What Good are Scholarships?
Three new studies raise important questions about merit scholarships. Are they really based on merit? Are they advancing the mission of our institutions? Are they doing any good and to whom? First this...
View ArticleMy RSS of Management
As a dean, I have to make hard decisions every day. Since I often articulate the reason for the decision (see rule no 4) I figured I could actually write them down. I have no idea if any of these make...
View ArticleFREE Summer Tech You Should Try
It’s summer and time to try something new. Digital Content If you still think that your lectures are the only way students can discover new subjects or ideas, then try Google: type the titles of some...
View ArticleMore FREE Summer Technology
Free Rice: Start by playing a few rounds of Free Rice, a free quiz site that donates 10 grains of rice to the World Food Program for each correct answer. Your students will love both aspects. Browse...
View ArticleFinal FREE Summer Technology
Just in time for your fall prep, Garin Horner and Michelle Hiscock have produced an amazing and searchable list of FREE online technology for the classroom. All of the basics plus loads for the...
View ArticleFirst Impressions: Do NOT hand out a syllabus!!!
The first day of class is a terrific opportunity to motivate students, demonstrate why your subject matters, create a greater sense of wonder, and surprise students with how your class might change how...
View ArticleSecond Impression: The eComm Policy over Office Hours
OK, you still want to see students F2F–faculty interactions after all are consistently cited as the most important learning opportunity in college. (Keep in mind, students rarely see class time as high...
View ArticleCognitive Wrappers: Using Metacognition and Reflection to Improve Learning
Our understanding of intelligence, learning, the brain has exploded in the last 30 years. We’ve discovered multiple types of intelligence, neural plasticity and realized that you can teach an old dog...
View ArticleCourse Design Grants
Today we launched a new teaching award that will provide more support and aid for faculty groups or individuals to redesign a course or course sequence. Technology may have increased the availability...
View ArticleObama’s New College Ratings Plan: We Need Better Assessment NOW!
At the end of August, President Obama outlined new proposals to make college more affordable and to develop a new rating system before the fall of 2015 that will appear in the existing College...
View Article“I Hate Your Class: It Changed My Life”
It’s time for course evaluations and grading: no wonder we love the end of the semester so much! Course evaluations are flawed mostly because they do not really tell us what we want to know—what did...
View ArticleValue in Higher Education: Preparing (Minds) for the Unknown
Rankings in higher education don’t measure quality. Mostly they measure the status or brand of a college, so more and better applicants means a higher rank. Beyond the historical elites, most of what...
View ArticleRethinking Course Evaluations to Improve Student Learning
Everyone hates student course evaluations. They don’t measure what students are learning or even how much good teaching is occurring (although it is probably not good to have persistent high GPAs and...
View ArticleDiversify or Die
Remember evolution? Random mutations create variations, some of which will be better suited to individual environments and will be more likely to reproduce (i.e. survive). Two points here might be...
View ArticleYour Major Doesn’t Matter! Yes, It Does! No, It Doesn’t! Part I
I recently sent out a video message to the members of Goucher’s Class of 2018 and their families. In it, I try to allay the academic anxiety that paralyzes both students and parents alike. In this...
View ArticleYour Major Doesn’t Matter! Yes, It Does! No, It Doesn’t! Part II
This is the second segment of a three-part blog series about why students (and their parents) shouldn’t stress about choosing a major. It complements a video I also recently posted. In the previous...
View ArticleYour Major Doesn’t Matter! Yes, It Does! No, It Doesn’t! Part III
This is the last segment of a three-part blog series that I mentioned in a recent video that is meant to get students and parents to relax about locking in a college major. In the previous blog post, I...
View ArticlePublish Your Pedagogy in TN2
Eddie Watson (Dir of the CTL at the U of Georgia) and I are working on a new Teaching Naked Handbook that will be published by Wiley next year. It will be full of practical advice for faculty, but...
View ArticleWhy do we have general education? Part one: What is the point of a liberal...
At Goucher College, we are rethinking our curriculum. Specifically, we’re asking: What is the core of a liberal arts degree? What is general education in that context? And what is the relationship...
View ArticleWhy do we have general education? Part two: How did we get here?
For most institutions, this core liberal arts mission happens in the general education curriculum, a unique feature of U.S. higher education. Today, we have two broad types of general education: the...
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