The literature has made us aware of the importance of a student's connection with a faculty member, advisor, or other significant adult and its impact on academic success and retention of students. For first-generation students, this can be especially critical, as they require assistance not only in what to take and why, but also how to understand and negotiate this new and overwhelming environment. Universities employ a variety of methods and people to attempt to ensure that this connection be established and maintained. Advisors often fulfill this role for students in their first year in higher education.

Fall semester is well underway at my institution. Prior to classes starting I had the opportunity to have lunch with a couple of fellow faculty members. During our lunch, we discussed many topics related to the upcoming term, but classroom management emerged as a common point of contention.

Sounds like a bit of jargon, doesn't it? It probably qualifies as such but what the term refers to is of interest. Researchers in the 50s who were trying to explain criminal behavior coined the phrase which describes “justifications for deviance that are seen as valid by the delinquent but not by the legal system or society as large.” (These researchers, Sykes and Matza, are quoted on p. 295 in the article referenced below). If deviant actions can be justifiable then the offender avoids moral culpability.

Rapport, defined as "the ability to maintain harmonious relationships based on affinity" (a definition cited in the article referenced below), is more colloquially thought of as what happens when two people "click"—they connect, interact well, and respond to each other favorably.

It's an age-old problem. You want to make the most of every minute you have with your students, but it’s been proven that most people can only retain about 20 minutes of content in our short-term memory before we have to reflect on it in order to move it to our long-term memory or it will be lost. Add to this the violently condensed attention span of the general population and anyone hoping to provide a content-rich education in the time slots of traditional classes faces an uphill battle.

In a 2008 essay that was published in the Journal of Cell Science author Martin Schwartz writes of the "importance of stupidity" when doing research in the sciences. Schwartz argues that during his graduate research in the sciences, "the crucial lesson was that the scope of things I didn't know wasn't merely vast; it was, for all practical purposes, infinite."

Simulations can be powerful active learning experiences. In the social sciences and humanities they can provide a kind of “lab-like” experience, often not a part of these courses. Finding good simulation exercises is a challenge in some fields and integrating them into the content and objectives of the course requires careful planning and execution. However, this extra work is justified given what a good simulation can accomplish in class. Check out these benefits listed in an excellent article on simulations (reference below).

Editor’s Note: In Tuesday’s post the author wrote about how technology provides access to a vast array of content that has the potential to resonate emotionally with students. In part two of his article focuses on making the most of online discussions.

Although we strive to uphold academic integrity, we may unknowingly be committing plagiarism. As we know (and tell our students) plagiarism is copying from a source verbatim, but it is even more than that. According to Reference.com, “plagiarism is the unauthorized use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one's own original work.”