Weekly Teaching Tips

Getting Students to Practice Expert Thinking Nobel-winner Carl Wieman will be speaking at FSU next week; we want to fit in one last message citing his practical advice on teaching, which is applicable across disciplines. We’ve condensed a bit, but the original is available here (and includes both references and strategies for minimizing the burden […]

Helping Students Learn to Collaborate There are many ways to engage students in collaborative learning, from informal small-group conversations to highly structured team-based learning. Regardless of the level of formality or the type of activity students are doing, collaborative learning works best when we and our students agree upon some norms for working together productively. […]

Small Changes That Create Accountability and Motivation We’re doing our homework for Carl Wieman’s visit on February 14th, and this week, we’d like to share his advice for a perennial problem across disciplines: getting students to come to class prepared. The CWSEI website recommends asking students to get their first experience with course content independently, […]

Teaching for Social Justice FSU is fortunate to have multiple internationally known scholars visiting campus to talk about teaching this spring. Vishanthie Sewpaul, Professor of Social Work at the University of Stavanger, Norway, and Professor Emeritus at the University of KwaZulu Natal, South Africa, will be a guest scholar later this month, co-sponsored by the […]

Setting the Tone for a Productive Classroom In anticipation of Nobel-winner and 2003 U.S. Professor of the Year Carl Wieman’s visit to FSU on February 14, we’d like to share more of his thoughts on teaching. In “Basic Instructor Habits to Keep Students Engaged,” excerpted below, Wieman shares practical suggestions about both what to do […]

Getting Students Ready to Learn We hope you had a restorative break, and resume your teaching with energy and optimism for the new year and new semester. FSU will have an exciting guest this spring: Carl Wieman, a Nobel laureate in Physics who has spent decades studying how to improve university education, will visit on […]

Getting Better All the Time Congratulations on making a success of a tough semester. Thank you for the care and compassion you showed your students—you kept them motivated to persist, and they acknowledged your dedication in hundreds of thank-yous. We can all be proud of the learning our students did this fall; and now that […]

At this point in the semester, when we’re slogging through stacks of papers and projects, it’s easy to lose sight of the purpose of grading. It’s not, in fact, to make ourselves and our students suffer. Our students’ final work should provide evidence of the learning they’ve done with us this fall. Students who have […]

What’s Changed? When we learn—really learn, rather than temporarily storing something in our memories—we change our brains. We develop and strengthen neural connections. We may also change our perceptions, our behaviors, our beliefs, our decisions. Thinking about this change, and thinking about our thinking, is a critical part of learning, so reflection is an essential […]

Your Students are Grateful The value of our connections and community is heightened this year, so we want to remind you how much your students appreciate all you do for them. Last fall, CAT started a Thank-A-Professor program, to help your students express their gratitude for you and the learning opportunities you create for them. […]

Planning to Wrap Up After this turbulent fall term, when we’re just trying to hang on until the holidays, it may be hard to remember the aspirations we had for our courses, back in August. We wanted to impart valuable knowledge and insights, to help students gain concepts and skills they could carry with them […]

Humans are fascinating social animals, fragile alone and powerful together. We’re wired to care deeply about how others perceive us, so our learning opportunities are shaped by our sense of belonging (Gilbert, 2018; Hammond, 2015; Steele and Aronson, 1995). In order to learn deeply and stretch intellectually, people need to feel safe, both physically and […]