Teaching and Learning
Teaching Tip: Successfully Flip Your Classroom (Ashley Mowreader, Inside Higher Ed, October 20, 2023): Surveys show students want more variation and active learning in the classroom. One popular strategy for instructors—which has grown simpler as digital course offerings have become more accessible—is the flipped classroom.
Words Matter: The Art of Effective Classroom Communication (Faculty Focus Live, Episode 70): Techniques to help strengthen communication in the classroom and with students. 22 min. podcast.
Classroom Walls Are Shifting (Beth McMurtrie, Chronicle of Higher Education, October 18, 2023): Professors are open to online instruction – but what form is best?
Make your Teaching the Cynosure of Attention (J. Naga Vishnu Vardhan and Devidutta Das, Faculty Focus, October 18, 2023): How to hold students’ attention for an extended period. (Raise your hand if you had to look up “cynosure”!)
How to Hold a Better Class Discussion (Jay Howard, Chronicle of Higher Education): Good discussions involve taking risks, by the students and the professor. This comprehensive guide is filled with tips to help improve yours. (Note: previously published and still very useful.)
EF + Math – Interdisciplinary Teams Co-Creating Evidence-Based Approaches (Maxim Vickerie and Adam Smith, The Learning Scientists, October 13, 2023): Podcast (44 minutes) detailing a collaborative method to improve math learning through increasing executive functioning skills.
Interested in ePortfolios as a high-impact pedagogical approach? The International Journal of ePortfolio encourages the study of practices and pedagogies associated with ePortfolio in educational settings.
A.I. in the Classroom
Leveraging AI in a Research-Driven Way: Augmenting Feedback During Spaced Retrieval Practice Using ChatGPT (Joshua Ling, The Learning Scientists, October 19, 2023): Discusses a free web app (Podsie) that allows teachers to provide personalized, automated spiraled review for each student.
The Trouble With AI Writing Detection (Elizabeth Steere, Inside Higher Ed, October 18, 2023): The author recommends instructors be aware of the messages students are receiving and the types of tools they are using to rephrase AI-generated text.
Speech Issues on Campus
The crisis in Israel-Palestine is heartbreaking on more levels than can be counted. It has, unfortunately but unsurprisingly, reverberated negatively on college campuses. Here are a few of the many articles and guides that can help us think about the issue from a campus-speech perspective: PEN America, Guidance on Campus Free Speech, Amid Controversies and Protests Related to Israel and Gaza. (You may find their Campus Free Speech Guide useful, as well.) In his opinion piece, When Commitments to Free Speech and Against Antisemitism Collide (Inside Higher Ed, October 17, 2023), Jeffrey Herbst argues that we need to be asking different questions as conflicts around antisemitism and free speech continue to roil college campuses. Finally, for some positive examples, in Coming Together Over the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, (Inside Higher Ed, October 20, 2023), Jessica Blake and Johanna Alonso trace the ways that some university officials are fostering dialogue and compassion among students on campus as the Mideast crisis deepens.
The Long Read
Metacognition and Critical Thinking: Using ChatGPT-Generated Responses as Prompts for Critique in a Problem-Solving Workshop (Betty Exintaris, Nilushi Karunaratne, and Elizabeth Yuriev, Journal of Chemical Education, July 24, 2023). Students analyzed several problems, including some that were generated by ChatGPT which contained some errors and were discoverable as students worked through each step and analyzed the thinking behind them.
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)