Student Guide Corner

I have always thought that if I taught theater I would take my students to see plays.  Theater has to be live to be fully appreciated.   And, if I taught art, I would lead my students through art museums.   Monet and Picasso can only be really understood when you are looking at the real thing.   No book is ever going to be so alive as the paint on those canvases.   Well, I teach accounting.   How do you open up the world of business to accounting students?   Nothing in this world could be more alive than what happens each day in business.   Decisions and innovations and advertising campaigns and take overs occur every day in full view of the public.  Think Wells Fargo right now.   The CEO is having to explain the company�s action to Congress.   To a true business person, this stuff is better than great fiction.   It is alive all around us.  The good, the bad, and the ugly....

By Rachel Levy ,  Contributing Editor,   Harvey Mudd College A common teaching practice is to throw a question out to the class. When a student provides a wrong answer, it can be awkward for both you and your student. What should you do? The way we answer these questions impacts the learning environment in our classes, according to a study in the American Educational Research Journal . Conversations with colleagues Darryl Yong and Lelia Hawkins generated these five suggestions for constructive responses to misconceptions. Create a safe space for incorrect answers. This takes time and care. For example, you can say "I�m so glad you raised that point. We often think [incorrect idea] because [some kind of reason], but actually if you take into account [key idea] it leads to this other way of thinking, which is correct." This emphasizes that reasonable attempts at solving a problem can sometimes lead to incorrect solutions. After all, many published proofs have later been fou...

A few years ago, I wrote a short book on Success, a topic that has always fascinated me.   In Chapter Five of that book, I relay the following story.   I tend to read a lot of books but no single quote has meant more to me over the last few years than the one I discuss in this little section of that book (slightly edited): �This past summer I listened to a fascinating audiobook in my car:  Wild by Cheryl Strayed.   It was long and complex so I will not include a detailed synopsis here.  However, at the beginning of this autobiographical work, the author believes that she has lost control over her life (at least in part because of the death of her mother).  She decides to focus on a genuine challenge in hopes of regaining inner peace and balance.  In that circumstance, I might have taken up a hobby like pottery.  With virtually no experience to guide her, Strayed chose to walk 1,100 miles alone through the mountains of California and...

By Julie Phelps ,  Contributing Editor,   Valencia College Photo Credit: Victor Bj�rkund/Flickr Recently, I reported for jury duty the Friday before classes started, and was surprised by the judge�s negative reactions to my statement that I wanted to be in the classroom on the first day of classes. I then realized that there is a common misconception that the first day of class is a wasted day. Instructors should use the first day of class to establish class tone and build community for the entire semester. Building a sense of classroom community or belonging has important ramifications, including students� academic self-efficacy and intrinsic motivation, as well as perceptions towards the instructor�s openness, encouragement and organization . The 2016 Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE) results about student connections with faculty, other students, and college resources may surprise you. Of the students surveyed in the CCSSE, only about 50% of students...

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...

If I offered you $1,000 to teach my dog (Fido) to roll over, how would you go about doing it?   Even if you have never taught an animal to do anything, do you think you could come up with logical and reasonable steps?  Sure you could.  For that kind of incentive, my guess is that we would all probably do a pretty decent job.  It might take awhile but we could do it. I have written well over 200 blog postings about teaching during the last 6-7 years.   One particular entry from early in 2010 has really been on my mind recently�probably because a new school year is starting and I�m thinking deeply about teaching my 56 students.   In that original blog, I talked about teaching Fido to roll over.  Earlier today, I went back and reread this old post.   I loved the idea but I did not seem to develop my thoughts particularly well.  I am not sure I knew what I wanted to say.  Heck, I was only 62 at the time.  Maybe I hav...

Welcome to Teaching Tidbits , a new blog hosted by the Mathematical Association of America, written for mathematics instructors by mathematics instructors. As seasoned instructors and professors, we recognize how challenging it is to keep up with all of the latest educational research and pedagogical practices that are coming out each year. We all want to engage our students and invigorate our classes, but it can be a struggle to find the time to research, plan, and execute these ideas. To help you find the latest advancements in pedagogy, we created Teaching Tidbits : a blog that will provide quality instruction ideas in succinct posts that you can read before class and implement the same day. You can even read it on your smartphone or tablet while you walk to class! Teaching Tidbits will post our first tidbit in a few weeks, at the start of the new academic year. Our experts , Jessica M. Deshler, Dana C. Ernst, Rachel Levy, Lew Ludwig, Rejoice Mudzimiri, and Julie Phelps will be pr...