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High Impact Practices Purpose of Teaching

Post-Pandemic High Impact Practices

A small group of faculty gathered today in the CTL to discuss possible futures for high-impact practices at St. Lawrence. I found it to be one of the most refreshing and joyful conversations I’ve had in a very long time, and I am excited by many of the ideas that emerged through our conversation. I […]

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Purpose of Teaching

Busywork?

During an advising meeting, a student told me: Before the pandemic, I was basically willing to do anything I was asked to do in a class. Now, I can’t stand busywork. I will only do work that feels important to me. I appreciate the student’s honesty, and I appreciate how this student–like many of us–clarified […]

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Feedback Mental Health Purpose of Teaching

Mid-Semester Break

As we enter the mid-semester break, I write to offer two suggestions. First, now is a good time to think about soliciting informal feedback from students about the course. If you feel that aspects of the course aren’t going as well as you’d like, ask the students. After two years of hybrid learning experiences, I […]

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High Impact Practices Purpose of Teaching

Signature Experiences

In a previous post, I announced an upcoming workshop on High-Impact Practices 2.0. In this post, I want to consider some of the ways we can facilitate what we might think of as “signature experiences” for students related to these high-impact practices. Leon Botstein, President of Bard College, writes in his book Jefferson’s Children: “A […]

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Mental Health Purpose of Teaching

Supporting Students

NPR recently reported that the Covid pandemic may have a lasting impact on our personalities. At the start of the semester, I was optimistic that our students would have a more normal college experience than they’d had these past three years. While many signals of normalcy are reappearing on campus, all is not well. To […]

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Purpose of Teaching Reader Question

Understanding by Design

I’ve had the good fortune of doing several classroom visits recently, and it is always inspiring to see the work my colleagues are doing. A question I often get asked after a classroom visit is about approaches that a professor can study in order to renew or advance their practice. One of the most well-known […]

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High Impact Practices Purpose of Teaching

High-Impact Practices 2.0

Several years ago, the AAC&U published a list of high-impact practices that lead to increased student engagement and learning. Here is the list of their 11 high-impact practices First-year seminars Common intellectual experiences Learning communities Writing-intensive courses Collaborative projects Undergraduate research Diversity and global learning Service learning Internships Capstone projects Reflective e-portfolios  As you will […]

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Purpose of Teaching

Teacher-Scholar

Tomorrow (9/23) I will host a discussion on a new grant program I am initiating as the CITA director. The goal of the grant is to encourage SLU faculty to write about their teaching practice or write about ways that their scholarship and creative work intersect with their teaching. An ideal that many of us at […]

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Assessment Purpose of Teaching

Departmental Assessment

In this post, I want to explore connections between departmental assessment projects and teaching excellence. I do this because I think it is easy to feel that the departmental assessment projects we are asked to do are disconnected from the things we care most deeply about. Too often, we may not see the ways that […]

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Mental Health Purpose of Teaching

Slumps, Cycles, Seasons

In my previous post, I mentioned a strategy I recently used because I worried my class was getting into a slump. Almost every class will have these. Some are predictable–when the campus has a major event over the weekend, or when a break is approaching–but others are more difficult to anticipate. Regardless, good teachers develop […]