Improving Teaching
This page was developed by members of the Core Curriculum Committee of the College of Arts and Sciences, UNE. It includes links to many resources for you to use as you look for new ideas about teaching. We hope it will be helpful, and would appreciate any feedback or additional links you can recommend (send to pmorgan@une.edu).
Recommended Books and Articles
BOOKS
Angelo and Cross provide clear suggestions on how to seamlessly integrate assessment into instruction by collecting daily feedback from students on their learning. This ongoing assessment keeps students engaged and motivated and professors informed about the effectiveness of their teaching. The book clearly explains what classroom assessment involves and how it works. It offers step-by-step guidance for using fifty classroom assessment techniques, including Background Knowledge Probe, The Minute Paper, The Muddiest Point, One Sentence Summary, and Concept Maps.
Bean provides a “how-to” guide for designing writing and critical thinking activities for inspiring and motivating students to learn. He offers specifics regarding how to encourage students to engage in inquiry, exploration, discussion, and debate. He demonstrates how to integrate writing into other activities involving critical thinking, e.g. inquiry discussions, simulation games, classroom debates, and interactive lectures.
Davis shares a collection of teaching tools that cover both traditional tasks--writing a course syllabus, delivering a lecture--and newer, broader concerns, such as responding to diversity and using technology. The practical strategies and suggestions come from effective teachers and the literature on teaching and learning, and take the reader from the First to the Last Day of Class. Included are tips on discussion strategies, group work, role-playing, homework, and testing and grading.
Fink emphasizes the critical nature of the thinking and planning professors must do in order to ensure student learning. Professors must create learning objectives, a course design, and teaching strategies that are carefully conceived and connected to significant learning experiences; this requires a shift on the professors’ parts from a content-centered approach to a learning-centered approach. Fink challenges faculty members to focus their and their students’ efforts on these significant learning experiences, which other educators have called “enduring” or “essential” learning. To support professors’ efforts to create significant learning experiences for their students, Fink offers information and suggestions regarding active learning, educative assessment, a taxonomy of significant learning, and the concept of a teaching strategy.
McKeachie blends theory and practice, has a constructivist approach, favors discussion over lecture, but offers numerous ideas for improving the lecture approach; he is suggestive, not dictatorial regarding his preferences. In addition, the book offers flexible tools for faculty members to use to “maximize learning for all students. At the end of each chapter, there are annotated recommendations for related reading. In addition to sharing his own expertise, he taps the knowledge of other recognized gurus for technology in teaching, motivation, and laboratory instruction. McKeachie earns high praise from veteran and novice faculty members.
Weimer explains that “learner-centered teaching focuses attention on what the student is learning, how the student is learning, the conditions under which the student is learning, whether the student is retaining and applying the learning, and how current learning positions the student for future learning.” Learner-Centered Teaching helps teachers look beyond content delivery to the learning process and objectives and how to connect them with their teaching and curriculum.
ARTICLES
Bonwell and Eison address what active learning is, why it’s important, and techniques for incorporating this approach in the classroom. They note that research has shown that active learning is “. . . superior to lectures in promoting the development of students' skills in thinking and writing. Further, some cognitive research has shown that a significant number of individuals have learning styles best served by pedagogical techniques other than lecturing.”
Steadman and Svincki promote and defend the use of CATs—Classroom Assessment Techniques—based on cognitive theory’s claim that the active involvement of the learner is required in order for learning to occur.
Theall offers a review of findings in the field of the scholarship of teaching and learning, concluding, “college teaching and learning take place in a complex and ever-changing environment, a community affected by and affecting the larger world.” He offers support for utilizing Donald Schon’s “reflection-in-action” and an “active learning [approach that] reinforces the importance of engagement, time on task, and the ongoing partnership of students and teachers.”
Teaching Techniques
Below is a list of topics related to teaching. Under each topic is a list of web sites that contain information, techniques and activities that may be useful to you. If you discover other websites that you think would be helpful to your fellow faculty members, please let us know and we will add them to the list! (email pmorgan@une.edu)
Encouraging and improving class discussion
http://www.nyu.edu/cte/discussionhtm.html
http://teaching.berkeley.edu/bgd/participation.html
http://teaching.berkeley.edu/
compendium/sectionlists/sect10.html
http://ctl.unc.edu/fyc12.html
http://www.crlt.umich.edu/tstrategies/tsd.html
http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/html/
icb.topic58474/TFTlectures.html
http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k1985&pageid=icb.page29698
http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/html/
icb.topic58474/Dawes_DL.html
Socratic questions
http://changingminds.org/techniques/questioning/socratic_questions.htm
Group work and team work
http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/html/icb.topic58474/wigintro.html
http://www.crlt.umich.edu/tstrategies/tsgwcl.html
Active learning
http://ctl.unc.edu/fyc2.html
http://www.crlt.umich.edu/tstrategies/tsal.html
Case-based teaching
http://www.crlt.umich.edu/tstrategies/tscbt.html
Cooperative learning
http://www.crlt.umich.edu/tstrategies/tscl.html
Lectures and large classes
http://www.crlt.umich.edu/tstrategies/tscl.html
http://isites.harvard.edu/fs/html/icb.topic58474/TFTlectures.html
Sample Activities
The following web sites are great resources for activities to help you improve your teaching.
From Faculty Development Committee, Honolulu Community College
1. http://honolulu.hawaii.edu/intranet/committees/
FacDevCom/guidebk/teachtip/assess-2.htm
This link takes you to a “sampler” of key activities from the extensive resource by Thomas Angelo and Patricia Cross: Classroom Assessment Techniques: A Handbook for College Teachers. Included are their “Background Knowledge Probe,” “Minute Paper,” and “Muddiest Point” techniques. The first category of the “Background Knowledge Probe” asks students to respond to “What do you know” about a new topic about to be introduced; a slight change that makes it less daunting for students to offer their ideas is “What do you think you know about________?”
