Ethical action and decision-making has always undergirded higher education practice. For example, issues such as academic freedom and how to balance financial realities with the need for quality both have an ethical dimension.

Here’s a list of some practical suggestions taken from a, “miniature guide for those who teach on how to improve student learning.” (Web address below) The guide was prepared by Richard Paul and Linda Elder, both well-known experts on critical thinking.

Most faculty (especially those reading a publication like this) do care about students. We wouldn’t be doing all that we do if we didn’t. However, some semesters are long, some students are difficult, we get behind, we have too much on our plates, and we get stressed and tired. When that’s how we’re feeling we don’t always show that concern in tangible ways.

Two of the big buzzwords in higher education are “student engagement” and “teacher effectiveness.” One way to address these intertwined issues is to improve the quality of student-teacher interactions both inside and outside the classroom.

I had dinner with a group of faculty recently during which we had a prolonged and intense discussion of rubrics—I know, only college teachers could become impassioned about a topic like this. The debate centered on whether rubrics could capture all the aspects of an assignments or whether they constrained both instructors and students. “I want my students to be able to blow me away with something wonderful that I never expected to receive on an assignment,” one instructor proclaimed. Another at the table offered an example—a 45-year-old woman who spent time with some gay people to fulfill an assignment that tasked students to connect with an unfamiliar community. “Her paper met almost none of the assignment requirements, but all I could think of as I read it was how much she had learned,” her instructor explained. “How could I give her a C when she had learned everything I had hoped for in the assignment?”

I recently read two wonderful books on the medical profession, one by Jerome Groopman (How Doctors Think) and the other by Atul Gawande (Better). I’ve been thinking about how closely the tasks of teachers and doctors are aligned.

Consider the following scenario: A student, clearly upset about receiving a failing grade on the midterm, comes up to you after class and says he wants to retake it. You reply that, as stated in the syllabus, there are no make-up exams. You also remind him of his spotty attendance record. He becomes angry, knocks your papers off the front table, and yells “You’re a terrible professor! The whole class hates you!”

Think back to your first few years of teaching. If you’re like most educators, you probably made your share of mistakes. Maybe you were too strict … or not strict enough. Perhaps you were so absorbed delivering your course content that you didn’t realize half the class was completely lost. Or maybe you made assumptions about your students that later proved to be false. You’re not alone.

If you’re interested in having students learn something about how groups function as they participate in a group project, you might consider having them do some journaling about their group experience.