Weekly Teaching Tips

Assignments: Making the Most of Students’ Time Almost all of us give students assignments of some kind in our courses—from large, multi-stage projects that take a whole semester to complete, down to small, low-stakes assignments that students can do as homework or during class. Sometimes we inherit assignments from a colleague who taught the course […]

The Relationship Between Old Knowledge and New Learning, real learning, is a process of change. When we learn, we change our minds. We develop new skills and new perspectives; we approach problems differently; we make different decisions. We’re building new neural connections, changing our brains. Our courses are opportunities for students to grow: The powerful […]

Truth, Lies, and Critical Thinking When we teach, we strive to equip our students with the knowledge and skills they need, for the future they face. We aspire to help them develop intellectually, professionally, and personally. So as events unfold in our country, in both politics and public health, we are dismayed to see so […]

Support at the Beginning of the Semester Welcome back! We hope you had opportunities to rest during the break, and we look forward to working with you again this semester. While we are pleased to greet the new term and our new students, many of us are also reeling after our first day of classes […]

Spring Faculty Reading Groups & Syllabus Clinics This spring, CAT is offering the following fully online faculty reading groups. Each group will meet once a week for three weeks on Zoom to discuss the books in sections. Each book will be available electronically, so it will be possible to participate from anywhere. We hope you […]

Teaching & Learning in 2020 Congratulations; you made it. Today marks the end of Fall 2020 classes, and only finalsremain. Soon we’ll have a well-deserved and much-needed break—at least from teaching. Faculty and students alike have been commenting that they feel like we’ve been running one long marathon semester since spring. As we reflect on […]

What Students Appreciated in a Year Like No Other Welcome to the fourth year of our Thank-A-Professor Program! Students have submitted hundreds of tributes so far this fall, and their outpouring of gratitude feels especially welcome as this difficult year draws to a close. Students expressed their heartfelt appreciation for the extra time and care […]

What Can We Do About Students’ Motivation? Nobel Laureate Herbert A. Simon insisted that “learning results from what the student does and thinks and only from what the student does and thinks. The teacher can advance learning only by influencing what the student does to learn.” This is why motivation is essential for learning; it […]

Welcome to FSU’s FGen week, which celebrates first-generation college students across the university, including faculty and staff who were first-generation college students . Students who are the first in their family to attend college are pioneers, navigating new territory and making new discoveries. They’ve often overcome serious obstacles on their path to attending FSU and […]

Even in normal circumstances, students can start to fall behind (or even disappear) by this point in a semester. If only a few of our students consistently participate or turn on their cameras, it may be harder than ever to tell whether they’re with us. Especially in an asynchronous course, students may feel like we’re […]

“But I understood it in class!” We hear this all the time from students who are surprised by a lower than expected exam score. Chances are you hear it, too. Variations include: “I studied so hard for the test, and I still got a C! How is that possible?” Obviously, there can be many explanations […]

It’s always illuminating to get students’ feedback on the way we’ve designed our courses: what’s helping them learn, what’s not helping them learn, and what adjustments we could make for the remainder of the term. Just the act of checking in with our students about how the course is going from their perspective shows that […]