This is Dr. Maria Yon at the Center for Teaching and Learning at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.  Thanks for tuning into this episode on helping your students become better writers. 

I know that you might be thinking, “It’s not my job.  That’s what English professors do.  I expect students to know how to write when they get to my class.  I don’t have time to teach writing too.”   But, you know that students are not all good writers.  You also know from personal experience writing is a process that occurs over time with much practice.  Finally, you understand that good writing is required in almost all fields — engineers, historians, artists, and biologists all need to write.  So, it’s the job of every professor to help students write well.

So, here are some ideas for helping your students.  First of all, stress the importance of good writing.  Some students think that good writing is expected only in their English classes.  They need to know that you value it and require it.  Put it in your syllabus and tell them on the first day. 

Remind them with every assignment that writing counts.  Explain how they will be penalized for poorly written papers. Back up your statements so that they see that you are serious.  Recommend that students work with the college tutoring services to improve their writing skills.  And insist on it with those students with serious difficulties.
   
Explain to students that writing is hard work that requires practice and effort.  Tell them that rarely is a first draft a finished product and that revision is part of the process. Help them understand that they can’t wait until the last minute to write a paper.  Share your own writing experiences with them about the challenge of writing, revising, and editing, before seeing an article in print — weeks of work.

Make writing a part of your teaching because writing is a way of learning.  You will give students the practice they need to improve their skills by giving them opportunities to write a few minutes in class, doing outside writing assignments, and giving exams with open-ended questions.

Help students understand that writing is not always an end in itself.  Writing helps us to develop ideas, clarify our understandings, and express what we know.  So, besides writing for a grade, they are learning at a deeper level.

Some faculty use commercially available software to help students plan, write, and revise their written work.  Giving students reference materials or tip sheets on good writing is helpful as well.  Grouping or pairing students either in class or online to give feedback on drafts is a good learning experience.

Finally, give students guidance throughout the writing process.  After you make an assignment, walk them through the steps of writing the paper.  Check on their progress throughout those steps.  By all means, explain plagiarism. 

We are seeing a “cut-and-paste” generation who believes that information on the Internet is free for everyone to use just as it is and with no citations.  One remedy is to require a draft of the paper to which you will give feedback.  Also, request that the draft be turned in with the final paper. 

I hope you have found this information helpful.  Remember, it is the responsibility of all of us to help our students write better as we prepare them for their chosen professions.

Tune in again and remember “Teaching and Leaning Matters”.
 

Welcome back to longtime listeners, and a special welcome to newcomers, too.  I am Dr. Garvey Pyke, and I want to thank you all for coming.  This episode of “Teaching & Learning Matters” is about communicating high expectations to our students—why it is important and how we can do it.

Regular listeners will note that communicating high expectations is one of  the “Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education” (1987).  Chickering and Gamson note that by setting high expectations for students, and then explicitly communicating these expectations to our students, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy for them: they often will rise to meet the challenge.  We need to let our students know that we understand that learning can be difficult and that we expect great things of them and that we know they can achieve through proper effort.  This has a wonderful motivating effect on students.  Our communicating high expectations will cause them to rise to the challenge and often exceed our expectations. 

So how do we do this, exactly?  What are some means or methods for communicating high expectations to our students?  Well, first off the bat and foremost on students’ minds is our grading scale.  We can set up a course contract with the students, outlining expectations and explaining the grading scheme.  We should also try to provide lots of variation and challenging aspects to the course content, to seek higher order thinking and prove they are using higher order skills.  Thus, we should expect student participation—active learning, not passive, and incorporate this into the grading scheme.

Clearly stating our expectations goes beyond the syllabus, too—we should do so throughout the course materials and assignments as well.  Something that many students really respond well to is the use of rubrics, which show them the various factors that we include in grading projects and the levels of performance we expect. 

We should not forget to model high expectations, too.  We need to be well prepared and organized when teaching and pay attention to the details.   And  we can provide stellar examples of past student projects or papers for our current students to refer to.  One professor I spoke with—he teaches technical writing—he said that he always includes exemplary work from past semesters in his course syllabus.  And student work has gotten better and better every single semester since he started doing that.  In fact, it continues to improve so well that he has to keep changing the exemplars!  Now there’s some work a teacher doesn’t mind doing.  In a similar vein, it is always nice to be able to celebrate in-class success—go ahead and name the students or groups who have done well.  We can even make student products more “public” by putting assignments online or creating public venues or showcases for their work.  If we use online discussions as part of our classes, how about promoting a “post of the day” or “post of the week” to the course homepage—or several such posts, and have students vote on the best one?  This models expected performance, and it drives student traffic to come view and vote on products in the realm of excellence.

We can also communicate high expectations when we provide corrective feedback to our students.  We can let them know what went well, what did not go well, and what to do differently next time.  Or we can give elaborative feedback by suggesting extra readings, et cetera, to support key points and objectives.

Now just take a moment and think about some of the ways you are already doing this: how are you communicating high expectations to your students?  Are you letting them know about their performance on a regular basis—AND letting them know what you expect?  There are so many ways to go about this, but the key is that we are explicit in telling them and leave nothing to chance!

