Student Guide Corner

How do we ever get better as college teachers?   Albert Einstein has been quoted as defining insanity as "doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."   What can we do differently as teachers in order to improve our results?    How can a college teacher go from being average to being good and then move from good to absolutely great?    I think that is a legitimate goal for any professor.   From my own observations, not enough teachers make significant improvements over time.   Average teachers tend to stay average while good teachers tend to stay good.   I believe every teacher should push toward greatness.   I often tell my students that the secret to success is to experiment, evaluate, and evolve.   The same, I believe, is true of college professors.   Try something new and see how it works.   Experiment frequently.   You CAN get better in the classroo...

    Recently, I have had several people ask me if I would send them an email when I post a new entry here on my teaching blog.  I am more than happy to do that.   If you send your email address to Jhoyle@richmond.edu , I�ll drop you a note whenever a new entry goes up.   I will not sell your email addresses or send out spam.   You will only get an occasional note that I have added more of my thoughts to this teaching blog. ** Many years ago I was called to serve on jury duty.   For an entire week, I hung out around the courthouse trying to stay awake.  I was bored to death and felt like the experience was the ultimate waste of time.   At the end of that long miserable week, the judge called us in to dismiss the group.   He took a few minutes to describe all of the many things that the court had managed to accomplish during the week and it was amazing.   As I remember it, hundreds of cases had been ...

This will be my 201 st entry on this blog.   That is roughly 190 more than I expected to write when I first began.    Over the years, the blog has had 130,000 page views and was recently named one of the top 50 blogs in accounting for 2014.    ( http://www.accounting-degree.org/50-best-accounting-blogs-of-2014/ )     Unfortunately, it was the only blog on the list that dealt with education.    I would honestly love to be reading 50 different blogs about teaching and learning.     At that point, I think college education could really begin to improve.    So, start a blog.    Share your opinions.    Share your questions.    Share your doubts.    Share your frustrations.    We need more of that.    You will never be able to estimate how much the blogging process can improve your own teaching until you start typing and posting. As always, I want to pass al...

The Aspen Institute Business & Society Program recently asked me to write a blog entry on educational innovation.    You can check out my thoughts on that topic at: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/article/20140918142350-105641542-wanted-education-innovations-big-and-small?trk=prof-post ** A new school year has begun.    I hope your classes are all off to a great start.    One of the discussions that I have with myself at the beginning of every new school year is about my role as a motivator for my students.    Over the years, I have had a number of conversations with college professors who adamantly assert that student motivation is not their responsibility.   Their feelings certainly have some validity:    �These students are adults.   By this time, it is their responsibility to provide their own motivation.    If they don�t want to learn the material, then they should not be in my class.    In fact, I a...

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 ...