Thriving in Academe

Select a topic from the alphabethical list below or browse the next three pages for numerous Thriving in Academe topics that promote effective teaching and learning in higher education:
Academic Honesty A Class Web Site Acting The Part Adjusting to Change A Meta-Profession An Expert Teacher Assigned Reading Challenging Students Click Click Click Come Follow Me Designing Courses Digital Immigrants Do Your Homework Ecological Campus Future Teachers Giving Good Grades Good Assessment Handling Conflict Information, Please Learning Context Learning Problems Learning Styles Learning Theory Measuring Up Overloaded Faculty Peer-Led Team Learning Planning a Trip Online Preparing Students Promoting Oneself Reaching All Students Reaching Students Restoring Civility Seeing is Believing Service Learning Showing The Way Show Me The Way Small Group Work Stopping To Listen Stressed-Out Prof Students From Across the Globe Student Self Assessment Sustaining First Year Students Teaching Diversity Teaching in Circles Techno-Teaching Thinking Critically Trailblazing by Team Transformation Vive La Difference Writing to Learn

Digital Immigrants

Has the digital age left the nation’s professoriate in the dust? Our students, writes the author of this issue’sThriving in Academe, have grown up in a digital world. The language of computers, video games, and the Internet is their first language. Most professors are trying to pick up this second language on the run. Will we be forever out of touch? Don’t despair! Lighten up! Help is on the way!

Overloaded Faculty

Technology! Accreditation! Accommodation! Strategic planning! Assessment! Curricular reform! Not to mention, courses and research! Twenty-first century higher education is generating more and more work with proportionally fewer full-time, tenure-line faculty to do it. How can a beleaguered professor manage? Thriving in Academe has some suggestions for controlling your workload.

Assigned Reading

Few things are more frustrating to a college teacher than to begin a discussion of the readings assigned during a previous class and discover that a significant number of students haven’t done the readings.

This issue’s Thriving in Academe offers encouraging news: There are classroom strategies for ensuring that students keep up with class readings—and students actually welcome them.

Click Click Click

Clickers in the classroom? This issue’s Thriving in Academe provides a look at an innovative instructional tool that the author promises will liven up your classroom, promote student discussion, and aid in on-the-spot assessment of student learning. Sound interesting? 

Vive La Différence

Despite the occasional controversy around the concept of diversity on our campuses, most college instructors want our classrooms to be inclusive. The authors, Kathryn Plank and Stephanie Rohdieck, of this Thriving in Academe suggest that we don’t let our assumptions about diversity get in the way. Instead, we should recognize the many and sometimes invisible ways that we and our students bring diversity into the classroom.

Learning Styles

The concept that one size fits all doesn’t have much of a place in education since we’ve begun to understand better how brains work and people learn. This issue’s Thriving in Academe author, Laura L.B. Border, suggests ways instructors can use the Kolb Learning Style Index to identify their own cognitive processing preferences and those of their students. From this knowledge they can develop more effective teaching strategies.

Reaching All Students

Today’s college students come in all shapes and sizes, spanning many cultures, speaking different languages, learning in different ways. Included in our classes also are students of varying abilities and disabilities, including physical impairments and learning disabilities. How in the world can we design courses that reach such a diversity of students? Universal Design will help, says Alexa Darby, the author of this issue’s Thriving in Academe.

Students From Across the Globe

This issue’s Thriving in Academe presents one more challenge for faculty to tackle: international students. These learners from beyond our borders require instructors to once again adjust their teaching style in order to ensure-academic success for all students. Leora Baron, a former international student during the 1960s, shares her insight and advice on teaching international students.

Sustaining First Year Student

The first year of college is a unique time in the lives of our students, whether they are fresh out of high school, returning to the classroom after many years away, or fall somewhere in between. Teaching these students is obviously a challenge because everything is so new to them. But it’s also a prime opportunity to introduce higher level thinking to students new to the challenge of college-level work. Calvin Peters, professor of socialogy at the University of Rhode Island, offers advice on teaching first-year students.

Learning Context

Whether you are designing an interdisciplinary course or updating a course that you teach each semester, including the needs of your students, your department and your institution are necessary and important to the success of your class. Thriving in Academe author, Marlene Preston even shares ways to enjoy the design process in the "Tales from Real Life" article.

A Meta-Profession

The meta-profession of teaching requires expertise in a wide variety of complex professional skills beyond that of content expertise. In an era where outside forces threaten the status of the professoriate, Michael Theall and Raoul Arreola, discuss a project that demonstrates the range of skills required by faculty members.

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