As regular blog readers know, I read a variety of pedagogical periodicals in which I almost always find content relevant to all teachers, not just those in the periodical’s discipline. I have written previously about how the positioning of pedagogical scholarship so extensively within the disciplines concerns me. I know there are instructional issues that are discipline specific, but my long years of reading this literature have convinced they are far fewer than those issues shared by all disciplines. But that’s background for what I wanted to write about in this entry.

Using multiple test trials was something I had never considered until found myself in a newly assigned course with an old syllabus. The previous course, which consisted of 310 total points, included 140 (45 percent) testing-based points. In addition to a 100-point final exam, there were four 10-point quizzes. I was intrigued by the quiz design format that allowed students to take the quiz up to three times over the course of a week, with the average score added to the grade book.

A biology class works with a local environmental organization to test water samples from the Chesapeake Bay. A graphics design class helps a non-profit organization build a new website. A childhood development class serves as mentors to at-risk students in an after-school program.

In a previous blog entry, we revisited the market metaphor and its applicability to higher education. Robert Knapp pointed out some of the comparisons that stimulate thought, analysis and hopefully response. But he concluded, as most in higher education have, that overall, a business model does not capture what higher education aspires to be about.

Editor’s note: What follows is part-two of the article on facilitating classroom discussion. If you missed part-one, you can read it here.

I’m always on the lookout for new teaching metaphors and I found a good one this weekend.

Discussion is a staple in most teachers’ repertoire of strategies, but it frequently disappoints. So few students are willing to participate and they tend to be the same ones. The students who do contribute often do so tentatively, blandly, and pretty much without anything that sounds like interest or conviction. On some days it’s just easier to present the material.

The findings of a recent study documenting differences between the priorities that faculty and students give to various learning goals will not come as a surprise to many. Those differences are an undercurrent that flow through most classes.

I remember the first time something in the newsletter generated all kinds of reader response ... well, the very first time was when I used “criteria” when I should have written “criterion”, but the first response to substance involved an article suggesting that higher education ought to be run more like a business. The response was overwhelmingly negative—some of it thoughtful, a lot of it visceral. It is a metaphor that still rankles and does not do justice, given the aims and purposes of higher education. But as Robert H. Knapp, Jr. points out, the metaphor does highlight some comparisons to which educators should attend.