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In The Classroom
I Acted Like a Complete Jerk to my Students Just to Prove a Point
I belittled one student by criticizing him in front of others. I favored another student by telling other students they should be more like her. I responded impatiently to questions. I told one student his contribution to class was…
More States are Allowing Guns on Campus—Are You Teaching in One of Those States?
by Neal H. Hutchens and Kerry B. Melear
A community college instructor in Texas started off the academic year by wearing a bulletproof vest and army helmet to class. He did this to protest a law that, starting this August, authorizes…
Putting the Focus on Student Engagement in Blended Learning Courses
by Meg Gorzycki, Ed.D. Center for Teaching and Faculty Development, San Francisco State University Hybrid teaching and blended learning are fundamentally concerned with providing an environment in which students assume responsibility for…
10th Circuit Rules Profs. Decide Free-Speech Limits in College Papers
by Victoria Prieskop The 10th Circuit ruled March 28, 2017 that the University of New Mexico had the right to reject an academic paper which called a lesbian-themed film “entirely perverse in its desire and attempt to reverse the natural…
I'm Finished Playing Favorites in the Classroom
by Laura Yeager In a previous essay entitled “The Academic Circle of Life & Excellent Usage of Commas,” I wrote about my time in graduate school at Iowa State, where I studied writing on a full fellowship. At this…
Trigger Warnings: Are We Asking Too Much of Faculty and Too Little of Students?
Professors say college students need to keep an open mind about disturbing or unfamiliar academic material. by Joseph Williams Proponents say they’re creating safe spaces for sexual assault victims, combat veterans, or other college…
Are Students Now Entitled to Freedom FROM Free Speech in the Classroom?
In the current climate, the pressure to “balance free speech and diversity” has invariably led to the notion that the former must give way to the latter. And the way free speech has been made less important than diversity can be clearly…
Syllabus-writing as Storytelling
Dr. Raul Pacheco-Vega Earlier this week, I realized that we had passed the mid-semester mark (our semester is uncharacteristically long, 16 weeks of class instead of the traditional 13 that I used to teach in Canada). I thus added a couple…
Ban PowerPoint in Lectures? Yes! Here's Why
by Bent Meier Sørensen Any university teacher who does not harbor a painful recollection of a failed lecture is a liar. On one such occasion, I felt early on that I had lost the students entirely: those who hadn’t sunk into comatose…
New Study: College Students Taught by Good-looking Lecturers Learn More
A new study finds that college students learn more from good-looking lecturers.This article is only available to subscribers. If you're a subscriber, log in. To subscribe, choose the subscription that suits your needs: 1 Year Individual…