Nov

4

Excelling at Excel

November 4, 2009 | by Will Millhiser | 4 Comments

Should all undergraduate business students study spreadsheet-based modeling?
For the past two years I’ve been thinking about this question, first as a member of the Provost’s Task Force for Quantitative Pedagogy, and now as a member of two follow-up efforts (the Weissman School’s “implementation committee” and the Zicklin School’s “quant group”). If you’ll bear with [...]

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 [...]

Aug

27

Note Taking Tips

August 27, 2009 | by Stephen Francoeur | 2 Comments

Lifehacker recently posted this handy survey of five ways to take notes, something that may be worth sharing with your students.

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 [...]

Jun

16

Citing Sources in Slide Presentation

June 16, 2009 | by Stephen Francoeur | 9 Comments

A student I was helping at the reference desk recently asked me to examine a slide presentation he and a classmate were working on for an assignment. On one slide, there appeared a bulletted item that was clearly not written by the students. When I mentioned to the student that she should consider putting quote [...]

Mar

11

A+ . . . Despite Heavy Accent

March 11, 2009 | by Elisabeth Gareis | 10 Comments

Question: A student gives a presentation. He has a heavy foreign accent and is at times incomprehensible. Overall, the speech seems well researched and on target. What do you do?
a. Give him an A.
b. Subtract points for incomprehensibility and give him a B.
c. Tell him that the presentation was unacceptable and that he should improve [...]

Feb

10

What Will You Do Differently?

February 10, 2009 | by Leah Schanke | 2 Comments

One of the things I do at the end of my training classes is hand out a post assessment. Instead of asking what faculty and staff participants think of me as an instructor, I ask what they feel they are taking away with them as a result of attending the class. The goal is to [...]

Dec

7

A for Content . . . F for Form

December 7, 2008 | by Elisabeth Gareis | 3 Comments

It’s term paper time. Actually, it was time last week for term paper drafts in two of my classes. Unfortunately, six students had draft grades below 50 (three below 40). The thing is: Their papers were actually quite good with respect to content. The students had clearly conducted their research and presented interesting information and [...]

Nov

17

Inter-disciplinary Teaching: A Novel Approach

November 17, 2008 | by Sarah Ryan | 2 Comments

Last week I attended an inspirational presentation by two members of our faculty. Christina Christoforatou specializes in Medieval manuscripts, Karen Freedman in abstract design. Together, they are rocking the worlds of their Learning Communities students – teaching abstract thinking and expression through English, Graphic Design, and “tours” to modern art installations.
Christoforatou and Freedman have [...]

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 [...]

keep looking »