• For semesters, terms and courses that end and then begin again—if only they would end sooner and begin later.
• For students (sometimes not very many) who come to class prepared and ready to learn.
• For students (sometimes too many) who don’t come prepared and don’t care about learning. From them we learn humility and how far we can stretch to reach.
• For students who figure it out and forget to hid their joy.
• For PowerPoint that makes content look way more impressive than overheads ever did and projects with bulbs less likely to burn out.
• For librarians who navigate data bases and run search engines, skilled and delighted to show students and faculty how they too can manage information.
• For email that brings notes from now successful former students. And extra gratitude for those willing to admit what we told them was right.
• For grading software that corrects errors, assigns meaningful comments, and tallies the points. For that day when it’s available and let it be soon.
• For new colleagues who can’t believe they’re getting paid to do what they’d almost do without pay but are happily doing for almost no pay.
• For old colleagues still in love with their content and on fire in their classrooms.
• For department heads who care about teaching with something other than lips.
• For questions with answers that raise questions in a knowledge circle that expands but never breaks or ends.
• For minds still nimble and restless enough to pursue those answers that raise questions.
• For classrooms with furniture that moves, for clean floors, empty trash cans, chalk in the tray, a computer that stands ready, for places and spaces that convey the sanctity of learning.
• For feedback that helps students to grow and faculty to flourish.
• For a job, less like work, more like a vocation with meaning and purpose, that on good days makes a difference and on bad ones still holds promise.

—Maryellen Weimer

Students not doing the reading or other assigned homework—I’ve already done more than several blog posts on the topic and lots of articles in the newsletter. Hopefully all the “coverage” has offered grist for your thinking and new strategies worth trying. Despite all the previous “coverage,” I’m still finding there is more to be shared on the topic.

This may not be the best time of the semester to bring this up: Some students are already getting on your nerves? Nonetheless, I thought you might be interested in a typology that identifies the different ways students nag their professors. Usually we think of nagging as something children do to parents or spouses do to one another, but some researchers think it happens in the classroom. Here are the seven different kinds of “nags” perpetrated by students on their teachers.

It wasn’t all that long ago that the only people using Web 2.0 applications were Millennials and other early adopters. Today Web 2.0 tools are making serious in-roads into the higher education community as valuable weapons in today’s teaching arsenal. And while it’s no surprise that students are drawn to these applications, what may be one of the most unexpected technology trends in higher education is the number of faculty members using them as well.

Have you ever constructed your own student rating form? If you haven’t, you ought to consider doing it. First, the reasons why: It’s a chance to get student feedback on those aspects of instruction that matter most to you and that reflect the activities and learning opportunities in which your students participate. Most end-of-course rating instruments still ask for feedback on didactic instruction: Did the instructor present material that was clearly organized? How well did the lectures hold your attention? Did the instructor incorporate adequate visuals? If you regularly use active learning strategies, questions like these offer no feedback on the effectiveness of those approaches.

Here’s an interesting book: Academic Cultures: Professional Preparation and the Teaching Life. It isn’t one every faculty member should read even though the point is relevant to all academics.

I attended the recent ISETL Conference (International Society for Exploring Teaching and Learning). The conference is definitely worth attending. Of course, we do have a vested interest in your attendance at The Teaching Professor Conference, but even more important than that, is getting you to recognize the value of attending a teaching-learning conference. They offer such opportunities for growth and renewal. Check out: www.isetl.org and www.teachingprofessor.com)

Unlike their college-level counterparts, those who teach at the K-12 level spend a significant portion of their education studying the “how” of teaching. What they learn can be invaluable to college professors who enter classrooms with vast content knowledge but little (or no) background in teaching and learning. As those who teach these teachers, we’d like to showcase five teaching strategies college professors can learn from those who teach younger students.

I’m picking up where I left off with the previous blog entry. I’m still thinking about the evidence for active learning—those pedagogical practices that engage and involve students in learning processes directly. I’ve also been thinking about the faculty predilection (not at all universal but still reasonably widespread) to bad mouth educational research, or less flagrantly, to benignly neglect it.