Teaching in Higher Ed

The danger of making assumptions as educators

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I've fallen victim to it many times. I think I understand a situation completely and discover that I was missing some fundamental pieces of the picture.

male college student sitting in a classroomA couple years ago, I had a student who seemed like a complete jerk. He regularly came in late and seemed so disengaged. He seemed like someone so resistant to learning. Toward the end of the semester, he emailed me and asked to meet with me. I prepared myself for the typical end-of-semester conversation, where all the excuses come out and the dreaded requests for do-overs.

He actually wasn't even doing that poorly in the class, so I'm not sure why I felt so primed for him to ask me for favors. He showed up and started his story out slowly. He hadn't wanted to come see me that day, but his Mom had encouraged him to have a conversation with each of his professors. It turned out that he wasn't there to make excuses, but to share that his Dad was in a hospital bed, dying of cancer. He thought I should know, but didn't want to get pity from me. That had been the biggest thing that had held him back from making the appointment with me previously.

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Teaching joyfully ever after

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There's a stark contrast between relying on happiness to get you through, versus joyfulness. Happiness is comprised of the emotions that are derived from our circumstances, whereas joyfulness is independent of circumstances.

Tomorrow is the last day of school for most of the K-12 teachers here in Orange County, CA. Those of us who teach in higher ed have been done for about a month, if we are on a traditional semester system. Social media has been lit up with celebrations of another school year drawing to a close. [Read more…] about Teaching joyfully ever after

Three lessons my children have taught me about teaching

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I had lunch with a former colleague at Strawberry Farms here in Irvine, CA, recently. What a great opportunity to admire the beautiful flowers that surround the place (see photo), despite the otherwise dreary day. If any of you reading this are locals and want an amazing salad, you can't go wrong with their chicken Waldorf.

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My lunch companion has children that are 17 and 19, while our kids are two and just four months old. In the course of our conversation, my friend and I lamented about the physical demands that young children take in stark contrast to the cognitive challenges that older kids bring.

The process of parenting can be the great educator: always challenging and always providing new opportunities for learning. Here are three lessons my children have taught me about teaching:

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Still questioning the effectiveness of rubrics?

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Ever since I first read the book Introduction to Rubrics: An Assessment Tool to Save Grading Time, Convey Effective Feedback, and Promote Student Learning, I was hooked.

However, I am surrounded by colleagues who not only don't see value in them, but think they are a deterrent to teaching. Their concerns range from what I call the supreme court method of assessment (“I'll know it when I see it) to the “sink or swim” mentality that they say will help prepare our students for corporate life.

I see… If there are awful managers out there who don't communicate their expectations well, we should definitely employ their methods in our teaching process…

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It doesn't take long to find a poor quality rubric, which certainly contributes to the concerns about their validity. Grant Wiggins stresses the importance of having “intelligent versus thoughtless” rubrics. It takes time to craft a rubric that truly assessed learning and, over time, increases the quality of student work. A rubric should provide the means to assess quality in differing degrees. If what is being described is a binary characteristic (the student either included it, or didn't), the proper term is checklist, not rubric (Wiggins).

If you're reading this post and have attempted to use rubrics well, but still aren't sure you've capitalized on their benefits, this is the right place for you. Here are ways to get more out of rubrics by capturing, curating, and creating them:

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How to leverage the bookmarks you’ve saved

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I've been teaching the practice of Personal Knowledge Management to my doctoral students this term. One thing I didn't anticipate was just how challenging it would be for some of them to select tools to use in the process. I didn't want to dictate that they had to use particular apps, but I'm thinking that I need to create an “essentials” or “basics” set to provide for those on the lower end of the digital literacy spectrum.

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