#efficient teaching

[smallpondscience]

The Chicago Guide to College Science Teaching

While I’ve mentioned it briefly in the past, now I’m ready for the full announcement: my book is good to go and is available for pre-order!

One of my goals with this blog is to make evidence-based teaching practices more accessible to scientists who aren’t prepared for a deep dive into educational jargon and theory. I sometimes have been asked to recommend a book that does this, and I…

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[smallpondscience]

Efficient teaching: frequent assessments

Efficient teaching: frequent assessments

If your teaching is at least modestly informed by the scholarship of teaching and learning (and, I dare suggest, it should be), then you are probably aware that frequent assessments are a good thing. Students learn better when they have more opportunities to find out if they’re learning what is being taught. But — as Meg Duffy pointed out last week — some teaching practices are effective but may…

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[smallpondscience]

In teaching, less is more

In teaching, less is more

Question: When you’re teaching, how much should you cover? I propose a couple answers: Answer A: You shouldn’t cover much, because the more you cover, the less they learn. Answer B: Trick question! You’re not supposed to “cover” anything! If you teach a topic by just making sure it gets covered in a lecture, then you’re not really teaching it. Imagine your goal is to teach just one relatively…

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[smallpondscience]

How should the shape of your grade distribution change the way you teach?

How should the shape of your grade distribution change the way you teach?

I’ve received a number of comments about one of the recommended reads from last Friday. It was about the New York Times op-ed piece, about why people shouldn’t grade on a curve. And then, I asked, who does that anymore? The answer is: a lot of people. In addition to the comments on the post, I’ve gotten some emails and chatted with a few people (here while I’m at the International Congress of…

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[smallpondscience]

Parade of professors or solo scholar?

Parade of professors or solo scholar?

There are two basic models for teaching courses and the norm varies a lot depending on the type of ecology course. A single professor was responsible for the majority of classes I took as an undergraduate. However, these days the courses I’m involved with are done by a series of professors for particular subtopics. The contrast has me thinking about the pluses and minuses of these approaches. On…

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[smallpondscience]

What are office hours for?

What do you think office hours are for? Office hours are drop-in* hours for students to see their professors. How should you spend this time? If you don’t have students in your office, then you should probably be writing. Because we always should probably be writing, right? Or analyzing. Or doing a weekly browse of tables of contents. Or something else productive. If you’re me, you should be…

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[smallpondscience]

Why I avoid lecturing

Why I avoid lecturing

Academic freedom is glorious. Despite pronouncements to the contrary, university faculty — including most contingent faculty — enjoy tremendous freedom in what we teach and how we teach it. Most professors teach however the hell they choose to teach. Academic freedom enables change, but resists rapid change. Faculty have the liberty to stand aside as change happens. We can stand by and snark as…

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[smallpondscience]

There are lots of opportunities for grad students to learn how to teach

There are lots of opportunities for grad students to learn how to teach

In my last post I complained that grad students don’t generally get taught how to teach in grad school, despite the fact that they are (arguably) there to be trained for a career that requires them to teach. Thanks very much to everyone who commented! As a result of both the comments and getting more information about TA training at my current university, I’ll now write about how there are in…

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