Weekly Teaching Tips

Part 2: Learning from Bob Moses To celebrate Black History Month this year, we’re featuring two transformative Black educators who passed in 2021. Last week, we shared teaching advice from author, teacher, scholar, and activist bell hooks, and this week we’re featuring Bob Moses, who was a teacher, civil rights leader, and founder and president […]

Part 1: Learning from bell hooks To celebrate Black History Month this year, we’d like to feature two transformative Black educators who passed in 2021. Their powerful work has been illuminating and liberating for so many people, particularly for those of us working in education, so we wanted to express our gratitude and share some […]

Creating an Error-Rich Environment for Learning To develop as thinkers, students need to wrestle with ambiguity, attempt to solve intractable problems, and grow more comfortable with a learning process that includes struggle. Unfortunately, many of our students have been conditioned by their prior learning experiences to fear failure and to avoid revealing ignorance. They may […]

How Students’ Reasoning Develops If you’ve ever felt frustrated that your students seem to think only in black and white, or that they seem reluctant to do their own reasoning, and expect you to provide the “right” answers to every question, you might be reassured to know that what you’re noticing is not intellectual languor, […]

A Brief Guide to In-Class Activities As often as we can, we like to speak with students about their experiences—how does it feel to be a student at FSU at this point in the semester? What we’re hearing now is that there’s still excitement about the new term, but students are feeling isolated. They wish […]

Staying Connected During Quarantine & Isolation If you are feeling so tired of this pandemic, we’re right there with you. Because of the latest surge, we’re all noticing more student absences and requests for alternate ways to keep up with the class. Since we absolutely do not want ill or potentially contagious students coming to […]

To Help Students Grow, Start Where They Are Welcome back! We’re starting the new year with a new provost, and a recently new president. FSU is changing and growing, so we thought it might be useful to frame the new term with some contemplation of the role of change in learning, and of what it […]

Congratulations, Reflections & Feedback Congratulations! Fall 2021 is a wrap and winter break is just around the corner. If you haven’t yet had an opportunity to read through the Thank-a-Professor messages we shared a few weeks ago, now might be a great time to do so and remind yourself how meaningful your work is. Students […]

Grading Final Projects Regular classes draw to a close today, and only finals week remains. For many of us, the work of grading final projects, papers, or presentations looms. On one hand, it’s gratifying to see the learning students have done this semester, and on the other, evaluating their work takes a lot of thought […]

Students Are Giving Thanks for All You Do! Welcome to the fifth year of our Thank-A-Professor Program! Students have submitted almost 900 tributes so far this fall, and their outpouring of gratitude feels especially welcome this year. Students expressed their heartfelt appreciation for your kindness and understanding in response to their difficulties, and they found […]

Considering Cognitive Load If you were going to teach someone how to drive, would you rather start in a large, empty parking lot or on a busy interstate? The answer is obvious, but the reasoning is worth exploring because of the implications for teaching other things. Experienced drivers know that driving on a busy interstate […]

Setting Priorities for the Last Few Weeks Believe it or not, there are only two and a half more weeks of regular classes left in this semester. With days off for holidays toward the end of the term, sometimes the fall semester can feel like a long climb followed by a steep downward slope to […]