With the exception of “presentations” students prepare and present in-class with very little preparation, I have discovered when they hear “presentation,” they automatically think of PowerPoint. Last semester when I told my students in African American History they could not use… Read More ›
The idea for this blog came a few minutes after I posted “Emotional Demands of College” some weeks ago now, and I am just now getting a chance to finish it! As regular readers, my students, and anyone else who knows me… Read More ›
Being in my ninth year of teaching, I am just about convinced that the biggest obstacle for most new students relates to the time and emotional demands of college. I generally reject notions that students being underprepared for college equates to… Read More ›
Last week in my First Year Seminar classes, we focused on questions. Together with my student, we discussed the difference between “low-level” and “high-level” questions; the difference between who, what, when, and where questions and the how and why questions;… Read More ›
In my First Year Seminar classes I spent time in three of the four classes (totally forgot in one of them we were having so much fun getting to know each other – bell hooks calls this “engaged pedagogy”) asking… Read More ›
Recently, I have been re-reminded of the power of ending classes with a 5-10 minute discussion where each student names one thing they learned during the lesson that day. The only rule is they can’t name something another student has… Read More ›
In my classes, we tend to laugh a lot. I especially enjoy nice, good laughs. Sometimes my students and I get to laughing so hard that I cannot talk or think for a minute. Laughing is one of countless human emotions,… Read More ›
A lot. Working memory (or short-term memory, using now-dated terminology) last a matter of seconds and can hold 7±2 chunks of information before it is gone forever, unless we make special efforts to transfer that information into long-term memory. But what about all… Read More ›
