Weekly Teaching Tips

Spring Study Advice for Students The brilliant weather this week reminds us that it’s time to share our favorite study advice: we hope you’ll pass it along to your students. Too many students experience studying as a lonesome and sedentary activity, like poring over their notes or highlighting the textbook. But they’d be better off […]

Supporting Academic Reading + Apps to Help It’s a familiar problem: only some students complete the assigned reading, so in-class discussion only involves a few participants or activities aren’t as fruitful as they could be. Maryellen Weimer summarizes: Getting students to do their assigned reading is a struggle. Most teachers don’t need anyone to tell […]

Checking in Halfway Through the Term 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 […]

Inviting Students to Ask Questions Have you ever stood in front of a class, or sat in front of a gallery of faces on Zoom, and asked, “Are there any questions?” only to be met with silence and lowered eyes or, equally disappointing, only to receive questions about something unrelated, like the word count requirement […]

A Brief Guide to Group Activities The last year has felt like a decade to most of us, so it must have felt even longer to our students, who are trying to figure out who they are, what they want to do, and how to face the future in the midst of a pandemic and […]

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 […]