Want to learn more about communicating high expectations?  Come on over to the Center for Teaching and Learning at UNC Charlotte, and we will talk about some strategies that fit your style, your students’ needs, and your subject area.  

Thanks for listening, and please tune in next time, where we will talk about respecting diverse talents and ways of learning.

Until then, so long, and remember: Teaching and Learning Matters.

Welcome to Teaching and Learning Matters. This is Dr. Maria Yon from the Center for Teaching and Learning at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

Our topic for today is classroom discussion—when to use it as a teaching strategy and how to plan for effective discussions. First off, discussion can be used to break up a lengthy lecture. This allows students to work with the content and test out their understanding as well as to be more engaged in the lesson. Furthermore, it gives you a chance to informally assess their understanding. Besides using discussion in conjunction with lecture, it is often used as the primary strategy.

When might discussion be the best strategy? Discussion is best used when the goal is to increase higher-level thinking skills such as problem solving. Some examples are: analyzing a piece of literature or historical event, examining current social or political issues, solving a real-world problem or case study.

Through discussion, students gain practice in thinking through problems, formulating arguments and making counterarguments, and responding critically to diverse points of view. They can compare their thinking to that of others and self-evaluate. Finally, learning to communicate effectively in a public setting prepares them for the workplace.

Preparing for a discussion is different from preparing for a lecture. You have less control over the content. You can’t be sure where students will take the discussion. You have less control over how much time will be spent on a topic. Students may be particularly motivated and you don’t want to stop them. Or the discussion needs to continue so that students have the time to develop understanding. It requires you to make on-the-spot decisions about when to interject with questions or comments. Bad timing or the wrong comment can impede the discussion or shut it down. So, planning for a discussion requires a different kind of planning than planning for a lecture.

The first step in planning for a discussion is preparing the students. At the beginning of the term help students understand how discussion will enhance their learning. Explain your expectations of them such as being prepared for class and following the ground rules for participation. If students will be graded on participation, have that in your syllabus and discuss it as well.

Now, let’s talk about your own planning. The first thing is to decide which class sessions lend themselves to discussion. Then, decide what you will have students do to prepare, whether it’s to answer a set of questions, solve a problem, write a response to a reading, and so forth. Next, plan how you will start the discussion.

Here are some ideas: refer to the study questions by asking them to the whole class or having students pair up before answering, pose an opening question and give students a few minutes to write down an answer, ask students to write an event in their own lives that pertains to the topic, pose a controversial question, have students tell you the key points in the reading and list them on the board for discussion. It’s usually helpful to ask students to share something they found confusing or difficult and have a discussion around those points.

Finally, bring closure to the discussion by summarizing key points, letting students make final comments, and answering any questions or letting students write down any questions they have. Responding to these is a good way to begin the next class session.

I hope you have found this helpful for leading effective discussions. Tune in again and remember—teaching and learning matters.

Hello, and thank you for coming!  I am Dr. Garvey Pyke, and today’s episode of Teaching & Learning Matters is about emphasizing time on task, which means I need to jump right into it if I want to be a good role model!

As one of Chickering and Gamson’s “Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education” (1987),  emphasizing time on task means that faculty should create opportunities for students to practice good time management. This includes setting realistic time for students to complete assignments as well as using class time for learning opportunities.  But it also means that we need to explicitly communicate to our students the strategies for managing their time in completing tasks for our course.

For example, undergraduate students do not realize how much time they should be spending on each course they take.  They think that going to class and doing a little homework every now and then is sufficient.  However, we know that success takes much more than that!  A good rule of thumb is that students should spend two hours preparing for every one hour spent in class—every week! 

In other words, a three hour class requires about six hours of preparation—reading, completing assignments, studying—every single week.  Sometimes more, sometimes less, but the students need to know this is the average.  And if they are taking 15 credit hours, this means their studies should account for 45 hours per week: 15 in class and 30 outside of class.  That’s a full time job!  So we need to tell them this, to let them know what we require of them. 

Likewise, we need to give them other time management strategies, such as showing them how to break down larger tasks into smaller pieces.  We are the expert thinkers in our field, so we need to illustrate to them how we solve problems and complete projects, to model the expert thinking to them.  For example, when a term paper is assigned, instead of just giving a final due date for the project, we should instead create several smaller milestones along the way to mark the path to success for our students. 

We can tell them in the syllabus, “By this date, you should have chosen your topic,” and, “before this date, you should have selected your sources and written your opening argument.”  This is how we tackle large projects, and so should they.  Whether you choose to grade these smaller steps is up to you: it is probably a good idea, but the key is that we do, in fact, communicate and illustrate what these steps are.

Another aspect of emphasizing time on task is to guide our students to where they should be devoting their time on projects and assignments.  For example, we can provide students with rubrics, or checklists, for projects with point values given for each portion of the project.  Then they will understand that the content of the project, the supporting arguments, the evidence, and so forth are worth more points than the presentation itself or the stunning visual design they might have otherwise spent countless hours on.  This is a common problem in asking students to do presentations: they think the PowerPoint design is more important than the content they should create for it.  A scoring rubric would set them straight, and it would focus their time on task.

