Meaning Negotiation in International Teaching Assistant Preparation Classes
For International Teaching Assistants, meaning negotiation plays a vital role when it comes to interactions with native English speaking undergraduate students in the laboratory or in the classroom. In this article, I share a few tips that can help ITA instructors or coaches guide ITAs through their interactions with their (future) undergraduate students.
On What I Hope This Site Can Be
A Message from the Editor:
For those of you that know me, and no doubt today, at the start of this project, many of you...
Opening up Office Hours
A common complaint of college instructors is how many of their students don’t come to office hours when they are struggling. As instructors, we...
Creative Writing Feedback: On Finding Praise
There’s a lot of talk in teaching circles about feedback—how to give an appropriate amount that doesn’t overwhelm the student (or the teacher’s workload) and balances praise and constructive criticism. Finding praise is, of course, characterized by its very verb as the part where you have to strain yourself, what you include to soften the blow your critique.
Engaging the Unruly Class
An unruly class can leave us feeling flustered, frustrated, and downright helpless. Try these strategies to help refocus your students' attention.
Student Centered Office Hours
Those of us who teach Creative Writing usually have the luxury that our students actively choose to be in the class. When they come...
Raising the Stakes: Group Projects as Competitive Contests
Group projects regularly cause trepidation but structuring them as competitive contests leads students away from generic and predictable outcomes.
Is it Really All My Fault? Sharing on In-Class Discussions
I’ve become familiar with the resistance to classroom discussions, but, until recently, I always assumed good discussions were lacking because students are, generally speaking, lacking in “critical thinking.” But last week, something happened that made me reconsider.
Creating Usable Syllabi
We're all familiar with the frustrations that come from students not reading the syllabus. But I've come to realize the problem isn't one of whether or not the syllabus is read, but one of if and how it's used.
Five Ways to Effectively Engage Students
I am frequently asked, “How do you do what you do?” and I always say, “I just do it.” So,when prompted to discuss how...
Student Engagement Articles
Maintaining student engagement can be difficult, especially as we near midterms where students' minds are preoccupied with any number of papers, exams, or presentations....
Engaging Your Class in Peer-Listening During Presentations
Being teachers and instructors, we frequently include oral presentations into our syllabi. Unlike other group or individual activities, Power Point presentations on a particular...
Three Ways to Visualize Your Syllabus
While the syllabus forms the foundation of a course, it doesn't always reach it's full potential. By nature, the syllabus is linear. The daily plans...
Three Tricks to Learning Students’ Names
I pride myself in knowing all of my student’s names by the end of the first week of class. This is no easy task...
Learning to Read Online
In introductory writing classes with a research based project, most of us spend time teaching students how to read academic journal articles. We understand how to...
Shared Responsibilities -When a teacher turns into a facilitator
Today, to pace with the learners’ interests and needs, most teachers tend to change their teaching styles, making their classes more interactive and task-oriented.