Ask-Dr-Kirk

Happy Birthday To Me!

So...today's my birthday.  I'm taking today off....maybe tomorrow too...

A Big Part Of Teaching Is Thinking About Teaching!

Professor Joe Hoyle (University of Richmond) is "Still Thinking About Teaching After All These Years." In this article, he states that good teaching comes from a process of thinking about teaching. As he notes:

Suddenly, I better understood those teachers whom I had admired. Their talents had not been developed purely as a result of years of repetition. For them, the education process was not viewed as a series of isolated events occurring over time. Rather, the students and their intellectual development reverberated in the teachers' thoughts, night and day, weekday and weekend. Almost like background music, a litany of mental questions was constantly being turned over and examined. How can I make the connection clearer between these two events? Why has the quality of a particular student's work fallen in the last few weeks? How can I relate the upcoming topic to the real world? Why do so many of my students consistently miss the same specific concept?

By thinking about what you are trying to do in the classroom and constantly updating and trying new ways of teaching and learning, your students will be convinced that you care about them and what they are learning. Better yet, the students will be more motivated to learn from you.

You can read Dr. Hoyle's entire article here: Download Hoyle Still Teaching

Using New Technologies in Academia

I've been incorporating various social networking sites into my classes and was interviewed about this a couple months ago. Now apparently I am an expert in social media, according to this article...<grin>

The Top 10 Student Excuses For Not Doing Homework

Micah Scott has a list of reasons she's received as to why her students didn't do their homework. Anyone have any other good ones?

The 15 Strangest College Courses In America

Some of these sound like fun both to take and to teach!

50 Ways To Use Twitter In The Classroom

For those of you who are looking to incorporate technology into teaching and learning, here's a list of 50 ways to use Twitter in the college classroom.

Website For Free eBooks That Could Replace Textbooks

Got this from Clay Burell-it's a website with free ebooks on history, art, science, medicine, business, engineering, law, and others. Looks like some great resources.

First Impressions And Dress

I've posted here and here on the importance of first impressions in the classroom and that how you dress affects the impression your students have of your credibility.

Here's an interesting discussion of the various ways that female professors dress at academic conferences. Do you see yourself here?

Good Teaching Involves Expertise, Useful Learning Tools, And Interactions With Students

Found this at orgtheory.net.

Good teaching simply means that the instructor does his or her best to convey knowledge or skills to students. Therefore, good teaching has at least the following three components:

1. Expertise: The instructor has sufficient knowledge of the topic.
2. Teaching tools: The instructor uses routines that help students learn.
3. Interactions: The instructor creates an environment that helps students learn.

It’s pretty simple once you write it out, but it helps clarify some issues about teaching. For example, a lot of bad teaching reduces to #3. Grad school may teach you the topic, and you know some teaching tricks, but you don’t have the people skills that you’ll need to help people learn. These interaction skills may include things as simple as being nice toward students (rather than being aggressive), or knowing how to keep the class from getting boring. Your personal behavior may cancel out your knowledge and techniques.

These three points also clarify much about student evaluations of teaching. The gut instinct of many people is to dismiss student reports – they only care about shallow things like the teacher’s charisma. However, if you accept that “interactions” are important, then you might believe that charisma isn’t a bad thing. If you can make people relax and enjoy the class, won’t that help people learn? Furthermore, “interactions” include things other than charisma. For example, prompt and reasonable paper grading counts as interaction. Having accessible office hours counts as interaction. Speaking clearly during class. These all count and they help.

I would agree. We have to get, and keep, the students' attention before learning can take place. You can access the entire article here.

Taking Some Much Needed Downtime...

I'm off to France for ten days so will be taking a short break from posting on this website.  Hope everyone is having a great summer!