As you plan a new course or revise an existing one, when do you decide on a text? I worry that many of us make that decision early on and then use the text to anchor our course design decisions. What gets included in the course as well as how it’s presented are often strongly influenced by what’s in the text and how it’s presented there. As the authors below point out, that’s not the role the text should be assuming in course planning.

We handed out the 2010 McGraw-Hill and Magna Publications Scholarly Work on Teaching and Learning Award at the recent Teaching Professor Conference. The review committee designated two finalist articles along with the winning piece, and all three of these articles are open with free access (for a limited period for two of the articles). I do hope you’ll take time to peruse them. Even though all three appeared in discipline-based periodicals, they are relevant to wider audiences—first, as exemplars of scholarly work on teaching and learning and second with content relevant beyond just the discipline. The winning article describes an impressive project that used a creative assessment method to look at the critical-thinking skills of a program’s majors. What discipline would not find that of interest? The article on library instruction looks at how well online instruction, face-to-face instruction, or a combination of both fostered learning. And the history article shares an assignment in which students prepared a well-researched entry for Wikipedia, a writing assignment that could work in many courses.

I was interested in the conclusions of a study done in Great Britain that asked students about their perceptions of and experiences with feedback provided by teachers. The researchers wanted to learn more about how students defined feedback and what feedback they had found useful. Students in the study, most of whom were upper division, understood feedback more broadly than it tends to be defined in the literature. They saw it “as a complex, holistic process involving multiple ongoing feedback channels and did not focus primarily on written feedback.” (p. 27) In their focus groups, students commented on the verbal feedback teachers offered—in response to questions they asked the teachers, about the answers they offered in response to teacher questions, about a completed assignment, performance on an exam, or overall progress in the course. Given the content of the comments, many of them seem like remarks teachers made in passing—that they weren’t planned feedback activities but responses that grew out of an interaction with the student. In some cases, teachers may not have even been aware that they were providing feedback.

“One can still be committed to one’s discipline, one can still be scholarly, studious and literate ... and SMILE while you are doing it.” That was the message early in John Huss’ session on humor at The Teaching Professor Conference this past weekend.

Handouts—for many of us they are an essential part of teaching, but conceptually they are not something to which we devote much mental energy. With summer approaching or during the current break between semesters, maybe a review of what handouts can be used to accomplish might motivate us to reconsider how we use them. Could it be time to explore some other options?

A new college teacher identifies the previous experience that most helped him when he first started teaching: “But it was in Outward Bound that I learned the most. Probably the single most important lesson was the need for humility. The sheer talent and passion that my peers displayed at times made me wonder if I should just give up. Eventually, however, I came to grips with a guiding philosophy of Outward Bound: Not everyone can be great, but everyone can, and is obliged to, get better. Post-course debriefing sessions were not about patting each other on the back. We were expected to critically evaluate our peers and do something with the feedback we received. It didn't matter how gifted you were; if you didn't see room for improvement in your performance, you weren't qualified to teach anyone. Get better or get out.” (p. 62)

The Teaching Professor Conference is next week, and it’s a sold-out event. More than 800 of us will gather in Cambridge outside Boston for this event. If this year’s conference is like previous ones, it will be a high-energy event with virtually nonstop talk about teaching and learning

I just received a copy of Michael Harris and Roxanne Cullen’s new book, Leading the Learner-Centered Campus. I’ll be writing more about it in the newsletter. When I first reviewed this manuscript, there was one idea that struck me as being so insightful and on target. It’s what these authors say about the now common and much overused phrase “paradigm shift.”