Source: certi.mst.edu

Teaching Partners is a confidential professional development service for instructors who want to enhance their teaching through peer observation and feedback. Trained faculty mentors and instructional designers meet with interested instructors in a collegial atmosphere where there is mutual sharing that benefits both parties. EdTech and CERTI worked together with faculty to develop this program where faculty can work with each other and discuss teaching and learning including any issues that might be faced in the classroom. This is a great program to participate in. Sign-up today!

There’s no shortage of lists identifying desirable teacher characteristics, are students are fairly consistent in naming the behaviors that help them learn.

Source: www.facultyfocus.com

How would you describe a good instructor? What characteristics do you think are important to make a difference in student learning? Here is an article that identifies 10 characteristics and behaviors that can lead to enhanced student outcomes. It is also important to note that there are tons of lists around good teaching characteristics that have been published. Use this list to examine how you interact with students in the classroom and online. What other characteristics would you like to see listed?

Our institutional and/or course policies aren’t doing much to stop cheating in college. How we get students to realize how much cheating hurts them? It has nothing to do with whether they’re caught, but rather the personal consequences.

Source: www.facultyfocus.com

How do you help students understand that cheating hurts them more than they think? In this article, Maryellen Weimer shares a memo that she has given to students. It is a short memo but completely summarizes why cheating can hurt you, the student. This simply memo may be one that we can share before the test as a way to have a serious conversation with students in our classes about the damage cheating can do.

Source: tomprof.stanford.edu

Student engagement and class participation are two of the characteristics that most everyone identifies with a successful course. But how do you get this engagement? In this article is one strategy on building that engagement in your classroom. 

To retain students in Engineering, ENGAGE students in Engineering. Retain
undergraduates, particularly underrepresented groups, by improving their
day-to-day classroom and educational experiences. ENGAGE’s free,
research-based resources can help you do this.

Source: www.engageengineering.org

One the statements that I hear a lot is “this topic that I’m studying doesn’t have anything to do with what I’ll be doing when I graduate.” Students sometimes lack the ability to connect what they are learning in the courses they are taking with what they will be doing when they graduate and “get a real job.” See if there are ways that you can relate the topics and lectures that you are giving to real-world applications. This will also help students connect to you, especially when you showcase your research as part of this process.

In a recent study, more than 85% of students said it was important to them that their instructors knew their names. Their reasons were quite convincing.

Source: www.facultyfocus.com

Knowing someone’s name and greeting them by that name when they come in your classroom is a great way to set the tone for the semester. It is the first steps in creating an atmosphere of collegiality. It also shows that as the instructor you are invested in this class because you took the time to learn the students’ names. Sometimes it is the most simple things that can have the most impact. 

Source: www.chronicle.com

The results of this study are not surprising, but confirm what instructors have said for a long time. Many students judge good teaching by how well they succeed in a class rather than the way it was taught. 

Source: tomprof.stanford.edu

Dealing with students is never easy and it seems like more and more students like to complain and argue with you, the instructor. We can talk forever about what has led to this but that isn’t as important on a daily basis as it is to know how you can deal with difficult students. This article offers 8 strategies that you can use to help you deal with students who are being difficult. The last strategy refers to “knowing what you will never allow in class.” and setting your expectations from the beginning and being clear in your syllabus is the first way to deal with all students.

Sometimes teaching gets tired because we’ve done what we’re doing a hundred times before. We march through the material along well-worn paths.

Source: www.facultyfocus.com

This article addresses the issue of tired teaching. It’s so easy to become tired. There are so many demands on our time and it seems easy to fall into the trap of just doing what I did last semester because I’ve taught this course lots of time, right? This article gives six strategies to help us overcome “tired” teaching. The hardest part is acknowledging the issue. But you are not alone in this and reaching out to a colleague can help build a culture of support and collegiality that can help everyone in the teaching and learning process.

The online classroom can sometimes feel isolating for students and faculty. Here are five ways you can build a sense of community in your online courses.

Source: www.facultyfocus.com

This article has 5 great suggestions for building community in your online course. We take a lot of things for granted in our face to face class and it’s only when we move online that we realize how much. Building community from the very beginning of your course is important to overall student success.  Do you do any of these?