Improving Teaching at the Institution Level with Lindsay Masland Back in September 2023, Beth McMurtrie published an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education titled "Americans Value Good Teaching. Do Colleges?" The piece explores some of the ways that the policies and practices at colleges and universities don't live up to the promises those institutions make concerning their teaching missions. While the article is mostly bad news for those who care about teaching and learning, McMurtrie...
14 days ago • 2 min read
The paradox of textbooks During a recent online workshop, I wanted to introduce the idea that students might need help organizing the new information they encounter in our courses. I told the faculty in the room to imagine they were going to sit down with some friends to play a board and when they opened the game's rulebook, they were confronted with this: I asked the workshop participants to share an emoji in the chat that represented how they felt about that. Here's a recreation of their...
21 days ago • 6 min read
Neurodivergent Students in Active Learning Classes A lot of the accommodations that have traditionally been given for students with learning disabilities, like notetaking assistance and extra time on exams, assume that a college course is mostly lectures and tests. That's not as true as it once was, especially for STEM courses where years of research on active learning have directed faculty to structure their courses differently. What is it like to experience an active learning class if...
28 days ago • 3 min read
Surfacing Students' Prior Experience with AI Last week I helped lead a two-day institute for faculty members participating in the University of Virginia's new Faculty AI Guides program. These faculty have signed up to explore the use of generative artificial intelligence (AI) in their own teaching and support their colleagues as they make informed, intentional decisions about the roles of AI in their teaching. We covered a lot of ground in our two days with the AI Guides, as you might...
about 1 month ago • 3 min read
Culturally Responsive Teaching with Emily Affolter On this week's Intentional Teaching podcast episode, I talk with Emily Affolter, who teaches in the PhD program in sustainability education at Prescott College in Arizona. Her students come from all different professions, some even already have PhDs. They’re in the program to pursue what Emily describes as “social and environmental justice as enacted in teaching, learning, and leading.” How do Emily and her colleagues meet these diverse...
about 1 month ago • 6 min read
Wherefore Office Hours Earlier this week, I was on the campus of High Point University to lead a workshop on teaching and AI as part of their welcome back event for faculty. The workshop went well and gave me a lot to think about as I start working with University of Virginia faculty around AI this fall, but it was a lunch discussion with a few High Point faculty earlier in the day that keeps sticking with me. Specifically, I heard from more than one instructor who can't seem to interest...
about 2 months ago • 4 min read
All the Things with Paul Hanstedt High-impact practices. Student agency. General education. Authentic audiences. Rhetorical triangles. The liberal arts. In this week's podcast episode, I talk with Paul Hanstedt about all the things! Earlier this year, I wanted to provide some bonus resources for my Patreon supporters who were participating in a slow read of my 2019 book Intentional Tech: Principles to Guide the Use of Educational Technology in College Teaching. The last chapter in the book...
about 2 months ago • 1 min read
High Structure Course Design with Justin Shaffer This week on the podcast, I'm excited to have Justin Shaffer back on. Justin is a teaching professor in chemical and biological engineering and associate dean of undergraduate studies at the Colorado School of Mines. He's the author of the forthcoming book High Structure Course Design for STEM as well as numerous discipline-based educational research articles, and he's frequent speaker to groups of faculty, particularly STEM faculty, on topics...
2 months ago • 3 min read
Multimodal AI Projects with Emily Bruff Back in the spring of 2023, when faculty and other instructors were justifiably worried about students having ChatGPT write their papers for them, I would give this advice: "Turn your paper into a multimodal project! ChatGPT can't help with those!" That advice is sadly no longer true. The newest versions of ChatGPT and other generative AI tools are no longer just text generators, but multimodal in nature. That is, they can work with text and images and...
2 months ago • 2 min read