Teaching and Learning
Flipped Classrooms: Can We Skip the Lecture? (Cindy Nebel, The Learning Scientists, July 17, 2025): Some experimental data says that skipping the lecture might be better for students.
More Tips for Preventing AI Misuse in the Classroom (Beth McMurtrie, July 17, 2025): Details approaches adopted by a number of faculty.
The Art of Collaboration: Designing Assignments That Work (Ana Figueroa, Faculty Focus, July 16, 2025): A practical and successful strategy is to design performance tasks using cooperative learning structures deliberately. Cooperative learning structures help students participate equally through simultaneous interactions and collaborative strategies help educators navigate their role as facilitators, guiding and responding rather than lecturing and directing.
How Are Students Really Using AI? (Derek O’Connell, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 14, 2025): Here’s what the data tell us.
Artificial Intelligence and Critical Thinking in Higher Education: Fostering a Transformative Learning Experience for Students (Tina M. Evans, Faculty Focus, July 14, 2025): Teaching students to analyze critically the information generated from AI chatbots will become necessary for a progressing society. Determining fact from fiction will be a skill that dedicated educators will train their students to harness in the work they complete.
Conservative, Liberal Midwest College Students Talk Politics While Practicing Empathy (Catharine Richert, NPR, July 11, 2025): Conservative and liberal students at two small Midwest universities have been meeting every month to talk politics, while practicing listening and avoiding making assumptions about the other side.
Center for Learning and Teaching at Forman Christian College: Report on Free Online Research Methodology Course 2025. The 23-session course was very well received, and with 19,000 unique registrations from 100+ countries of the world, the aggregate registration was colossal— more than 300,000 people. You can find an “Overview” of the course here.
Universities in the Crosshairs
Columbia University on the Cusp of a Deal with Trump Administration, Paying Millions to Unlock Federal Funding (Betsy Klein, CNN, July 12, 2025): Columbia is expected to pay a multimillion-dollar settlement to victims of alleged civil rights violations, implement changes to its diversity, equity and inclusion policies, boost transparency about hiring and admissions efforts, and take other steps to improve security and safety on campus for Jewish students, according to one source familiar with the matter.
Extra Credit Reading
Students Want the Liberal Arts. Administrators, Not So Much (Jennifer Frey, New York Times, July 17, 2025): Students thrive in liberal arts settings, equipping them to fashion meaningful and deeply fulfilling lives.
For Once, Public Confidence in Higher Ed Has Increased (Rick Seltzer, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 16, 2025): The public-polling firm Gallup first asked Americans whether they trust the sector a decade ago. This year, after years of decline, the sector finally gained back some ground.
Three More Campus Leaders Face Congress (Josh Moody, Inside Higher Ed, July 16, 2025): Leaders of CUNY, Georgetown and UC Berkeley testified at the latest campus antisemitism hearing, where they were grilled by Republicans while Democrats took aim at Trump.
The Rise of AI Will Make Liberal Arts Degrees Popular Again. Here’s Why (Jessica Stillman, Inc., July 14, 2025): Here’s an unexpected prediction: With AI taking over more routine business and tech tasks, experts say the value of a liberal arts degree is set to rise.
The Death of Shared Governance (Adrienne Lu, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 11, 2025): When administrators attempt to slash programs and lay off staff, should faculty have a say?
The Trump Staffers Who Set Out to Reshape Their Alma Maters (Emily Davies and Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff, July 11, 2025): Architects of pressure campaigns targeting U-Va. and Harvard were shaped by experiences as ideological minorities in liberal campus communities.
Future Imperfect
Rufo, Shapiro, Others Request New Higher Ed ‘Contract’ (Ryan Quinn, Inside Higher Ed, July 15, 2025): A conservative think tank called on President Trump Tuesday to “draft a new contract” that universities must follow or face “revocation of all public benefit.” Among other things, institutions would have to end “their direct participation in social and political activism,” abolish “DEI bureaucracies,” and publish “complete data on race, admissions, and class rank,” according to the statement put out by the Manhattan Institute.
What Trump’s Bombast Reveals About His Vision for Higher Ed (Sara Custer, Inside Higher Ed, July 15, 2025): This is very much an adversarial relationship where the Trump administration is saying, “Universities and higher education broadly are making America weaker, and therefore we need to bring U.S. higher education to a heel in order to fit with our political vision for what America should be.”
Why Universities Are So Powerless in Their Fight Against Trump (Jason Owen-Smith, Chronicle of Higher Education, July 14, 2025): The administration has turned our institutions’ traditional strengths into paralyzing weaknesses.
Supreme Court Clears the Way for Trump’s Cuts to the Education Department (Abbie VanSickle, New York Times, July 14, 2025): The move by the justices represents an expansion of executive power, allowing President Trump to dismantle the inner workings of a government department.
Florida International University Finalizes Agreement to Assist ICE (Clara-Sophia Daly, Miami Herald, July 12, 2025): Florida International University Police will deputize members of its staff to act as federal immigration officials under a 287(g) agreement.
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)