2. http://honolulu.hawaii.edu/intranet/committees/FacDevCom
/guidebk/teachtip/teachtip.htm#criticalthink
This links to the “Teaching Tips Index,” which includes everything from teaching techniques to course design to motivating students.
Office of Educational Development, University of California at Berkeley
http://teaching.berkeley.edu/bgd/teaching.html
Check out this link for a “buffet” of techniques to try from UC Berkeley’s Barbara Gross Davis and her book: Tools for Teaching. Topics include: Preparing or Revising a Course; Diversity and Complexity in the Classroom: Considerations of Race, Ethnicity, and Gender; Encouraging Student Participation in Discussion, Collaborative Learning: Group Work and Study Teams; Motivating Students; Helping Students Write Better in All Courses; Fast Feedback.
Also see “A Berkeley Compendium of Suggestions for Teaching with Excellence”
http://teaching.berkeley.edu/compendium/
Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning, Harvard University
http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k1985&pageid=icb.page11800
Also see “Tip Sheets”
http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k1985&pageid=icb.page29721
Includes two helpful sections for improving teaching, one on “Advice” and another, “Resources”
Derek Bok is the author of a number of books that discuss college teaching and learning, including, Our Underachieving Colleges: A Candid Look at How Much Students Learn and Why They Should Be Learning More. Princeton University Press. Princeton, NJ.
Center for Research on Learning and Teaching, University of Michigan
http://www.crlt.umich.edu/tstrategies/tssf.html
Teaching Strategies: Classroom Assessment Techniques (CATs)
Classroom Assessment Techniques (CATs) allow instructors to monitor students’ progress throughout the term. CATs help answer the questions, “What are my students learning? How effectively am I teaching?” The articles and links in this section provide comprehensive information about CATs, including their purpose and their use across disciplines.
The Writing Center at Illinois Wesleyan University
http://titan.iwu.edu/~writcent/Active_Reading.htm
This link will take you to Active Reading ideas to use with students from John C. Bean’s book, Engaging Ideas: The Professor’s Guide to Integrating Writing, Critical Thinking, and Active Learning in the Classroom.
When we talk about critical thinking pedagogy, we are not referring simply to pedagogy that challenges our students to think and reason more carefully than they do. Nor are we referring to instruction in the fundamentals of argument. Rather, we are referring to a particular system of teaching whose aim is to break down a student's critical thinking into discrete activities, and then to show students how to reflect carefully on each of these activities in order to sharpen their thinking skills.
- from Dartmouth’s web site http://www.dartmouth.edu/~writing/
materials/faculty/pedagogies/thinking.shtml
What is Critical Thinking? Some Definitions
Citation: Huitt, W. (1998). Critical thinking: An overview. Educational Psychology Interactive. Valdosta, GA: Valdosta State University.
http://chiron.valdosta.edu/whuitt/col/cogsys/critthnk.html
From Ericae.net - Critical Thinking Skills - Definitions and Assessment
Includes definitions of critical thinking, teaching of critical thinking in specific disciplines.
http://ericae.net/faqs/crit_tnk.htm
Rubrics and Skills Lists
Washington State University's Critical and Integrative Thinking Rubric (Gary Brown visited UNE in Spring 2006)
https://my.wsu.edu/portal/page?_pageid=177,276578&_dad=portal&_schema=PORTAL
From Miami University
**The rubric developed at Washington State University has been modified for different disciplines
http://www.units.muohio.edu/led/Assessment/Assessment_Basics/Rubrics.htm
A Rubric from Northeastern Illinois University
http://www.neiu.edu/~ctl/bulletins/Bulletin11.pdf
A Rubric from Winona State University
www.winona.edu/air/resourcelinks/critical%20thinking%203.pdf
Paul, Binker, Jensen, and Kreklau (1990) have developed a list of 35 dimensions of critical thought:
www.ncrel.org/sdrs/areas/issues/envrnmnt/drugfree/sa3crit.htm
Bloom’s Taxonomy
http://faculty.washington.edu/krumme/guides/bloom1.html
From Susan Wolcott – see summary table p. 11
https://www.lynchburg.edu/documents/facresources/
critical%20thinking%20files/wolcott%20handout%201.pdf
From California State University, Chico
http://www.csuchico.edu/phil/ct/ct_assess.htm
Indicators of Critical Thinking by physicist Arnold Arons
http://www.nyu.edu/cte/abstreason.html
Teaching Critical Thinking
(1) “Helping Your Students Develop Critical Thinking Skills,” Cindy L. Lynch and Susan K. Wolcott. (IDEA Paper #37, October 2001).
Presents a model for developing students’ critical thinking/problem-solving skills based on reflective judgment. Gives specific tasks and language.
Link: http://www.idea.ksu.edu/papers/Idea_Paper_37.pdf
(2) Dartmouth’s Teaching Critical Thinking through Writing
http://www.dartmouth.edu/~writing/materials/faculty/pedagogies/thinking.shtml
(3) Michigan State University’s Teaching Methods: Teaching Critical Thinking
Contains links to many valuable sources of information about teaching critical thinking
http://www1.provost.msu.edu/facdev
/instructionalresources/TeachingMethods/critical-thinking.asp
(4) John C. Bean’s comprehensive pdf. File on writing and critical thinking: good background information and clear strategies for designing assignments that encourage the development of these skills.
http://teach-usda.ahnrit.vt.edu/best_practice/
presentations/pdfs/bean.pdf