Weekly Teaching Tips

Starting with What Students Know Welcome back! We hope the first few days of class went smoothly and that the semester is off to a promising start. Drop/add ends at 11:59 p.m. on Monday, so rosters will stabilize soon. You’re probably already getting to know your students, and they are getting to know you and […]

Looking Ahead to Finals, Feedback, and Spring Congratulations to you on the last day of classes! You’ve led and inspired your students and facilitated their development. We hope exams and final projects go smoothly and that final grades show that your students have learned and grown in the ways you wanted them to do. In […]

Sharing Thanks from Your Students It’s that time of year! As we’ve done each fall since 2017, we invited students to express their gratitude for you and your teaching. The outpouring of appreciation was just as moving as ever, so we want to share some of the highlights. We’ll be sending individual letters enclosing these […]

Connecting Attendance and Learning At this point in the semester, you may be noticing an increase in absences or missing assignments. There are plenty of reasons: Students may be feeling overextended, and they often have trouble managing competing priorities. They may stop showing up because they’re feeling intimidated by the class. Viruses are making the […]

Inspiration for Great Teaching We’re dedicating today’s message to beloved author and educator Ken Bain, who was the founding director of the Center for Teaching Excellence at Vanderbilt University and the president of the Best Teachers Institute. When we learned of his passing last month, we wanted to honor his life and work and share […]

Planning for Successful Final Projects Picture this: It’s December. Students have submitted their final projects, whatever form those take in your course, and you’re reading through them. You feel delighted (or relieved) because so many projects meet or exceed your expectations, and because you see evidence that students have done so much of the learning […]

Why Errors Lead to Insight To develop as thinkers, students need to grapple with ambiguity, attempt to solve complex problems, and grow more comfortable with a learning process that includes some struggle. Unfortunately, many students have been conditioned by their prior learning experiences to fear failure and to avoid revealing ignorance. Unsurprisingly, that tends to […]

Designing for Drive 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 “influences the direction, intensity, […]

Midsemester Slump? Time for a Refresh From what we’re hearing, students are in the midst of a “midsemester crunch,” meaning many of them have been busy with midterm exams and projects. This period of increased work in the middle of the term can deplete many students’ resources. It’s common for them to experience a midsemester […]

Checking In at Midsemester We can’t believe it’s almost midterm already. Where did the semester go? For students, exams and assignments may be piling up, so they could be getting overwhelmed. If you haven’t already, it’s a good time to check in with your students, to learn how they’re doing at this point in the […]

Planning for Participation Many of us use some form of class discussion in our teaching, likely with varying results. Sometimes class discussion is invigorating, with many students participating, making substantive contributions, and building on one another’s ideas. Other times, getting students to participate at all feels like pulling teeth, or we notice that although a […]

Do Your Students Know How They’re Doing? By this point in the semester, students in most courses will have received some feedback on their progress. This might take the form of a few smaller graded assessments like quizzes or reading responses, or maybe they’ve already finished the first exam or project. It’s important that students […]