Weekly Teaching Tips

If you’re having trouble focusing, you’re not alone. Most of us have been thrown for a loop by the changes unfolding in our lives. We’ve lost familiar routines, we’re isolated; many of us are frightened, and perhaps grieving; colleagues and students are worried about their careers, as well as their health and their families. Even […]

Governor DeSantis recommended on Tuesday that all Florida colleges and universities complete the spring 2020 semester remotely. We may have been expecting this, but most of us are experiencing confusion and even grief as we try to sort out the rest of the term.  Our students will also feel a sense of loss, and the […]

As most of you are aware, all schools in Florida are currently closed, so faculty and students who are parents have lost the structure that supported their academic lives. Teaching and learning with restless children at home will be exceptionally challenging. For many of us, continuing to teach synchronously at a distance may be impossible. […]

Moving Our Teaching to a New Modality On Wednesday, President Thrasher announced that we will shift from in-person to remote classes for at least the two-week period of March 23rd – April 6th. For those of us with limited or no experience teaching online, this may sound daunting. It’s also likely to be unnerving for […]

Just In Case: Adjusting Courses and Communicating with Students Living and working in a hurricane-prone state like Florida, we’re no strangers to campus closures. Over the last three years, we‘ve learned the value of developing contingency plans for our courses, just in case. Right now, COVID-19 is all over the news. Governor DeSantis has said […]

Recovering After Absences You may have noticed sparse attendance in the past couple of weeks. There are plenty of reasons: Students are already feeling overextended, and they often have trouble managing competing priorities. They may stop showing up because they’re stressed. Plus the flu hit hard and early, and other viruses are making the rounds […]

Getting Feedback in Time to Use It Getting useful feedback on teaching can be difficult. In “Everyone Hates Course Evaluations,” Supiano and Berrett summarize three important objections to the system most universities currently use: Research suggests that student evaluations of teaching are prone to bias, especially against faculty of color; students are unlikely to have the […]

Do Our Students See Themselves in Our Courses? Black History Month is a great opportunity to showcase the work of Black scholars and luminaries in each of our disciplines, from entrepreneurship to engineering, from literature to law. Some colleagues choose Black chemists, poets, doctors, sociologists, etc. whose scholarship they admire and highlight their work, names, […]

Formative Feedback In a recent tip, we talked about the importance of practice, but practice alone won’t move students toward mastery; they also need feedback. Practice doesn’t necessarily make perfect—practice makes permanent. Without feedback, students risk inscribing inefficient habits and ineffective approaches. (For example, many of them have practiced mistaken study habits for so long […]

Giving Good Instructions Imagine you’re a nineteen-year-old college student, and your course syllabus contains the following project description: Write a paper on the reason(s) the U.S. invaded Granada and be sure to form conclusions on your own after synthesizing your sources. Was the invasion justified? Why or why not? How did the media treat the […]

What Role Do Questions Play in Your Teaching? The everyday work of a scholar involves posing questions that matter in your discipline. Curiosity is part of the love of your field that got you to where you are today. If you can help your students to see their learning this way, too—as a process of […]

Creating Opportunities for Practice Any effective learning experience provides students with opportunities to develop their knowledge and skills through practice. In some courses, it’s obvious what students should practice: playing the violin, drawing patients’ blood, speaking a language, etc. In other courses, it may be less obvious what students should practice. We may not yet […]