Teaching and Learning
Challenging the Transactional Mindset (John Warner, Inside Higher Ed, September 5, 2024): Students struggle with agency. Without it, it’s hard to accomplish anything, learning-wise.
Thinking Is Hard (Althea Kaminske, Learning Scientists, September 5, 2024): Understanding that thinking in general, let alone thinking critically and learning, is resource-demanding is useful for reframing conversations around education.
Cultivating Hope and Action Beyond Grades (Bonni Stachowiak, Teaching in Higher Ed, September 5, 2024): Josh Eyler, the author of the recent book, Failing Our Future: How Grades Harm Students, and What We Can Do About It (Johns Hopkins, 2024) discusses how to help students learn to ask questions that are meaningful to them. (48-min. podcast)
Voices of Student Success: Addressing Student Protests With a First-Year Seminar (Ashley Mowreader, Inside Higher Ed, September 4, 2024): A conversation with John Gardner, one of the professors who helped create the first-year seminar at USC and founder of the John N. Gardner Institute for Excellence in Undergraduate Education, to reflect on past protests and share the importance of belonging in the first-year experience.
Teaching English in a Chinese Way (Xinqiang Li, Inside Higher Ed, September 4, 2024): Many academics criticize traditional lectures as being too passive and old-fashioned, but they actually help enhance pedagogical diversity.
Can Colleges Do Without Deadlines? (Jessica Winter, New Yorker, September 3, 2024): Since COVID, many professors have become more flexible about due dates. But some teachers believe that the way to address student anxiety is more deadlines, not fewer.
We Want Every Major To Be a Climate Major (Anya Kamenetz, Hechinger Report, August 28, 2024): How climate change and environmental sustainability are finding their way into more places across higher ed curricula.
Teaching Gen Z (Chronicle of Higher Education): The CHE’s collection of recent articles on the Gen Z student mind-set.
All Things AI
Here are the slides from the CTL’s August 28 presentation on AI, No Robot Left Behind: AI and Our Fall Classes, hosted by Lew Ludwig and featuring Alexis Hart (Allegheny) and Caitlyn Deeter (Rollins). Lew offers a useful compendium of other AI guides and resources here.
The Imperfect Tutor: Grading, Feedback and AI (Patricia Taylor, Inside Higher Ed, September 6, 2024): The author found using AI takes more time and creates more problems than not if instructors want students to get meaningful feedback on their work.
Post-Apocalyptic Education (Ethan Mollick, Oneusefulthing.org, August 30, 2024): We know that almost three-quarters of teachers are already using AI for work, but we have just started to learn the most effective ways for teachers to use AI.
Does A.I. Really Encourage Cheating in Schools? (Jay Caspian Kang, New Yorker, August 30, 2024): New technologies are raising suspicions about students’ work, but the controversy – like so many others swirling around American classrooms – misses the point of what we want our kids to learn.
Mental Health
Slides and resources from the CTL’s August 14 workshop on Strategies to Support Student Mental Health in the Classroom led by Jan Miyake and Angie Roles (both at Oberlin) can be found here.
Speech Issues and the Academy
Harvard Professors Protest Restrictions on Protests – With Chalk (Ryan Quinn, Inside Higher Ed, September 6, 2024): Five Harvard University professors wielded chalk on campus Tuesday in protest of the institution’s new policy banning chalking and other expressive activities.
Can You Teach Free Speech? These Colleges Are Trying (Christa Dutton, Chronicle of Higher Education, September 3, 2024): After unrest on campuses in the last academic year, more colleges are discussing how to integrate civic dialogue into the curriculum.
More on Academic Boycotts
What Is at Stake in an Academic Boycott? (Cary Nelson, Inside Higher Ed, September 6, 2024): The movement to boycott Israeli universities puts academic freedom at risk.
Affirmative Action
An Early Look at Diversity Post-Affirmative Action (Liam Knox, Inside Higher Ed, September 6, 2024): Colleges are slowly releasing demographic data for the Class of 2028, giving a glimpse of the Supreme Court ruling’s impact on racial diversity. The results are decidedly mixed.
How the US Supreme Court’s Affirmative Action Ruling Unleashed Anti-DEI Cases (Lauren Aratani, September 6, 2024): Activists against diversity, equity and inclusion feel the 6-3 conservative majority will aid workplace lawsuits.
UNC Shared Enrollment Data for First Post-Affirmative Action Class. What Does It Show? (Korie Dean, The News & Observer, September 5, 2024): The University of North Carolina flagship said the share of Black students in the class of 2028 decline from 8 to 5 percent from the previous year.
At 2 Elite Colleges, Shifts in Racial Enrollment After Affirmative Action Ban (Anemona Hartocollis and Stephanie Saul, New York Times, August 30, 2024): Amherst College and Tufts University saw shifts in the racial makeup of students after a Supreme Court decision ending affirmative action. The percentage of Black students entering Amherst this fall dropped to 3 percent from 11 percent last year,
Campus Protests and the New School Year
New Rules and Familiar Challenges as Antiwar Protesters Return to Campuses (Katherine Mangan, September 5, 2024): Rallies and demonstrations are again testing administrators’ ability to decipher between antisemitism and free speech. A new guide developed by scholars aims to help.
The University of Michigan’s Assault on Truth (Silke-Maria Weineck, Chronicle of Higher Education, September 3, 2024): College leaders crack down on protests – and lie about it.
In Preparing for Protests, Are Campuses Going Too Far? (Lisa Tolin, PEN America, August 28, 2024): All too often, universities have appeared to be enacting double standards, clamping down on pro-Palestinian speech more than speech on other issues.
Extra Credit Reading
The Professoriate’s Politics Problem (Chronicle of Higher Education, September 4, 2024): Eleven scholars on politics, partisanship, and the professoriate.
Encouraging Student Voting (Ashley Mowreader, Inside Higher Ed, September 3, 2024): Ahead of the 2024 presidential election, colleges, community organizations and student advocates are looking to boost on-campus civic engagement through voter registration and participation initiatives.
I’m a College President and I Hope My Campus Is Even More Political This Year (Michael S. Roth, New York Times, September 2, 2024): The president of Wesleyan University argues for the importance of understanding colleges and universities as environments in which the student develop character traits that would make them better citizens.
On the Bookshelf
Cass R. Sunstein, Campus Free Speech: A Pocket Guide (Harvard, 2024): Sunstein presents dozens of contentious free speech case studies. Review in Cass Sunstein Wants to Help Universities Navigate Free Speech Conflicts (Johana Alonso, Inside Higher Ed, September 3, 2024).
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)