Teaching and Learning
Why One Professor Urged Students to Make a Friend in Her Course (Beckie Supiano, Chronicle of Higher Education, August 24, 2023): Learning is social, and science is collaborative. “The reality is that science is a team sport,” according to Martha Mullally. “And the best, most important, most impactful science is done in big groups of people.”
Five Ways to Help Your Students Become Better Critical Thinkers (Louis E. Newman, Faculty Focus, August 23, 2023): Most students arrive on campus unaware that a primary goal of college is to mold them into critical thinkers. Most of us assume, as I did, that students will internalize essential habits of mind just by doing their coursework. While no doubt some will, many will not.
The Missed Opportunity of Office Hours (Beckie Supiano, Chronicle of Higher Education, August 21, 2023): Meeting with a professor can help students learn, or even change their lives. So why don’t more students do it?
Students Need Social-Emotional Learning, Too (Maureen Chapman and James Simons, Inside Higher Ed, August 22, 2023): Elementary and secondary educators increasingly prioritize SEL. Higher ed should take note.
Using Memes as a Teaching Tool (Carolina Kuepper-Tetzel, Learning Scientists, August 17, 2023): Content-relevant memes, potentially distracting, can be used as a teaching tool when used thoughtfully.
Measuring and Promoting Thriving in College (Colleen Flaherty, Inside Higher Ed, July 13, 2023): A long-running research project helps college and university professionals understand the five key components of student thriving – and how to set conditions for thriving in their campuses.
A.I. and Higher Ed
How Teachers and Students Feel About A.I. (Natasha Singer, New York Times, August 24, 2023): Professors, and high school and college students report on their experiences using A.I. chatbots for teaching and learning.
Can Oxford and Cambridge Save Harvard from ChatGPT? (Adrian Wooldridge, Bloomberg, August 23, 2023): Their time-tested tutorial system offers top US universities a way to blunt AI cheating and revive real learning.
Free Speech and Higher Ed
No, There’s No Free Speech Crisis (Elizabeth Niehaus, Inside Higher Ed, August 24, 2023): The ‘speech crisis’ narrative is incorrect, even as it risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy – and even as lawmakers use it to hammer higher ed.
Extra Credit Reading
Is West Virginia U’s Plan to Cut World Languages Another Blow for International Education? (Karin Fischer, Chronicle of Higher Education, August 23, 2023): The events at WVU are the latest in a troubling constellation of data points for international education.
The Most Disrespected Document in Higher Education (Ian Bogost, The Atlantic, August 21, 2023): The college syllabus is dead.
Let’s Stop Pretending College Degrees Don’t Matter (Ben Wildavsky, New York Times, August 21, 2023): The economic advantage of getting a college degree remains at just about an all-time high when compared with the average earnings of Americans with only a high-school diploma.
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)