Sep

29

Viral Video, Donor Dollars, and Academic Integrity: Poor Students versus Freedom of Speech?

September 29, 2008 | by Sarah Ryan | Leave a Comment

This summer, two of my colleagues became the subject of a YouTube viral video. Maybe you heard about the swearing, pants-dropping debate coaches (well, only one dropped his drawers) videotaped (with their consent) at the national cross-examination debate tournament… It was quite a spectacle. Since then, the video has been taken down, the debate association [...]

Sep

25

What’s in a Name?

September 25, 2008 | by Will Millhiser | 6 Comments

Physicist and award-winning master teacher Robert Brown [1] taught me several years ago to learn every student’s name every semester. This begs a related question: what should students call you?
At many independent secondary schools (for example, Quaker Friends schools) and progressive liberal arts colleges, students have been on a first-name basis with teachers for decades. [...]

Sep

22

Writing Better Learning Objectives

September 22, 2008 | by Leah Schanke | 4 Comments

When I attended the Zicklin Business School Summer Teaching Seminar in 2007 (and again this year), the first thing I noticed was that the terms “learning goals” and “learning objectives” are used interchangeably. This seems to be the case throughout much of the College. From my training and experience in strategic management and following the [...]

Sep

18

Animated Graphs

September 18, 2008 | by Elisabeth Gareis | 6 Comments

It’s football season . . . which reminds me of an interesting study. In it, Guadagno, Sundie, Asher, and Cialdini (2006) presented football statistics to groups of students-some were fans with extensive knowledge of the sport, some were unfamiliar with its intricacies. The premise was for students to act as recruiters and judge which players [...]

Sep

15

Breaking Free of the Podium

September 15, 2008 | by Stephen Francoeur | 6 Comments

Let me say up front that I’m a walker, a roamer, someone who likes to circulate around the classroom while lecturing. My intent is to make sure that no part of the classroom feels like a neglected corner (and perhaps to ensure that the sleepy students or the ones drifting away remember that I am [...]

Sep

11

.ppt? . . . pfft!

September 11, 2008 | by Tomasello | 11 Comments

In 2002, after most of the initial kinks had been worked out of the Vertical Campus, I had the opportunity to teach a large lecture class (MSC 1003–the music appreciation course, a.k.a. Music in Civilization) using all the smart technology available.
I decided to try PowerPoint (known by its .ppt file extension). I slogged through [...]

Sep

8

Of Legos and Sock Puppets – Knowing When to Go Low-tech

September 8, 2008 | by Sarah Ryan | 5 Comments

My first-year students find Plato’s The Republic daunting – especially the part of the book that requires sewing. My M.P.A. students claim that creating nonprofit organizations is difficult – when another group has taken all of the yellow legos. Deprived of their i-whatevers and Power-thingies, my students reluctantly admit to the joys of low-tech learning [...]