We know that what students believe about themselves as learners makes a difference, but sometimes a specific example really makes the point. Here’s a study that does just that. It involved beginning students taking a general chemistry course. At the beginning of the course they took a Self-Concept Inventory designed for chemistry students. Its five scales measure, among other things, a chemistry self-concept, a mathematics self-concept, and an academic self-concept.

The scholarship of teaching movement has made us aware that the effectiveness of those new activities and approaches we implement in the classroom must meet higher standards of evidence. Even though we may be thrilled with the effectiveness of what we tried, it no longer suffices to say that we thought it worked really well and our students loved it. Evidence of effectiveness needs to include more objective measures of success.

Did you see the nice collection of comments posted in response to the blog entry on rubrics? I love it when you add your comments! Something more on rubrics will be coming shortly but there was also a blog on critical thinking with the advice that a course should contain no more than 50 new concepts. My good friend and colleague Larry replied that he thought that was too many. In an email note to me he was a bit more blunt wondering where in the world that number came from. I expect it’s an arbitrary figure—somebody’s good guess. It may well be wrong. Quibbling over it is probably not worth the time, but it does raise several other points well worth consideration.

At a teaching center I visited recently this quote was posted on a bulletin board: “A teacher’s constant task is to take a roomful of live wires and see to it that they’re grounded.” The quote was attributed to E.C. McKenzie.

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.

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?”

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.

Occasionally we need a reminder like this: based on a thorough literature review, Paul Ramsden, a noted researcher on teaching and learning, along with several co-authors offered this description of good teachers.