Weekly Teaching Tips

Exam & Assignment Wrappers By this point in the semester, your students have probably completed graded work and gotten some feedback, so they have a sense of their progress toward the learning goals of the course. After students take an exam or turn in a project, they usually focus on the score they got and […]

What Makes a Course Design Effective? Much of the work of teaching happens before we enter the classroom. Course design is the process through which we plan what students should learn, what they should do in order to learn it, and what methods we’ll use to collect evidence of their progress. Whether a whole course […]

Why Developmental Stages Matter for Teaching If you’ve ever felt frustrated that your students seem to think 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 […]

The first week of the spring term didn’t launch in quite the smooth fashion we were expecting. We hope that despite the disruptions you enjoyed meeting your students, and that they’re excited about the learning they’ll do in your courses. Although many students begin the semester experiencing positive emotions about their classes, some may feel […]

Students Can Help Set the Norms Welcome back! We hope you had a restful break. No matter how long you’ve been teaching, each semester brings new energy and opportunities, and we all look forward to meeting our new students on the first day of class. The first day is also our best opportunity to establish […]

Reflecting on the Fall Semester Congratulations! Fall 2023 is a wrap. We can all be proud of what we helped our students accomplish during our time together this semester. Now that we’re done (or almost done, if you’re still grading) we get the pleasure of reflecting on what we’ve learned, too. Because the term ends […]

Grade What You Mean to be Grading On the last day of classes, with only finals remaining, you may be bracing yourself to work through stacks of papers, projects, or exams that need to be graded. Although the workload is certainly a factor, it’s often the human dimension of grading that can be the hardest […]

Goals for a Great Last Week At any point in the semester, we know that the more content we try to race through, the less students actually learn. To learn deeply, they need opportunities to think, to analyze, to apply concepts, and to develop skills through practice and feedback. Now, when (mysteriously–how did this happen?) […]

Thankful for Your Teaching Welcome to the seventh 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 their gratitude will warm your Thanksgiving. We’ll be sending individual letters to their recipients over the next […]

Teaching Students to Incorporate Research “My students don’t know how to incorporate source material into their work. They don’t even correctly cite their sources. They should know how to do this by now!” This is one of the most common complaints we hear from our colleagues across disciplines. Certainly it can be frustrating to get […]

Ending the Term with Students’ Best Work Picture this: It’s the end of the semester. Students have submitted their final projects, whatever form those take in your course, and you’re reading through them, feeling delighted (or relieved) because so many meet or exceed your expectations, and because you see evidence that students have done so […]

Bouncing Back After a Bad Exam When students don’t do as well as we would wish on exams, we may assume it’s because they didn’t study enough, but there are a variety of reasons they might struggle. Pinpointing the issue(s) can help us make adjustments to give students the best possible chance at success. Here […]