TAKE TIME FOR YOURSELF
We are already in the second week of class for the summer term and the campus is alive with teaching and learning. We are also seeing a good number of students who will begin their academic careers in the fall and their excitement level is very contagious. For those teaching during the summer (and the rest of us on break), I want to encourage you to journal throughout the semester. Critical self-reflection is crucial to any attempt to improve your teaching and add to your toolkit. The academic support staff is hard at work in the Division of Innovative Learning and Academic Support and we stand ready to assist you with your teaching and learning needs. If you are looking for some summer reading, I want to recommend Ken Bain's classic What The Best College Teachers Do. Remember to keep calm and be engaged.
THE EFFECT OF FAIRNESS
There was an interesting research study published in the April 30 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience about how the brain responds to fairness. Using MRI scanners, Dr. Ryuta Akoi's team found that when people are offered the sames choices, they report being happier and their bran scans showed increased activity in the area called ventromedial prefrontal cortex. So how would you apply these findings in your classroom? I immediately thought of the awkward situation when students ask for extra credit work. It was validating to see that the explanation I always use related to the fairness of extra credit work is a good choice. By explaining to your students that your strategy to treat everyone fairly and equally will actually work to your advantage and leaves the student feeling satisfied.
DO YOU KNOW YOUR TEACHING STYLE
Reading a recent column by Dr. Neil Haave about teaching philosophies and how they are usually developed made me think about learning styles. Although there is not a consensus on the matter of learning styles, most educationalists agree that students do use different methods to learn. Dr. Haave pointed out that many of us also teach using the method that we find most useful to our own learning. So it begs the question, do you know your own learning style preference? Have you ever taken one of the many online tests to determine your bias? I encourage you to take that step, especially if you are asking your students to determine how they learn best (and you should be). Learning about learning (or metacognition) should be a learning outcome for everyone's class. Let me know what you discover about yourself.
