by Ithaka S+R, can help you stay on top of the tools.
“Syllabi Policies for AI-Generative Tools.” This crowdsourced document was created by Lance Eaton at College Unbound.
Our Responsibility to Teach AI to Students (Ray Schroeder, Inside Higher Ed, July 31, 2024): Put aside your concerns about student use of generative AI in your classes. It is our urgent responsibility to teach students now how to use the technology in their discipline—their careers depend on us. [You might want to read this in conjunction with Not So Fast on Teaching AI ‘Skills’ (John Warner, Inside Higher Ed, August 1, 2024): Preparing students for the future means thinking deeply about the questions new technologies raise.]
Students and Professors Believe AI Will Aid Cheating (Lauren Coffey, Inside Higher Ed, July 29, 2024): A new survey finds students believe it’s already easier to cheat, thanks to generative artificial intelligence—and instructors think it will get worse in coming years.
Speech Issues on Campus
College Student Views on Free Expression and Campus Speech 2024: A Look at Key Trends in Student Speech Since 2016 (Knight Foundation-IPSOS, July 2024): The share of students who feel their freedom of speech is secure has plummeted by 30 percentage points since 2016, to just 43 percent, a Knight Foundation-Ipsos study found. And there’s reason to believe that could overstate how students feel today — the survey was conducted before protests over the Israel-Hamas war rocked campuses this spring.
Fallout from Spring Protests
Indiana U Board Doubled Down on Protest Restrictions (Ryan Quinn, Inside Higher Ed, July 30, 2024): The Indiana University Board of Trustees has approved a divisive policy expanding restrictions enacted against a pro-Palestinian encampment at the Bloomington campus in the spring.
Extra Credit Reading
A Conservative Professor on Academe’s Political Conformity (Mark Moyar, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 30, 2024): A professor of military history at Hillsdale College argues that decades of ideological homogeneity have hurt everyone.
Varying Degrees 2024: New America’s Eighth Annual Survey on Higher Education (Sophie Nguyen, Rachel Fishman, and Olivia Cheche, New America, July 30, 2024): Only 35% of Americans agree that higher education in America is fine.
Actually, There Are More Conservatives on the Faculty Than You Think, Study Finds (Alex Walters, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 26, 2024): In previous research on professors’ politics, participants would categorize or describe themselves in surveys. A new study used their social-media activity.
Workshops and Presentations
Are you concerned about the rising mental health challenges among your college-age students? Have you noticed an increase in depression and anxiety in your classroom? The GLCA’s Consortium for Teaching and Learning (CTL) is sponsoring a presentation on “Strategies to Support Student Mental Health in the Classroom” on Wednesday, August 14 at Noon EDT by Angie Roles (Associate Professor of Biology) and Jan Miyake (Professor of Music Theory) at Oberlin College. If you have been thinking of ways to structure your classroom spaces in ways that can help students to manage these challenges and thus improve their learning capacity while also building resilience for future challenges, then this workshop is for you!
Sign up here for this online event (a Zoom link will be sent the day before). We look forward to seeing you later this summer!
The AAC&U is offering a series of four workshops on Tuesdays from September 3-24 featuring current-to-the-moment information regarding teaching with generative AI and its possibilities for higher education. Among the topics covered: Working with AI for Teaching and Learning; Cheating, Detection, and Policy; Assignments and Writing; and AI to Improve Classes and Courses. More information and to register available 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)