Student Guide Corner

On July 25, 2016, I posted a blog entry describing a class supplement I was building for my introductory financial accounting class.   I have spent the summer creating electronic flashcards using Power Point so that I could embed audio clips and link to videos that I had made.   My goal was to guide students through each chapter of the textbook to help them in organizing and reviewing complex material (or to serve as the preliminary coverage for a flipped classroom).  In that earlier posting, I stressed the need for careful sequencing of the individual cards. I emailed the finished product for Chapter One to my students yesterday.   I am a big believer in the power of communications so I explained what I was trying to do and why.   I asked for their feedback.   After all, the product is for their benefit.  Students are in the best position to say what works and what doesn�t. If you would like a copy of what I created for Chapte...

As I try to mention every now and then, if you want me to send you an announcement whenever I post a new blog entry (about 20 times per year), send me an email at Jhoyle@richmond.edu . *** My good friend Bob Jensen passed along the following URL a week or so ago: https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/11/06/qa-laguardia-community-college-president-new-book-college-teaching?utm_source=Inside+Higher+Ed&utm_campaign=1d9d10a57e-Insider_Update_201512&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1fcbc04421-1d9d10a57e-197565045 The related story talks with one of the authors of the book Taking College Teaching Seriously :   Pedagogy Matters!     The story begins with an interesting assertion:   �The call to increase the number of U.S. adults with college degrees and improve college completion rates across the country has only grown louder in recent years.  But relatively little has been discussed about the actual teaching that occurs inside the thousands of...

The September 16, 2015, issue of The Wall Street Journal provided a wonderful essay by Jason Stevens titled �A Professor Who Put Teaching First.�   He writes about one of his professors (Peter W. Schramm of Ashland University) who recently died.   I found almost every word to be moving.  However, here are two sentences that were really wonderful:   �His office was always full of students wanting to tear off a bit of wisdom . . .  Schramm taught his students how to think and live well, how to be prudent and judge wisely, how to seek the just and the true.�  Words like those were what made me want to become a college teacher way back when I was a young person.   For me, kings and presidents could not have a more important and interesting life than Stevens describes. Reading this essay started me thinking.   Do students today still talk about their college teachers in such glowing terms?  In some ways, the description o...

In a March 5, 2015, blog entry, I posted the results of a survey that I had conducted.   I have 76 students this semester and they were each asked to identify the characteristics they believed exemplified great teaching.  I read and classified each of their responses.   I then ranked the various response categories by frequency.   This essay generated heavy traffic.   It quickly jumped onto my all-time top five list in terms of the number of page views.   Readers of my blog apparently have a genuine interest in what students say about great teaching.   I hope you will consider doing a similar survey with your students just to see if the results are consistent. Although I was fascinated by what my students had to say, they were clearly thinking about teaching from a student perspective.   That is hardly surprising.   However, having taught in college now for 44 years, the characteristics that I associate...

One of the great benefits of teaching is that the summer is available.    We can do research and writing.   Or, we can work to improve our teaching.    �How can my next class be better than my last class?� is a great question to ponder during the summer break.    You have had a couple of months of break � how often have you addressed that question?    I am a strong proponent that everyone needs to learn to think differently about the challenges they face.    If you think like everyone else, you will wind up being average by definition.    In my book Don�t Just Dream about Success:    Stack the Odds in Your Favor , I devote an entire chapter to the challenge of learning to �Think Differently.�    Here is just one of the suggestions that I put forward in that book: ��How could this have been improved?� is a great question to consider throughout your daily wanderings.    It stimulates critical ...

We completed our first week of school yesterday. I always believe that this is an important juncture. Is the class going to fall into a lethargic mediocrity or begin to take off? We only have about 14 weeks. If we are going to have something great, we need to start building on that almost immediately. If you begin to lose student enthusiasm, you may never get it back. So, this morning, I wrote my students a note to make sure they each understand what it takes to be good in my class. The goal is not to cram the night before the test. The goal is to understand the material today so that you can answer more questions tomorrow. I�m hoping they�ll buy into that as a goal worth taking seriously. Here�s the note that I wrote to my students in Intermediate Accounting II. �I thought we had an excellent first week. That�s what I want and that�s what I want every day and every week. Success is never earned by an occasional good day of work. I want you to be consistently excellent. �I have three p...

This is my 125th blog entry in the last 25 months. When I started this site, I promised myself that I�d try to do at least 15 entries. My guess is that I would have quit long ago were it not for the many kind emails that I have received. Thanks � I love hearing from people who tell me about their own love of teaching and the challenges they face each day. Today�s entry is broken into several individual parts. PART ONE � I travel around the country 3-5 times per year to give teaching programs and presentations. Invariably, at each stop, some teacher will ask in complete exasperation �why should I even try to do better? The students do not appreciate what I do. They certainly don�t appreciate when I try to make them work and think.� It is very tough to spend the time necessary to move toward excellence if you believe that no one appreciates you. It is hard to put out so much energy if no one cares. I often think deans and department chairs ought to be required to pat as ...