How do I create a syllabus?
Syllabus Design 101
There’s never a bad time to re-examine and rethink how to write your syllabus. This guide walks you through everything you need to know, with specific tips and strategies, to craft an effective syllabus.
How do I improve my teaching?
How to Prepare for a Teaching Career
In between finishing your dissertation, here's what you should be doing to enhance your candidacy.
Small Changes in Teaching
How simple changes in pedagogy — in things like course design, classroom practices, and communication with students — can have a powerful impact on student learning.
How to Prepare for Class Without Overpreparing
Let go of the fantasy that you must use every minute of a strictly planned class schedule to introduce, explain, clarify, and cover.
How to Make Your Teaching More Engaging
Stimulate your students’ curiosity — and help them learn — using the tried-and-true techniques in this comprehensive guide.
How to Teach a Good First Day of Class
The first day of class is crucial both for your students and for you. This guide will help you make opening day as effective as possible.
How Peer Instruction and Polling Have Changed My Teaching
Here’s why I gave peer instruction and polling a try, and why you might consider them, too.
How to Hold a Better Class Discussion
Good discussions involve taking risks, by the students and the professor. This comprehensive guide is filled with tips to help improve yours.
How to Make Your Teaching More Inclusive
This comprehensive guide offers a road map to make sure your classroom interactions and course design reach all students, not just some of them.
The Case for Inclusive Teaching
If we can't recruit additional students, we need to make every effort to keep more of the ones we have.
The ‘Holy Grail’ of Class Discussion
Why faculty members should come up with more ambitious goals for class discussion than just getting students to talk.
Advice on Advising: How to Mentor Minority Students
"I did not always understand how much labor, thought, and care went into meaningful mentoring, how emotionally draining that work can be, and how little prepared I was for it."
To: Professors, Re: Your Advisees
Why am I getting paid to mentor your graduate students? Because someone has to do it.
What are the best ways to use technology in my teaching?
How to Be a Better Online Teacher
Many professors don’t know how to teach online, and may not know how to improve at it. Our comprehensive guide can help.
How to Make Smart Choices About Tech for Your Course
Choosing the right tech tools for your teaching means making strategic choices, weighing costs against payoffs, and staying laser-focused on your course goals — and that is what this guide aims to help you do.
Tell Me a Smart Story: On Podcasts, Videos, and Websites as Writing
Letting students "write" in nontraditional formats has the potential to have a major impact on our classrooms.
Teaching Online Will Make You a Better Teacher in Any Setting
Adapting a course for a digital environment forces you to ask yourself why you're doing a particular pedagogical thing — and then to rethink it.
Why I Teach Online
It turns out that online instruction is a feminist issue.
7 Steps to Better Online Teaching
What one instructor learned from YouTube, and other strategies that helped her better motivate her students.
Faculty Members Can Build Relationships With Online Students. Here’s How.
Learning that you can bring a personal touch to the virtual classroom just might make you a convert.
How do I engage my students in class more effectively?
How to Make Your Teaching More Engaging
Stimulate your students’ curiosity — and help them learn — using the tried-and-true techniques in this comprehensive guide.
Getting Beyond Brain Games
A new book looks at how to apply the science of learning to college teaching.
How Students Learn From Games
How can professors use simulation games in the classroom.
And on the Last Day of Class, We'll Play Games
Why I decided to ditch the blue books for an "epic" final exam.
How Peer Instruction and Polling Have Changed My Teaching
Here’s why I gave peer instruction and polling a try, and why you might consider them, too.
How to Hold a Better Class Discussion
Good discussions involve taking risks, by the students and the professor. This comprehensive guide is filled with tips to help improve yours.
How to Make Your Teaching More Inclusive
This comprehensive guide offers a road map to make sure your classroom interactions and course design reach all students, not just some of them.
How to Make Smart Choices About Tech for Your Course
Choosing the right tech tools for your teaching means making strategic choices, weighing costs against payoffs, and staying laser-focused on your course goals — and that is what this guide aims to help you do.
Tell Me a Smart Story: On Podcasts, Videos, and Websites as Writing
Letting students "write" in nontraditional formats has the potential to have a major impact on our classrooms.
How do I figure out my teaching persona?
I Don't Like Teaching. There, I Said It.
It's perfectly possible to dislike teaching and still do a good, even an excellent, job in the classroom.
Stop Blaming Students for Your Listless Classroom
How the use of games as a teaching methodology has the potential to break the long history of student disengagement in college learning.
Don't Be Hard to Get Along With
Why do faculty members insist on rigid rules to prepare students for the "real" world when that world is characterized by accommodation?
Be Hard to Get Along With
Growing problems of classroom decorum mean faculty members have to get tough or sacrifice learning for all students.
How to Help a Student in a Mental-Health Crisis
You're a faculty member, not a trained counselor. But you can play a significant role in guiding a struggling student.
Sar-Chasm in the Classroom
I do my best to avoid snarky rejoinders when I’m teaching, yet they pop out uninvited.
How do I avoid burnout in the classroom?
4 Ideas for Avoiding Faculty Burnout
If we're feeling depressed and anxious, it's near-impossible to do our jobs well in the college classroom.
3 Ways Colleges Can Help Faculty Members Avoid Burnout
If institutions hope to flourish, it’s in their interest to make sure their faculty flourish, too.
You Are Not a Public Utility
When strangers seek your expertise, do you have to respond? What if it's a student?
Does 'High-Impact' Teaching Cause High-Impact Fatigue?
"Transformative" teaching is exhausting. Here are some suggestions on how to lessen the load.
Why I Collapsed on the Job
Academics are silent workaholics — so free to work whenever we want that many of us end up working all the time.
How Can I Make Big Classes Feel Smaller?
How One Email From You Could Help Students Succeed
A professor shares some promising results from sending a personalized message to students who failed the first exam.
Small Ways to Help Students Feel Noticed
Start by building excitement, says a professor who teaches large courses at the University of Arizona.
Insights From Other Instructors on Teaching Large Classes
Professors share the emails they use to "nudge" students at key moments in a course.
What do I need to know about grading?
How to Escape Grading Jail
In the end-of-the-semester crush, our students don’t do their best work in all-night cram sessions, and neither do we.
Final Exams Versus Epic Finales
Instead of a multiple-choice test, try ending the semester with one, last memorable learning experience.
‘How Much Do You Want Your Final to Count?’
An economics professor devises a way to allow a class of 200 more choice over how they are graded.
Why I’m Easy: On Giving Lots of A’s
The importance of encouraging students, weighed down by preprofessional courses, to take a class for — dare I say it? — pleasure.
Why Grades Still Matter
High standards coupled with high expectations — including encouragement, not derision — create real student success.
What Is the Purpose of Final Exams, Anyway?
It's not just about inflicting one more test before the semester ends. There are ways to make it meaningful.
The Extra-Credit Question: Should You Offer It or Resist?
It's that time of the semester when students start to wonder what they can do to boost their final grades.
Defending My Grades
The semester was over, but the adjunct instructor wasn’t done working, just done being paid.
I’m Not Ready to Quit Grading
But I am ready to ask students to do more self-assessments, and to give their "grading" as much weight as mine.