Teaching Tips

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updated October 08, 1999

IMPROVING LEARNING AND TEACHING at Columbia University:

Teaching Styles & Tips

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Instructional Innovation Network This link will take you to a site that describes many ways to get your students actively involved in their own learning. Includes active, collaborative activites. Note that this site also has some "dead" links...Don't get frustrated. It is a wonderful site.

Iowa State University Center for Teaching Excellence includes: Annotated Bibliography of Student Development Literature, Developing course objectives, Large classroom techniques, "A student guide to essay exams", "A student guide to multiple choice exams", "Suggestions for Leading Small-Group Discussions"

Mount Allison University includes: Collaborative Learning, Class Discussions & Seminars Learning/Teaching Styles, Learning Assistance, Lecture/Large Class, Teaching Tips, Technology

Muskingum College Learning Strategies Database includes: information on assessing learning styles, learning strategies instruction. "The General-Purpose Learning Strategies main stack covers the purposes, advantages, and instructions for learning strategies related to attention, memory, notetaking, reading comprehension, testing, time management, writing, and a variety of other tasks. The Content-Specific Learning Strategies main stack deals with strategies intended for use in specific academic areas and disciplines like English, history, math, and sciences, among others. The Bibliography of Learning Strategies Resources main stack provides alphabetical listings of references by author and by subject."

University of Kansas Center for Teaching Excellence includes:
- Great beginnings: Planning your course: the first day, 101 things you can do the first three weeks of class, learning students' names, teaching aids
  Teaching roles: Leading discussions, lecturing, effective teaching skills, demonstrating problem-solving
  
  Teaching strategies: Overview, active learning, cooperative learning, structured controversy
  
  Teaching tips: Lesson planning, interactive communication, maps for learning, questioning techniques
  
  Evaluating learning: General tips, writing tests, testing alternatives
University of Nebraska-Lincoln Teaching & Learning Center includes: Course planning, syllabus design, first day of class, lesson planning, suggestions for teaching assistants, question types, chalkboard skills

Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville is one of the best sites that can help you decide how to assess your teaching and student learning. The teaching goals inventory is highly recommended. There are sections on active learning, in-class assessment techniques (Primary Trait Analysis, Assessment vs. Grades, Using Anonymous, Assessments, Directed Paraphrasing, Goal Ranking & Matching, The Muddiest Point, The Minute Paper, Self Assessment, Self Confidence Survey, Active Learning,Guided Essay, Classroom Interviews, What Students Want in a Professor, Assessment of Group Work, Assessing Group Effectivness, Effective Study Time

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Articles on Teaching Tips

Also see a vast array of Teaching Tips that have been collected by other Centers

Beating the Numbers Game: Effective Teaching in Large Classes (R.M. Felder) "Fortunately, there are ways to make large classes almost as effective as their smaller counterparts. Without turning yourself inside out, you can get students actively involved, help them develop a sense of community, and give frequent homework assignments without killing yourself (or your teaching assistants) with impossible grading loads. Following are some ideas for doing all that." 1997

How About A Quick One? (R.M. Felder) "Of all instructional methods, lecturing is the most common, the easiest, and the least effective." In this essay, the author gives ideas pertaining to the 1-minute "dump" paper. This short quiz not only gives feedback to the instructor regarding how well he/she is going, but also helps the students reflect on their learning.

The First Day of Class...A Day of Missed Opportunities? (Center for Learning at Teaching at UNC) "The way you choose to spend the first day of class will set the tone for the entire semester. Many teachers devote the first class meeting to giving a general description of the course and its requirements and, after answering questions about the course, either begin to lecture or dismiss the class early. But there are many things you can do on the first day that will help establish rapport with the students, prepare them for the semester's work, and generate excitement about the course subject matter." 1988

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Styles

Powerful Partnerships: A Shared Responsibility for Learning (American Assoication for Higher Education, American College Personnel Association and National Association of Student Personnel Administrators) "Despite American higher education's success at providing collegiate education for an unprecedented number of people, the vision of equipping all our students with learning deep enough to meet the challenges of the post-industrial age provides us with a powerful incentive to do our work better. People collaborate when the job they face is too big, is too urgent, or requires too much knowledge for one person or group to do alone. Marshalling what we know about learning and applying it to the education of our students is just such a job. This report makes the case that only when everyone on campus -- particularly academic affairs and student affairs staff--shares the responsibility for student learning will we be able to make significant progress in improving it.", 1998
Understanding or Memorization: Are We Teaching The Right Thing? (E. Mazur) This file is in PDF format (click on the icon to download-You will need the Adobe Acrobat Reader to view). The author argues Physics is not taught in a manner that includes all of the students in the class. He provides a description of peer instruction, a technique that he developed that helps students understand ideas in a conceptual manner. 1998
Objectively Speaking (R.M. Felder and R. Brent) Tips and examples of instructional objectives. 1997

The Science Lecture: A Relic of the Past? (E. Mazur) This file is in PDF format (click on the icon to download-You will need the Adobe Acrobat Reader to view). The essay discusses the merits of using pure-lecture style in introductory science classes. The essay has applications for all large classes. 1996

We Never Said It Would Be Easy (R.M. Felder) "The problem is that doing anything new and nontrivial always involves a learning curve, and the curve may be particularly steep for both you and your students when you try an active learning approach for the first time. The students, whose teachers have been telling them everything they needed to know from the first grade on, don't appreciate having this support suddenly withdrawn...(The Author's) goal here is to assure you that these initial glitches are both common and natural, and that they may be a cause for concern but not for panic or discouragement. The trick is knowing how the process works, taking a few precautionary steps to smooth out the bumps, and waiting out the inevitable setbacks until the payoffs start emerging." 1995

The Myth of the Superhuman Professor (R.M. Felder) In this essay the author wants to take a look at the purported linkage between teaching and academic research. He argues that they don't necessarily go hand-in-hand. 1994

Things I Wish They Had Told Me (R.M. Felder) "Most of us on college faculties learn our craft by trial-and-error. We start teaching and doing research, make lots of mistakes, learn from some of them, teach some more and do more research, make more mistakes and learn from them, and gradually more or less figure out what we're doing. However, while there's something to be said for purely experiential learning, it's not very efficient. Sometimes small changes in the ways we do things can yield large benefits. We may eventually come up with the changes ourselves, but it could help both us and our students immeasurably if someone were to suggest them early in our careers." Here are a few tips.... 1994

Reaching The Second Tier: Learning and Teaching Styles in College Science Education (R.M. Felder) "In her recent study of college science instruction, Sheila Tobias (They're Not Dumb, They're Different: Stalking the Second Tier., Research Corporation, Tucson, 1990) defines two tiers of entering college students, the first consisting of those who go on to earn science degrees and the second those who have the initial intention and the ability to do so but instead switch to nonscientific fields. The number of students in the second category might in fact be enough to prevent the shortfall of American scientists and engineers that has been widely forecast for the coming decade." 1993

What Do They Know Anyway? (R.M. Felder) A discussion of misconceptions pertaining to student evaluations. 1992

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Improvements, Suggestions or bad link? Please let me (kleinman@chem.columbia.edu) know!