Embracing Error in the Classroom

Two recent articles raise the question of what it would look like to embrace error in the classroom.  One discusses a British girls’ school that is planning a “failure week” to encourage its students to “embrace risk, build resilience, and learn from their mistakes”:

“‘Failure week’ at top girls’ school to build resilience”

The other, from the Chronicle of Higher Education, challenges the assumption that faculty should always appear all-knowing in the classroom.  Instead it encourages faculty to model for students what it looks like to “try, fail, and persist.”

One professor quoted asserts, ”I personally believe students benefit greatly if they see us struggle . . . They see that it’s OK for them to struggle.”

Read the full article here: “Note to Faculty: Don’t Be Such a Know-It-All”

Economists take on motivation

In this animated version of a lecture he gave for the RSA, Dan Pink discusses some of the less-than-intuitive findings about rewards and motivation put forth by economists in recent years.  Although Pink’s focus is on the workplace, his conclusions about the motivating power of autonomy, purpose, and mastery have interesting implications for the classroom, as well.

“Delicious” Historical Resource

Stonehill librarian, Trish McPherson, has developed a blog called Primarily History as a way of organizing the list of primary source websites she’s been collecting.

It’s an interactive tool for students (and faculty), where they can search for primary source sites — and contact her with questions and comments about those resources.

Not just for historians, the blog provides a useful resource for anyone looking to identify primary source materials.

“Innovations in Education” online interviews

Stony Brook University’s Center for Teaching, Learning, & Technology has developed a new series of online interviews with faculty members discussing different ways they use technology in the classroom.

The “Innovations in Education” series features faculty talking about how they use clickers, online discussion boards, learning management systems, and other technologies to facilitate learning in their classes.

Resources for teaching about white privilege

In light of the number of speakers coming to campus this spring to talk about white privilege, I’ve put together some resources for faculty who are interested in discussing privilege with their students.  

The following are resources related specifically to the invited speakers, and I’ve also listed some more general resources on the CTL’s website.

 

Tim Wise (speaking on Wednesday, February 11, 2009)

Wise’s website (http://www.timwise.org/) is a good place to start researching his work.  There you can find numerous links to his essays and blog posts.  Some recent posts of his — which reflect on the implications of Obama’s election — may provide interesting texts for class discussion:

• “In Search of Post-Racial America” (a satirical critique of commentators who saw Obama’s election as marking the end of racism in the US) 
• “Explaining White Privilege to the Deniers and the Haters” (written in response to comments he received on his post, “The is Your Nation on Privilege”) 
• Tim Wise: On White Privilege is a DVD (now available at Stonehill’s library) of a lecture Wise gave at Mt. Holyoke College in 2007.  You can also see an excerpt of this video on YouTube.

Tomorrow’s Professor: Do Students Understand Your Assignments?

The latest post to the Tomorrow’s Professor blog looks at research into how students make sense of assignments. Specifically, it examines how to enhance “task understanding” among students.

Read the post here.

Twitter pedagogy: “the walls of the classroom no longer apply”

The Chronicle of Higher Education reports today about yet another social networking technology that has made its way into the classroom: microblogging.

Twitter is the most popular microblogging site, and some professors have begun using it as a way of building community in their classes and of engaging students even outside the classroom:

Jason B. Jones, an assistant professor of English at Central Connecticut State University, uses his iPhone to post a message to Twitter after every class session as “a way to jot down a little reflection about the class — how it went, things that were frustrating or worked really well — so that I can remember them later.” Students who see the messages often give him a reality check, though. “If I thought something didn’t go well, I’ve had people say, Actually we understood that fine, we were distracted by something else or we were just tired,” he says.

Find the Chronicle article in full here.

And view a short video interview with a University of Texas at Dallas professor who’s found Twitter an effective teaching tool.

Inclusive Pedagogies handouts

For those of you who missed the first Teaching Roundtable, “Inclusive Pedagogies for the Diverse Classroom,” the handouts from that discussion and other related materials are now available on the CTL’s website.

Online Brown Bag on Teaching this Thursday

The Chronicle of Higher Education is hosting a free online brown bag discussion Thursday, February 21st at noon. Titled “Teacher Feature: Brushing Up on Your Classroom Technique,” the discussion will be hosted by Barbara Gross Davis, author of Tools for Teaching.

Here’s the Chronicle’s description:

Is your teaching technique a little rusty? Your classroom routine a tad tired? Come share your stories, tips, and questions about motivating students, personalizing a large lecture class, promoting academic honesty, managing classroom conduct, fielding students’ questions, holding office hours, designing effective writing assignments, and incorporating group-learning activities — and talk about them with an expert on the art and science of teaching.

On Thursday, you can find the discussion here:

http://chronicle.com/live/2008/02/davis/chat.php3

Discussing Tragic Events in the Classroom

Although we are geographically distant from the recent shootings at NIU, I imagine that some of our students may still be looking for opportunities to discuss their feelings about it. A recent post to the POD listserv suggested some online resources for teachers seeking ideas for how best to engage such emotionally-charged topics in their classrooms.

Here are a few of them (many were developed in response to 9/11 but the advice is generalizable to other situations):

1. The POD website lists resources as well as two scholarly articles that might be of interest:

http://www.podnetwork.org/resources/crises.htm

2. University of Michigan’s CRLT has a set of guidelines for discussions about topics that bring up intense emotional reactions:

http://www.crlt.umich.edu/publinks/tragedydiscussion.html

3. The University of Washington has some practical guidelines with leads to other resources for classroom discussions:

http://depts.washington.edu/cidrweb/resources/guide.html

Plus they also have resources about dealing with “threatening classroom situations”:

http://depts.washington.edu/cidrweb/resources/safety.html

4. Lee Warren’s article “Managing Hot Moments in the Classroom” is available online:

http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/html/icb.topic58474/hotmoments.html

5. Western Kentucky University has a booklet on the topic with resources:

http://www.wku.edu/Dept/Support/AcadAffairs/CTL/booklets/crisis.html