WSU Teaching & Learning Blog

Clearly the trend within higher education is a move toward larger class sizes. A recent article in the Association for Psychological Science magazine Observer presents some tips for managing larger classes. They report that faculty often first have to deal with their own feelings about the change:

Faculty responses to increased class sizes often resemble Kubler-Ross’s (1969) stages of grief and loss: denial (”There is no way to increase the size of this class and maintain academic integrity!”); anger (”I can’t believe they did this, administrators don’t care about students or faculty!”); bargaining (”If I teach 20 percent more students without additional compensation, what do I get in return?”); depression (”How am I ever going to teach this class in a meaningful way again?”); and finally acceptance (”OK, my class is larger. How do I deal with the hordes?”).

If this sounds familiar to you, you’ll appreciate Todd Zakrajsek’s presentation of some very pragmatic tips for staying connected as your class size grows. Check it out here.

Alan Levine, one of the better known digital pioneers in higher education, put together a great tour of 50 different tools that can be used to tell a narrative tale with pictures and more online. A narrated slideshow walks you through them, and a wiki points you to the sources discussed. Very interesting…

Last week, UNESCO released a report (authored by Susan D’Antoni) entitled Open Educational Resources: The way forward (.pdf). A wiki version is available as well. George Siemens from the University of Manitoba has put together a short online presentation (using Articulate) that summarizes key points from the report. It’s a good way to get up to speed on some of the current buzz on OER’s.  

As one possible indication of the sea change we’re headed for, Harvard University’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences has just adopted a policy that requires faculty members to allow the university to make their scholarly articles available free online, making it the first U.S. university to do so. Here’s a link to more details.

Suggestions from R. Palloff and K. Pratt (2007) Building Online Learning Communities: Effective Strategies for the Virtual Classroom, John Wiley & Sons, San Francisco, CA

These are a few suggestions that might be relative to your online teaching. Collaborative learning is a powerful principle and your students might benefit from working together. See if you could apply some of the following examples:

Have students read a case study and then with a partner from class come to consensus on issues involved in the case, a diagnosis of the problem, a treatment plan, or suggestions to resolve the issue or problem. Post their work as a position paper.

Students form teams and come up with a discussion topic which the group researches. They must also post questions to each other and summarize answers to the questions. The team then decides the format they want to use to present the research on the topic to the whole class. The group organizes around that format with individual members taking on different responsibilities for the presentation.

Student teams develop and produce a simulation or role play that demonstrate one of the main concepts or principles for the subject. The simulation could then be performed live by the team or using animations or props.

The interdependence of the students will help create learning communities and encourage collaboration and group study habits that can translate to their future lives.

If you have been doing any service learning work with your students, or are thinking about it and need some motivation, you’ll appreciate this listing of 93 potential research publishing opportunities. The Guide (available here as a pdf) was developed by Gary Homana, a participant in the 2007 Service-Learning Emerging Scholars Works-in-Progress Seminar hosted by the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement (CIRCLE).

The Connexions clearinghouse at Rice University offers a wide variety of open learning content. One very useful jumping off point for faculty and students interested in the growing wealth of shared learning content is the online course Introduction to Open Educational Resources. 

Developed by Judy Baker, the course walks the user through the major topics in the OER world, namely Open Courseware, Fair Use and Copyright, Finding Sources (including discipline-specific ones), Public Domain Textbooks, Primary Sources, Development of OER resources, and mechanisms for the Delivery, Storage and Organization of free content. Plenty of links and examples provide a quick entrance into an exciting area of growth for instructors at all levels of our educational system.

While aimed at a 5th-grade audience, all ages can appreciate the old songs, folktales, legends and history presented by the Windsor Public Library in their online exhibit known as The Folklore of le Détroit. The exhibit focuses on the Detroit River French who lived on both sides of the River through most of the 1700’s. Here’s a quick history lesson from the site: 

The French founded a colony at le Détroit du lac Érié in 1701. Détroit means “strait”, and that’s exactly what the Detroit River is: the strait between Lake Erie and Lake Saint Clair. The colony was the brainchild of Antoine Cadillac, first commander of Fort Pontchartrain du Détroit. He brought soldiers, farmers and merchants, as well as members of several First Nations, to settle in the area, in order to help defend the Great Lakes and French possessions in the interior against advances by the British and their Iroquois allies. Initially, the colonists settled on the north shore of the river (on what is now the American side). But from1749 on, they began occupying the south shore as well. Some of the settlers came directly from France, others from the Saint Lawrence River Valley. They practised a bit of agriculture, but most of them relied on hunting and fishing and the fur trade to earn a living. The colony became a British possession in 1760, but Francophones continued to settle in the area. Even after the north shore became part of the United States in 1796, the Detroit River remained for all intents and purposes a French river.      

The U.S. Professors of the Year Award Program was created in 1981 by the Carnegie Foundation to increase awareness of the importance of undergraduate instruction at all types of higher education institutions. The program recognizes faculty members for their achievement as undergraduate professors. This short podcast from Inside Higher Ed interviews the 2007 winners to learn some of the things they do to make their teaching a success.

Spreadsheets in Education is an open-access journal hosted by Bond University in Australia that explores the role that spreadsheets can play in education. Three years of content are now available. Of particular interest to many faculty will be the regular features focusing on using spreadsheets in the classroom. A recent example is an article entitled Quick Correct: A Method to Automatically Evaluate Student Work in MS Excel Spreadsheets by Laura R. Wetzel and Peter J. Whicker. Worth a look…

For those of you who haven’t heard, we’ve got many exciting speakers lined up at the OTL. Your own colleagues will be presenting their ideas and innovative approaches to teaching. This Friday, February 1, Dr. Tim Spannaus will discuss Simulations for Classroom Use and next Tuesday, February 5, Dr. Mame Jackson will talk about Opening Doors Between the Classroom and Community.

We’ve also got other speakers lined up for the rest of the semester. Topics include: Thoughts on How to be Both Rigorous and Flexible in the Classroom, Today’s Student: Deciphering What’s Real, and more. Click here for a complete list of Winter semester faculty speakers.