Teaching and Learning
Changing Your Teaching Takes More than a Recipe (Beckie Supiano, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 9, 2023): Professors have been urged to adopt more effective practices. Why are their results so mixed?
In Defense of Bad Readers (Steven Mintz, Inside Higher Ed, March 9, 2023): Shouldn’t those of us who don’t teach in a lit department use more fiction in our classes?
A University-Wide Language for Learning (Beckie Supiano, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 9, 2023): Reports on Shaun Vecera’s initiative at the University of Iowa which focuses on mind-set, metacognition, and memory to help transfer skills across courses and from the university to a career.
4 Questions to Ask to Promote Student Learning (JT Torres, Inside Higher Ed, March 8, 2023): Applying a growth mind-set-by-design approach encourages students to leave the classroom with a sense of agency.
Protocol for Advancing Inclusive Teaching Efforts – PAITE (Tracie Addy, Associate Dean of Teaching and Learning, Lafayette College): Dr. Addy informs of the publication of an article describing the development of PATIE, an observation protocol that provides instructors with formative feedback on their implementation of various inclusive teaching approaches. It can be found here. Further, she will run a free virtual training session of PAITE on April 3, 3:00-3:30 Eastern, via Zoom. You can register here.
Students Talking (Heather Hewett, Inside Higher Ed, March 8, 2023): The author argues that classrooms are filled with students who need to think and talk about gender violence, and professors have a unique opportunity to help that happen.
Can Video Games Provide Meaningful Learning Experiences? (Steven Mintz, Inside Higher Ed, March 7, 2023): What video games can teach us about instructional design and educational psychology.
ChatGPT
The False Promise of ChatGPT (Noam Chomsky, Ian Roberts, and Jeffrey Watumull, The New York Times, March 8, 2023): However useful these programs may be in some narrow domains, we know from the science of linguistics and the philosophy of knowledge that they differ profoundly from how humans reason and use language.
ChatGPT is Everywhere (Beth McMurtrie, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 6, 2023): Love it or hate it, academics can’t ignore the already pervasive technology.
The Chronicle of Higher Education sponsored a webinar on ChatGPT on March 8. The hour-long event contained a lot of useful information and resources. You can access the archived version of the event here.
Student Mental Health
Academic: What Went Up Now Comes Down (Timothy Burke, Substack, March 9, 2023): The Swarthmore history prof has a lot of smart things to say about the student “mental health crisis.” Among others: “… the one helpful thing we could do is start being honest about the future and its challenges—to have career centers that talk frankly about what work has become, to have therapists who acknowledge the wider contexts, to have leaders who are willing to talk about how broken our civic and political institutions have become…”
Higher Ed
College Politically Engages Students But Doesn’t Make Them More Liberal (Laura Spitalniak, Higher Ed Dive, March 3, 2023): People who attend college are slightly less likely to be politically moderate than those that don’t — but higher education affects men and women differently, according to peer-reviewed research published in PLOS One, an open-access journal.
DEI and Academic Freedom
Lawmakers Expand Their Assault on Colleges’ DEI Efforts (Adrienne Lu, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 9, 2023): State lawmakers in 13 states have introduced at least 21 bills since December that aim to restrict colleges’ efforts to improve diversity, equity, and inclusion, a Chronicle analysis has found.
Diversity Statements Are Under Fire. Here’s What They Are and How They’re Used (Megan Zahneis, Chronicle of Higher Education, March 7, 2023): The practice is intended to gauge the attitudes of potential employees toward issues of diversity, and to ensure new hires are committed to recruiting, and working with, a diverse student population. Diversity statements can also ensure that the extra service burdens sometimes borne by scholars of color don’t go unnoticed.
The latest Academic Freedom Index (2023) has found that “academic freedom is in retreat for over 50% of the world’s population,” including in the United States, with gains registered in only 5 small countries.
How Ed Tech Can Worsen Racial Inequality (Javeria Salman, Hechinger Report, March 3, 2023): Because ed tech sometimes reflects the biases of its designers and society, careless expansion of tech tools into the classroom can exacerbate the discrimination Black and Brown students face.
Global Course Connections Program: Connecting Courses Internationally
A GLCA/GLAA webinar last month featured three pairs of faculty who have taught a connected course through the program. You can access a recording of the session here. If you have questions or want to know more about getting involved with the Global Course Connections program, please contact Simon Gray (gray@glca.org).
Webinars
Lessons Learned from Re-Engaging Students (Chronicle of Higher Education): March 14, 2023, 2:00 PM Eastern. Classroom disengagement hurts student performance and faculty morale alike. A panel of experts discusses strategies to prevent this from happening. Register here.
From Grades to Growth: Ungrading and Alternative Assessments (Top Hat): March 23, 2023, 2:00 PM Eastern. Jesse Strommel will explore what “ungrading” means, along with approaches to assessment that motivate students. Register here.
“What Works Conference” at Kenyon
The Center for Innovative Pedagogy at Kenyon College invites presentations on teaching and learning for the 2023 What Works virtual conference, to be held the week of May 30-June 2, 2023. They are considering all proposals that would apply to undergraduate education at a small college or university, but we especially want to encourage proposals in three areas:
- collaboration between faculty and staff to support student learning
- new applications of educational technology
- courses that employ pedagogies of diversity, equity and inclusion
Proposals are being accepted at https://forms.gle/C7rRj9aQutzRQMWV6 . The deadline to submit has been extended to March 22. Please feel free to contact Joe Murphy (murphyjm@kenyon.edu) or Alex Alderman (alderman1@kenyon.edu) to discuss your ideas for a session!
What’s On Your Bookshelf? Are you reading something (higher ed related or not) that you would like to recommend to your colleagues? Let us know!
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)