Teaching Strategy Tip #37

Useful Resources for Students

Source: http://fc.short.cm/UsefulResourcesforStudents

Teaching Strategy Tip #28

Master basic metacognitive processes*

Strategy: Support students’ efforts to evaluate their own knowledge and skills, identifying strengths and weaknesses. Instructors can help students recognize what they do well and where they need improvement in their performance. Learning to assess how to complete a performance task (e.g., project, examination) demands guidance from the instructor and practice by the student.

Process: For every demonstration of performance (ungraded and graded), instructors guide students to:

Source: http://fc.short.cm/MasterBasicMetacognitiveProcesses

Continue reading Teaching Strategy Tip #28

Teaching Strategy Tip #41

Citation and Research Management Tools

  • EasyBib A simple, easy-to-use tool for managing citations. Set up an account to save your work.
  • Zotero Free Firefox extension and standalone application that helps manage information found on the internet including articles in library databases. Enables capture of data and creation of bibliographies.
  • Refworks Web-based bibliographic citation management tool featuring importing of references from online databases and creation of bibliographies in a variety of citation styles. Available to City Tech students, faculty, and staff. Log-in with your City Tech ID is required.
  • Mendeley Free online service that facilitates management of research documents and creation of bibliographies. Also has many features that support collaboration between researchers.

Source: http://fc.short.cm/ResearchToolsforStudents

Teaching Strategy Tip #32

Student Self-Evaluation of Discussion

Tip: Student Self-Evaluation of Discussion Participation (Brookfield & Presskill, 2007)

  • Distribute these questions to participants and have them complete these. Discuss with participants whether you as the instructor will see the students’ responses. The questionnaires are to be completed anonymously.
  • What ideas, questions or information did I contribute to the discussion today?
  • How did I try to encourage another student to speak today?
  • What did I learn from the discussion today? (New information, a new understanding of something already covered, an idea to follow up after the discussion, etc.)
  • How did I make connections between what different people were saying today?

Source: http://fc.short.cm/StudentSelfEvaluation

Teaching Strategy Tip #44

WAC Best Practices

Writing can facilitate learning by staging or scaffolding assignments: begin with small, informal pieces that gradually build to the bigger issue raised by the assignment.Teaching Tip 44

  1. Instructors need not feel the need to read and comment on everything students write: informal writing exercises can be read by peers or used to start class discussion; occasional or random collection can keep instructors in contact with students’ writing without feeling overburdened.
  2. The level of commenting offered should correspond to the level of importance of the writing activity: an informal piece need not have any response, a response paper might warrant questions for further thought, and a formal essay might elicit comments toward revision.
  3. Feedback need not only come at the end of an assignment: collect or workshop thesis statements, introductions, or other important discrete portions of writing assignments.
  4. High-order concerns need attention before low-order concerns: suggestions should facilitate organization, focus, or argument revision before grammar, spelling, and vocabulary edits.
  5. Writing activities should link with course goals: writing should not be done merely for the sake of writing, but should enforce and promote course-specific learning.
  6. Students—any learners, really—need orientation into writing in the discipline: writing practices change from discipline to discipline, course to course, or even professor to professor, so be sure to discuss guidelines and expectations.
  7. Course assignments and other materials are important examples of effective writing: these are high-stakes pieces of writing that inform students about important elements of the course, so thoroughly read, revise, edit, proofread, share with peers, etc, any writing that given to students.
  8. Technology offers important lessons: take advantage of technologies such as blogs, wikis, social networking, and e-mail to encourage clear, effective writing with very real audiences.
  9. Reflection is an important element in any discipline: writing offers students an opportunity to reflect on elements of their coursework from what worked well in exam preparation to how they would proceed differently with lab work in the future to how they moved from one draft to the next when writing an essay.

For more in-depth descriptions, review our workshop materials or refer to the faculty handbook. Contact our coordinators if you would like to work personally with a WAC fellow on integrating WAC practices into your classes.

Source: http://fc.short.cm/WACBestPractices

Teaching Strategy Tip #5

Student Self-Evaluation of Discussion Participation

  • Distribute these questions to participants and have them complete these. Discuss with participants whether you as the instructor will see the students’ responses. The questionnaires are to be completed anonymously.
  • What ideas, questions or information did I contribute to the discussion today?
  • How did I try to encourage another student to speak today?
  • What did I learn from the discussion today? (New information, a new understanding of something already covered, an idea to follow up after the discussion, etc.)
  • How did I make connections between what different people were saying today?

Source: http://fc.short.cm/StudentSelfEvaluation

Teaching Strategy Tip #13

Demonstrate the organizational structure of the course*

Strategy: Provide students with the organizational structure of the course.

Objective: By explicitly discussing the order of presentation of topics and concepts, the instructor shares the connections and accumulation of knowledge.

Process: Review the syllabus as a “road map”

  • Highlight the organization of the concepts
    • In the readings
    • In the topics
  • Discuss how the assignments serve as scaffolding for cumulative learning

Option: Connect this exercise with further discussion of the syllabus
* Based on strategies suggested by Ambrose et al., 2010

Source: http://fc.short.cm/DemonstrateOrganizationalStructure