Welcome back from the dark side! That’s what I’ll say when I greet instructors and faculty members who – at some point – fell down the slippery slope of hardcore assessment only to one glorious day question their practices and the mismatch between their assessments and learning objectives – leading them to reflect, read, question and then return to the brighter side of the assessment paradigm. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Teaching in Higher Education
(Em)Power in the Classroom Series (part 4)
This past week Utah Valley University (UVU) in Orem, UT hosted the 4th Annual Conference on the Scholarship of Teaching and Engagement (SoTE) in Higher Education. I had the pleasure of presenting on my experiment with sharing the power in the class. My talk was entitled ‘Sharing the Power: A Community of Learners from Day One’. Interestingly, the director of the UVU Faculty Center along with a student also presented on Sharing the Power in the classroom. Our two sessions, offered back to back, provided a great platform for discussing the opportunities and challenges present in sharing the power.
I shared with the audience some recent feedback I received from my students during an informal midterm qualitative feedback session. I asked them to reflect on the following and give me some input: Continue reading
(Em)Power in the Classroom Series (Part 2)
Re-posted from my blog series for the Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence at the University of Utah.
“While meeting everyone’s needs sounds compassionate and student-centered, it is pedagogically unsound and psychologically demoralizing.” (Brookfield, 1995, p. 21).
Thank goodness!! From classes for undergraduate and graduate students to workshops for faculty, I have, from time to time, had the feeling that I didn’t meet everyone’s needs – as if it were possible; yet, I would still feel bad about it. That, I suppose, is in part because my top strength (of 34 possible) as identified by a Strengths Finder test is Empathy! Oh boy. According to Brookfield (1995), being a critically reflective teacher is at the core of accepting that it’s just not possible to meet everyone’s needs – it is simply an assumption that we might carry around with us, but it is an assumption that we should shrug off – right along with our Atlas Complex.
(Em)Power in the Classroom Series (Part 1)
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This is the latest blog entry that I wrote for the Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence at the University of Utah.
What would it look like if we arrived to class on Day One with merely a hint of a syllabus? Well, the folks in CTLE might jump all over us! Wait, I am the ‘folks’ in CTLE and yet, I arrived to my CTLE 6000 course with a hint of a syllabus this semester. Let’s call it a ‘pedagogical experiment’ inspired by one of the core texts for the course: Learner-Centered Teaching by Maryellen Weimer (2002). The basic premise is that students take more responsibility for their learning and become self-regulated when they are actually given some control over their learning… what a concept! Continue reading
Raichle (Rai) Farrelly 