“What we do in the same class can be soon forgotten by one student, yet have a profound impact on another.” (p.2) Joel Foisy, a math professor, says this might well be his “biggest” teaching lesson. He has another insight along the same lines: “Any given class is really many different classes—one for each student involved.” (p. 8)

Student evaluation results from last semester usually get distributed about this time at a lot of places. I thought a few reminders might be in order. This particular set is brought to you courtesy of the IDEA Center (Individual Development and Assessment Center) at Kansas State University. This center is one of the largest providers of a national student rating system. They have been in business for years and are highly respected by both ratings researchers and practitioners.

Transformative learning—learning that changes what students know, how much they know, and what they are able to do with that knowledge—can occur inside and outside the classroom and need not be restricted to any particular discipline, says Patricia Cranton, a noted authority on transformative learning.

With 10 inches of snow on top of two inches of ice, there wasn’t much to do besides read this past week, and I got around to several books that have been waiting on my shelf. One of those books is a collection of essays, all written by faculty at SUNY (State University of New York) Postdam.

If you think multiple choice tests are only good to assess how well students memorized facts, it may be time to rethink your testing strategy. Although they are not appropriate for every situation, when properly developed, multiple choice tests can used to assess higher levels of thinking, including application and analysis.

In the February issue of The Teaching Professor I highlight some very practical research that looked at student responses to written feedback provided on their papers. Most of us tend to be a bit cynical about this. We see students quickly turning to the page with the grade and then shoving the paper into the backpack. But the findings of these two studies indicate that this isn’t how most students respond. The studies give students more credit than we tend to. But there was something else from one of the studies I wanted to share here.

MAPP, CAAP, C-BASE, CLA, NSSE, to name just a few. With so many published assessment instruments available, how do you know the best one for assessing student learning at your school?

EDUCAUSE, the association for information technology in higher education, released its list of Top Teaching and Learning Challenges for 2009. Voted on by the EDUCAUSE teaching and learning community, the top five challenges are:

Recently I read this advice to new faculty: “Just be yourself.” Like a lot of advice, this isn’t bad; it’s just not very good. Every person has many selves, so which one of the many should you be in the classroom? Moreover, the classroom teacher is under some obligation to meet professional standards. You can’t act in the classroom like you do at home in your PJs.