[social_share/] “Happy New Year!!” That is how I think of September and the new school year. This often coincides with a strong pull to stationary stores, tidying my office, organizing my supplies, reading new books, and pulling out sweaters and…
[social_share/] With Wenona Partridge, GMCTE Richard Feynman was a great physicist and exceptional teacher, and generally cool person. He had a vision for how he wanted to teach and kept moving towards that vision. For a glimpse of Feynman, see…
[social_share/] It’s hard to believe, as we sit on a 30+ day, that the fall term is coming up fast! It is even warm in my office today as I write. (And for those of you who have stopped by…
[social_share/] I think of authentic assessments as ways for students to demonstrate knowledge and understanding in a public way. What makes assessment authentic for me is that students do something to show what they know in a public way that…
[social_share/] This past term, the day after the Dean of the College of Arts and Science Peter Stoicheff”s acoustic guitar noon-hour concert, I got two recommends for new and up-coming recording artists. Stella Swanson is my second cousin. Her grandmother…
[social_share/] I’ve been a teacher since I was 6 years old and I still absolutely grin when I see a class that is well-structured and flows with lots of student and instructor excitement and enthusiasm that is “on purpose.” When…
[social_share/] I recently interviewed Leah Ferguson, faculty member in Kinesiology, about how she chooses the examples she uses to illustrate concepts in her first year KIN class… This might surprise you at first but then it’s an “of course!!” What…
[social_share/] ISSoTL 2014 was held this past October in Quebec City. I was attracted to the conference not just because of the theme (“Nurturing Passion and Creativity in Teaching and Learning”) but also because of the location—I had not been…
[social_share/] At a recent Leadership Conversation we focused on creativity as it pertains to collaborative projects. We based our discussion on ideas from the book Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull who was one of the founders and is the current…
[social_share/] For the first time today, I tasted tamarind. I felt like I had discovered something so surprisingly delicious and interesting that I wondered why I had gone this long without knowing about it. This fruit’s benefits are wide-ranging and…
[social_share/] About a month ago I ran across a great TED Talk given by BJ Fogg, PhD, director of the Persuasive Tech Lab at Stanford University. Fogg claims that, “When you learn my Tiny Habits method, you can change your life forever.” Well, it hasn’t…
[social_share/] NOTE: There are ten high impact educational practices that reportedly increase student success. You can access that list and brief description at https://www.aacu.org/leap/hip.cfm, http://www.uwgb.edu/outreach/highimpact/assets/pdfs/kinzieHO2012.pdf, or watch this short 6-minute video: For the back-story—the elements that make these high impact…
[social_share/] I just observed in a large first-year class that has incorporated an undergraduate research experience. Today one third of the class attended to work on operationalizing their research questions into items for a survey in their small groups. Last…
[social_share/] Ryan Brook teaches Animal Science 475.3 Field Studies in Arctic Ecosystems and Aboriginal Peoples and about 120 students have taken the course in the ten years he has been teaching it. Ryan has spent twenty summers on the Hudson’s…
[social_share/] Text notes are not the best method of note taking for many students. Some do better simply listening and taking it in, while others thrive on visual representations of what is being said. I just watched Giulia Forsythe at Brock…