COMING BACK FOR MORE
Dr. Maryellen Weimer has posted a terrific message on her blog about critical self-reflection. She writes, "When are you going to retire?” “Why are you still working?” These are questions I’m asked regularly. Worried that the question is motivated by signs of diminished mental acuity, I scour old and new writings looking for evidence. Should I stop working? I wonder. On a recent flight back to State College I sat next to a Penn State student, a junior accounting and finance major. She sounded like one of those students we’re only too happy to have in class. She talked about her courses, projects, assignments she was working on, her teachers, and how excited she was about her chosen fields. “And what do you do?” she asked. “Oh, I work for you,” I replied. “How so?” “Well, I work with college profs on ways to teach that help students learn.” “I’ve had quite a few teachers who could use your help,” she observed. “You know, a good teacher makes such a difference for students. I have this accounting prof who is just fantastic. I leave his class and I am so motivated. I do homework for that class first and I really study for his exams, and not just for the grade; I really want to learn the material.” “What’s his name?” I asked, and when she told me I felt a big smile crossing my face. “I know him! I helped him when he was a brand-new prof.” I didn’t tell her that he wasn’t a very good teacher back then. But I remember his commitment to doing better, his openness to suggestions, and his willingness to learn. And now he’s having this kind of impact on a student! I wish I’d had a glass of wine—a toast seemed so in order." Continue reading.

Love this graphic from Edutopia. It gets to the heart of learning experiences that focus on good writing.


HOW AM I GOING TO USE THIS IN REAL LIFE
The Idea Center offers us clear examples of how and why we should make our learning experiences relevant for our students. "There are many reasons for incorporating real-life situations into instruction. Foremost are that applications of theoretical material in real-life situations make content easier to understand, and that the relevance of content is demonstrated by real-life examples. Relevance is a major component of many motivational models (1, 2) and particularly important if learners’ experiences can be used as a basis for new learning. Recent literature on brain function and learning (3, 4) reinforces a constructivist view in which existing knowledge forms the foundation for incorporating new information into more complex and sophisticated schemas. Thus, if prior experience can be connected to new material in a meaningful way, that material can be more clearly understood and more easily learned." Continue reading.

TEACHING THE ART OF ARGUMENT
David J. Kujawski has written a good article explaining the basics of Present, Critique, Reflect, and Refine (PCRR) as a teaching strategy. Although he writes from a science background, the pedagogy of PCRR can be altered to accommodate any type of class. The method is especially useful for creating a culture of learning through argumentation. Kujawski writes, “The PCRR strategy promotes conceptual understanding of scientific phenomena in various disciplinary core ideas through the development of explanatory models that can later be applied to enrich student understanding and help explain other phenomena. [It also] develops an inquiry-driven, evidence-based mindset that supports model-based science teaching and three dimensional learning and assessment.” You can read more in his article “Present, Critique, Reflect, and Refine: Supporting Evidence-Based Argumentation Through Conceptual Modeling” that appears in Science Scope’s December 2015 issue.

COMPLETION BUILDS SELF EFFICACY
Rod, Risely, executive director of Phi Theta Kappa, released an op-ed piece about community college completion that presents a compelling case. He writes, "One has to wonder why, when the first community college was established in 1901 to provide access to higher education, completing college was not seen as integral to its mission. Clearly, today completion must be seen as central to the mission of our community colleges. To continue with our automotive analogy, it is a moral imperative that our institutions take responsibility for providing its consumers the tools and knowledge to “build a car” with the appropriate features that will lead them down a road toward economic prosperity and well-being.  Community colleges must change their approach and accept responsibility for advising students upon enrollment on the importance of completing the associate degree prior to transferring to senior colleges. Studies show that community college students who transfer to senior colleges prior to earning the associate degree significantly increase their chances of never earning the baccalaureate degree."

LOOKING BACK TO PREPARE FOR THE FUTURE
David Gooblar urges us to encourage our students to be critically self-reflective about themselves and notes that the end of the semester is a great time to do it. He writes, "There are many reasons to have students complete self-evaluations at semester’s end, but perhaps the best is that the exercise encourages metacognition --- essentially “thinking about one’s thinking” — particularly in the context of getting students to consider their approach to our courses as they progress. But metacognition is a significantly valuable tool at the end of a course, when there are so many opportunities for self-reflection. At that point, students have been working on the same subject for more than three months; before they move on to other courses, and other professors, give them time and space to reflect on what they’ve done, and how they’ve done it. A self-evaluation is a great way to get students to assess how they approached the course with an eye to improving their learning strategies in the future. It can also help cement the particular skills they learned in your course — in effect, they remind themselves of the skills they’ve acquired, and may be more likely to put them to use in the future."

THE ANSWERS ARE IN THE SYLLABUS
Now is a great time to begin to look at your syllabi for the spring semester. My colleague at George Mason's Center for Teaching and Faculty Excellence provides the following suggestions. At its most fundamental level, a course syllabus is essentially a contract between the instructor and the student and is a vital tool for communicating expectations between students and faculty. A well-constructed syllabus provides a road map for the course, answers frequently asked questions, can help to lessen student anxiety, and allows the faculty member to concentrate on instruction. At another level, though, a syllabus is the embodiment of your philosophy of teaching and learning. Implicit in every assignment, every choice of textbook, every discussion topic should be an indication of what you want your students to learn from your course and why you want them to learn it.  Because critical thinking is at the heart of academic work, emphasize how your course will help them develop the kinds of skills with inquiry and problem solving that will benefit them throughout their time in college and into their lives as professionals. Continuing reading here.

GOING TO THE RESEARCH FOR SOLUTIONS
Dr. Maryellen Weimer’s latest post asks some really good questions about how we can use research to improve teaching and learning. She writes, “Evidence-based teaching seems like the new buzzword in higher education. The phrase appears to mean that we’ve identified and should be using those instructional practices shown empirically to enhance learning. Sounds pretty straightforward, but there are lots of questions that haven’t yet been addressed, such as: How much evidence does there need to be to justify a particular strategy, action, or approach? Is one study enough? What about when the evidence is mixed—in some studies the results of a practice are positive and in others they aren’t? In research conducted in classrooms, instructional strategies aren’t used in isolation; they are done in combination with other things. Does that grouping influence how individual strategies function?” Continue reading here.

THE GOOD OLD DAYS
Looking for some levity? Allison M. Vaillancourt’s latest post made me laugh while I was learning. She writes, “Who Melted My Cheese? would challenge the still-common worldview that academic life will eventually return to “normal” if we just sit patiently. According to that view, all the annoyances we are currently experiencing — state funding reductions, demands for accountability, and students who want their course content to be compelling — are simply fads that will soon fade if we just stay the course and insist on running our institutions like we did in the 1980s, or even the 1880s.” Continue reading here.