The Writer's Poke

Below are notes from the Student Motivation Workshop I facilitated today. I can't post the Powerpoints, but if you're interested in them, just send me an email, and I'll be happy to shoot them your way. 10. Limit/Manage Stress This is the topic of the 2/22 workshop. Please attend! :) 9. Promote Active Learning • Use in-class activities to reinforce newly presented material. After a new concept or subject has been presented via text reading, lecture, or class discussion, allow the students to put the concept into action by completing an in-class assignment. These assignments can be short, but they must be developed to ensure that the students understand the critical concepts underlying the new material. • Typically, the most learning takes place when the students are permitted to work in small groups, to refer to their text and notes, and to ask questions of the instructor while completing the assignment. If these in-class assignments are part of the course grading scheme, c...

Tomorrow I'm running a workshop on How to Motivate Students, and I'm creating a top ten list. What do you think is the most important? Respect Communication Listening Focus Assessment Others? If you have any thoughts, feel free to email them my way: fish1861@aol.com

Attention: Fun-lovers Not all of my blog will be work-related, unless you believe in the philosophy of Tao Te Ching, which states that all things are related (I kind of like that). I finished off the 3rd series of "Arrested Development" last night. If you've never seen the show, you're not alone. Only 4-6 million people tuned in each week when it was on. Let me tell you, though, it was simply too good for a mass audience. I believe MSN is starting to show the series for free on the Internet, but I would encourage you to go out and buy the DVD sets. You're going to want them, I promise. :) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrested_Development_%28TV_series%29

To follow up from Friday's posting, I did watch 49-Up over the weekend, and it might be the best in the series. Actually, I think each one is better than the last, and it's probably just because each one provides more information. Following the lives of these people is addictive. This is, in essence, real "reality TV." My wife said, "I feel like such a voyeur when I watch," but she can't help herself. She wants to watch, and you will, too. The tone in this one is different, too. Most of the people are happy and content with their lots in life. This wasn't the case in 35-Up, for example. Now, some of their children are grown -- and some have grandchildren, and their lives, for better or worse, are established.

Attention Psychology Instructors and "Nature vs. Nurture" Lovers Have your heard of the 7-Up documentary series? About 42 years ago, some British psychologists began to follow the lives of a group of children -- male, female, rich, poor, black, white. Every seven years, then, they do a follow-up interview to see what's going on in their lives. This, year, the 5th follow-up documentary was released, entitled 49-Up. I'll be watching it over the weekend, but I have previously viewed the other documentaries in the series -- 7-Up, 14-Up, 21-Up, 28-Up, and 35-Up. Good stuff. Do you need to watch all of them? Probably not. They repeat some of the same footage in each of the follow-up documentaries, so I wouldn't recommend watching them all at once... However, it's good to watch the earlier ones to see how the documentary style has changed over the past 40 years. Also, some of the people in the study have dropped out, and you need to watch the early ones to see who th...

What motivates you? How do you make sure that your students are motivated? I'll be leading a workshop on motivation in a couple of weeks, but I'd love to incorporate your ideas, too. Drop me an email -- fish1861@aol.com Bret

Attention: Philosophy Instructors and Armchair Philosophers I don't know if you've heard of this book -- The Pig That Wants to Be Eaten: 100 Experiments for the Armchair Philosopher -- but I'm currently reading it, and it's pretty darn good. I'm thinking it might be a cool way to introduce students to some of the most important philosophical and ethical questions ever analyzed by Western philosophical minds. There are 100 questions, if you will, and the book is only 300 pages. So it's good for those with ADHD, but it would also be a cool way to start a class discussion on a topic. Each "question" or section is also cross-listed, so you can easily refer to related questions/sections. Bret

CATs for All Occasions (Note: CATs that require more time and/or energy for 1) faculty to prepare, 2) students to respond to the assessment, or 3) faculty to analyze the data collected are in red italics.) Techniques for Assessing Course-Related Knowledge and Skills Assessing Prior Knowledge, Recall, and Understanding Minute Paper - Instructor asks students to respond in two or three minutes to either of the following questions: "What was the most important thing you learned during this class?" or "What important questions remains unanswered?" Used to provide a quick and extremely simple way to collect written feedback on student learning. Muddiest Point - Technique consists of asking students to jot down a quick response to one question: "What was the muddiest point in (fill in the blank)?" with the focus on the lecture, a discussion, a homework assignment, a play, or a film. Used to provide information on what students find least clear or most confusing...