By Doug Ward
Add another lock to the ivory tower.
A majority of college students say it is acceptable to shout down a speaker they disagree with, and 20 percent accept the idea of resorting to violence to keep an undesirable speaker from campus, a poll from the Brookings Institution finds.
By Doug Ward
The evaluation of teaching generally looks like this:
Students hurriedly fill in questionnaires at the end of a semester, evaluating an instructor on a five-point scale. The university compiles the results and provides a summary for each faculty member. The individual scores, often judged against a department mean, determine an instructor’s teaching effectiveness for everything from annual reviews to evaluations for promotion and tenure.
By Doug Ward
The amount of debt that colleges and universities are taking on is rising even as the number of students in higher education is declining, The Hechinger Report says. It offered these sobering statistics:
By Doug Ward
When Mark Mort began remaking a 100-level biology course a few years ago, he asked instructors who had taught the class what they thought students needed.
“Not surprisingly, the answers were very much content, content, content,” said Mort, an associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology.
By Doug Ward
Mannequins have been a part of health care training for decades. As Matt Lineberry of the Zamierowski Institute for Experiential Learning demonstrated recently, though, those mannequins have become decidedly smarter.
By Doug Ward
It was a simple idea.
Bring together a group of faculty members from around campus for guided discussions about diversity and inclusion. Guide them to think deliberately and openly about making their classroom practices and pedagogy more inclusive. Then help them create plans to take what they had learned back to their departments and help colleagues do the same.
By Doug Ward
One poster offers to explain the chemistry of the world’s most popular drug.
Another teases about the fatty acids that make T-shirts feel soft.
Still another promises secrets about the oils used in making the perfect chicken nugget.
None of them offers its secrets outright, though. And that’s just how Drew Vartia, a postdoctoral teaching fellow in the chemistry department, wants it.
By Doug Ward
Authentic assignments can be messy.
That’s not a bad thing. In fact, the messiness helps students deepen their critical thinking, improve their decision-making, learn about themselves, and even take more control over their learning.
If I were to design the perfect learning experience, it would have all the components that Chad Kraus included in a studio architecture class he taught this fall.
By Doug Ward
Here’s some sage advice to start the semester: Don’t be a jerk.