Writing assignments, particularly for first- and second-year college students, are probably one of those items in the syllabus that some professors dread almost as much as their students do. While no one's doubting that essays, research papers, and other types of writing assignments are an important part of the academic experience and vital to furthering student learning, they also are time consuming and, at times, frustrating to grade.

At the end of English composition, I ask students how what they’ve just learned in my class might be useful in their other classes. They’re often bemused and surprised to learn that professors in other courses care about their writing. To encourage them to take responsibility for succeeding in their future writing assignments, I hand out a list of 20 questions that they might ask to better understand “what the professor wants,” and thus continue to apply what we’ve been practicing.

I’m sure it’s pretty clear by now that pedagogical literature is one of my main passions. I am totally convinced that reading good materials on teaching and learning helps faculty improve instructional practice at the same time it motivates the effort good teaching requires. I am equally convinced that most teachers don’t read as much of this literature as they should, although readers of this blog are probably exceptions. To advance the cause of scholarship on teaching and learning, as in to make more faculty aware of good resources, I read widely, across disciplines, around and between them. It makes my day when I discover something new, albeit with chagrin when I don’t discover it in as timely a manner as I should.

Interested in a good example of how teaching, student scholarship, and service can be integrated into a single activity? Cecilia Shore [reference below] suggests that mentorship of undergraduates doing scholarship (be it research in labs or bibliographic searches) may just be that example.

It’s not easy to get unanimous agreement on anything these days, but on this most educators can agree:

I’m making my way through a long, but thoughtful and well-documented report, “Creating a Culture for Scholarly and Systematic Innovation in Engineering Education.” It is an impressive piece of work and one beneficially read by faculty and academic leaders interested in education innovation in any field. (Find the report at www.asee.org. The link is in the upper left hand corner of the American Society for Engineering Education’s homepage.)

As a former editor in the business profession and now educator, I see connections between business and classroom best practices, especially when it comes to using academic learning agreements to promote student engagement and leadership. Such learning agreements can increase student accountability in the classroom and lay the foundation for a successful college experience by helping them understand the importance of adhering to their own best practices and goals.

Student participation is perhaps the biggest challenge of teaching online courses, says Deborah Raines, professor and director of the Accelerated Second-Degree BSN Program at Florida Atlantic University. Part of the problem is that students often have misconceptions about what participation means. This is why Raines makes it a point, particularly during the first two weeks of a course, to model and encourage appropriate participation.

“There is no personal interaction between student and teacher…the spontaneity of teaching is lost…the only rapport exists in exchanging bits and bytes of info.”