Weekly Teaching Tips

Gratitude From Your Students Welcome to the sixth year of our Thank-A-Professor Program, which invites students and alumni to send messages of thanks anonymously to their professors. Students have submitted hundreds of tributes this fall, and we hope reading some of them will make a wonderful start to your Thanksgiving break. We’ll be sending your […]

A Strong Ending to the Semester Somehow the end of the term is upon us already. With only a week and a half of regular classes remaining, we may be tempted to speed up the pace of the class in a scramble to fit in as much content as possible before we part ways with […]

Designing for Better Final Projects It’s always a pleasure to see strong evidence of students’ learning and growth at the end of a semester. Many of us collect a good portion of that evidence in the form of a final project, so the way we design those projects, and guide students through the process of […]

What’s Going on When Students Tune Out? Have you ever felt like your students were bored in class? When students seem disengaged, it’s natural to wonder whether we might be boring them. We might even assume the material under discussion is not challenging enough to be interesting, which could lead us to speed up the […]

Why Sleep Is Important for Learning Have you noticed students missing from your courses, or seeming more anxious or exhausted when they do attend? Both graduate and undergraduate students have mentioned recently that this is a very busy time of the semester. They have midterm exams and projects, and competing demands for their time and […]

What Will Students Learn From Feedback? If you want to get good at playing golf, you probably already know that watching great golfers play won’t be enough. You’ll need to practice golfing yourself in order to develop your skills, and your practice will be much more fruitful if you have guidance and feedback from an […]

How Will We Know Whether Students Are Getting Back on Track? We hope you and your loved ones near and far stayed safe during and after Hurricane Ian. We are grateful for your flexibility and your care for your students during the cancellations and as we resumed classes this week. As the Provost has reminded […]

What Students and Faculty Can Learn from Exams Exams are some of the most common tools for gathering evidence of how much students have learned, but they can also be opportunities to learn, both for students and for us. For students, exams can be opportunities to learn when we assign exam wrappers or other reflections […]

Teaching Students How to Learn Few undergraduates arrive at the university with a sophisticated portfolio of study strategies. Students may think learning mostly means memorizing, so they will spend hours going over notes and re-reading (or highlighting every line of) their books. Before they arrive in our classrooms, many of our students have had only […]

Making the Most of Class Time One of the most common topics our colleagues inquire about is how to spend class time effectively. There are many ways to get students engaged in learning during class, and deciding how to make the most of their time and attention involves reflecting on what they most need to […]

Connecting Old Knowledge and New The book How Learning Works (a frequent CAT reading group selection) begins with this fundamental principle: Learning must be built on prior knowledge. When we learn, we are “interpreting incoming information and…perceptions through the lens of…existing knowledge, beliefs, and assumptions.” To learn effectively, students must connect what they learn to […]

Guiding Students’ Preparation for Class The beginning of a new semester is a great time to help our students develop good habits that will make their learning experiences productive. Coming to class prepared helps them participate more fully and learn more deeply from in-class activities and discussions. Though reading, watching videos, or doing other preparation […]