Posted by Rich Olexa
Are your PowerPoint or Keynote presentations any good? If your lecture came on TV, would you want to watch it? When I started teaching, one of my goals was to avoid various pet peeves I had as a student. At the very top of my list was what I’ll call the dreaded PowerPoint textbook. The change ...
Posted by Janet Day
I recently observed a large lecture class for a colleague in another department; I sat in the back during my visit. Her lecture techniques were really flawless and I found it very interesting. What I was stunned to see was that at least 1/3 of the class sat in the back and spent the whole clas...
Posted by Melissa Hudler
It’s no secret that today’s students, raised on technology and nourished by social media, find the traditional classroom lecture difficult to attentively sit through. If students prefer texting to email because email takes too long to access and read, imagine how they perceive a 50- or 7...
Posted by Bob Ertischek
At the community college where I teach, students sometimes ask for extra credit opportunities. I have never built extra credit into any of my courses, but when asked, I have usually allowed students to do some kind of assignment. I don’t know if I’m going to continue.There is the occasio...
Posted by Bob Ertischek
I’ve always been slightly amused and disconcerted that my college’s Political Science official abbreviation is POS. They couldn't use PSC or POL? Who are the ad wizards who came up with that one? Political Science is not a POS* discipline. However as an adjunct faculty member I sometim...
Posted by Bob Ertischek
About two-thirds of the way into my class this morning, I see a face staring into the little window in the classroom door, all the way up the stairs at the top of the room. I’m in the “teaching pit” below in my smallish stadium seating classroom and the window is in my field of vis...
Posted by Bob Ertischek
As we begin the new academic year, I have spent some time reflecting on collegiality; a concept that is often considered a fundamental element of working in higher education. To be collegial is defined by Merriam-Webster as characterized by or marked by power or authority vested equally (emp...
Posted by Robert Ostrow
I want to wish everyone a happy labor day anf good teaching druring the year. In a previous blog I mentioned that I had some excellent videos to share with sociology, criminology or even psychology courses. I have gone through hundreds of videos I have and found two of them and some more that I have...
Posted by Bob Ertischek
I recently read I Don't Like Teaching. There, I Said It, written under a pseudonym by a humanities professor who admitted that she (If it matters, I’m assuming the author is a woman as the picture accompanying the article showed a woman lecturing to a room full of students.) didn’t lik...
Posted by Bob Ertischek
Over seventy percent of the teaching faculty in higher education in the United States are part time, contract employees. They are eligible to teach only a limited number of classes, at a much lower pay rate than their full-time, tenure track colleagues, and mostly without benefits and with very li...