Sep

25

“Freshbloggers”

September 25, 2009 | by Mikhail Gershovich | 7 Comments

The Schwartz Communication Institute’s Luke Waltzer just posted to cac.ophony an interesting discussion of one of our most ambitious projects to date, the introduction of student blogging into every section of Freshman Seminar. In Luke’s words, “every Freshman Seminar at Baruch currently is blogging. That’s roughly 60 sections, populated by over 1200 students. Yowser.”
The [...]

Sep

4

The Sound of Silence

September 4, 2009 | by Will Millhiser | 2 Comments

Last night my executive MBA class discussed the case study “Deaconess-Glover Hospital” about a Massachusetts healthcare system that made significant improvements using the Toyota Production System. But before this column digresses into a “how do we improve healthcare?” debate, I’d like to share seven sentences Dr. Steven J. Spear wrote in the teaching note that [...]

Jul

21

VOCAT and the Question of Openness

July 21, 2009 | by Mikhail Gershovich | 6 Comments

x-posted from cac.ophony.org
It recently occurred to me that very little has been written about the Schwartz Communication Institute’s most ambitious and potentially most promising project, our Video Oral Communication Assessment Tool, or VOCAT. I have presented on VOCAT a number of times over the years (most recently at the 2009 Computers and Writing conference in [...]

Jul

1

Not Seeing the War For the Battles

July 1, 2009 | by Glenn Petersen | 3 Comments

The following is a portion of a letter to the editor that appeared in the June 15, 2009 NY Times. It addresses purported changes in the ways history is taught, but it is rooted in a larger perspective I have encountered many times and I bring it to our blog as a springboard to raise [...]

Jan

29

Intellectual Challenge Survey

January 29, 2009 | by Elisabeth Gareis | 1 Comment

I conducted an informal, anonymous survey on “intellectual challenge” with students in my classes (n = 32). The respondents were mostly Communication minors and Zicklin majors; i.e., represent somewhat of a cross-section of Baruch students. (I checked with Hannah Rothstein, IRB director: Informal surveys with the purpose of program improvement can be conducted without IRB [...]

Dec

12

Pondering Teaching Evaluations

December 12, 2008 | by Glenn Petersen | 21 Comments

Elisabeth Gareis recently raised a question regarding student evaluations of our courses, which prompted me to write this. But her post doesn’t have “evaluations” in its title, and so I’m making a new post of this, rather than simply commenting on Elisabeth’s, in order to draw attention to the matter of evaluations.
I take [...]

Nov

12

Let Them in on What You’re Doing

November 12, 2008 | by Glenn Petersen | 4 Comments

Most of you are probably familiar with the old saw: Those who can, do; those who can’t, teach. I once heard a coda: Those who can’t teach, teach pedagogy. I used to find the notion funny, but as I’ve observed new faculty beginning their careers over the years I’ve come [...]

Oct

30

Increasing Student Participation – the Response Sheet

October 30, 2008 | by Leah Schanke | 8 Comments

For those of us who were painfully shy as children – “painful” really is the right word – we recall our teachers telling us that we must participate in class discussions. I still have my high school report cards – the most frequent comment is “needs to participate more.” I remember even being very shy [...]

Oct

27

Breaking the Ice

October 27, 2008 | by Will Millhiser | 1 Comment

Did you meet Mel Silberman, Temple University’s guru of active classroom participation, when he spoke at Baruch in 2006 or 2008? I recently came across a four-page paper (here) that Silberman wrote on the subject of classroom icebreakers. Who would have known that you can promote social interaction while simultaneously engaging students in the course [...]