Ultimately, we want our students to leave our class with a deep and lasting understanding of the material.  If we can engage them to show them how to complete tasks and to dedicate the proper amount of time to these tasks, we will go a long way into making the learning stick.  We are striving beyond study skills: we are teaching them how to approach our subject and conquer it.

Want to learn more about emphasizing time on task?  Come on over to the Center for Teaching and Learning at UNC Charlotte, and we will talk about some strategies that fit your style, your students’ needs, and your subject area.   

Thanks for listening, and please tune in next time, where we will talk about communicating our high expectations to our students. Until then, so long, and remember: teaching and learning matters.

I’m Maria Yon from the Center for Teaching and Learning at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.  Thanks for tuning in to a topic that has historically been an issue on college campuses. As faculty members, we are very concerned about cheating and plagiarism.  Academic honesty is a core value of colleges and universities.  But according to anonymous surveys of students, cheating is common and widespread.

So, why do students cheat?  Let me give you three, sometimes overlapping, reasons.  One reason that has come up recently is the definition of cheating and plagiarism.  The millennial generation has collaborated and shared since kindergarten.  They have continued to collaborate in college where they share with peers in class, outside of class and online—sharing papers, projects, and answers.

Also, this net generation uses intellectual property found online without giving credit to its creators.  To them, if it’s on the internet why not cut and paste and call it theirs!  So, part of the problem is that students don’t know when it is permissible to collaborate and when it is not because it is a part of their culture to do so and they don’t see the fine line between working independently and working with the help of others.

Stress is another reason that students cheat.  This generation of students has been described as stressed out.  They are very grade conscious and performance-oriented.  They are not all learning oriented, but they want to get good grades.  Of course, some students just don’t put the time in that is required.  Then they take short cuts because they’re stressed.

Some students take several demanding courses or an overload.  More than ever before students work too many hours per week and even hold full-time jobs while taking a full load of courses.  Some students have families.  All this impacts their study time, thus increasing stress.  Some have anxiety about tests or are unclear about performance standards.  Stress and anxiety affect the ability to perform.  This can result in cheating in some form.

Finally, the environment of college teaching sometimes lends itself to cheating even when instructors make their best efforts to prevent it.  Cheating is quite common in large classes where multiple choice tests are given.  The chance of getting caught and sanctioned is quite low.  Students take the chance that an instructor will not identify plagiarism and less likely to take serious action when found.  Students have the attitude that “everybody does it”.  Even those who operate at a higher level of moral reasoning cheat if the circumstances are to their advantage.

So, what do we need to do to preserve the integrity of our courses and see that students learn?  First, don’t leave it to chance that students understand cheating and plagiarism.  Share with them your college code of academic integrity and especially the consequences for violating the code. Discuss specifically what is expected for the assignments in your class in terms of collaborating and using the work of others.  Emphasize when an assignment is to be done independently.

Stress is reduced when students know what is expected and how they will be evaluated.  So, give clear directions and evaluation criteria for each assignment.  Check in with them periodically to see if they have any questions.  Encourage them to talk to you if they need help.  Make students feel that they can succeed in your class without resorting to dishonesty.  Learn to recognize signs of stress in students and make them aware of campus resources for dealing with stress.

Each faculty member needs to determine how to reduce academic dishonesty for their particular circumstances.   Be as creative as you can with topics and assignments and change them often so that students can’t pass them down semester after semester or order completed papers on-line.  Ask for a draft of their work so that you can see their progress and provide feedback.  Have them turn in this draft with the final paper.  As for in class tests, use alternate forms or scrambled test items.  Be aware of the many different ways to use cheat notes.  Have students put away all electronic devices that can be used to send answers.

Finally, take quick and decisive action when you suspect academic dishonesty.  Know your institutional policies and follow through with the procedures.  Dealing with infractions, rather than ignoring them, will go a long way in preventing academic dishonesty in your classes and in setting the tone of academic integrity at the institution.

Thanks for tuning in to this important podcast.  And remember -- teaching and learning matters.

Welcome, good listener, out there in the podcasting metaverse!  I am delighted that you have tuned in for this installment of Teaching & Learning Matters.  I am Dr. Garvey Pyke, and we have another piece in the short series on “The Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education” (Chickering & Gamson, 1987).  We are now on the fourth principle,  giving prompt feedback.

Faculty should provide appropriate and prompt feedback to students on their academic performance.  Students need help in assessing their current competence and performance, and they require frequent opportunities to perform and receive suggestions for improvement. (Chickering & Gamson, 1987).  Such feedback is an ongoing process in all college courses.

As undergraduates wend their way through college, they often express their concern with not being able to understand what their professors want from them.  This is where feedback is key.  We can use instructor-to-student feedback to help our students better understand our performance expectations of them, whether it is regarding their attendance, class participation, or academic performance. 

This clears up misconceptions for them, and it makes our jobs more satisfying when our students strive to achieve the expectations we have for them.  Both constructive criticism and praise can have a motivating effect by helping students focus on learning.

One of the most common ways to give students feedback on their performance is through graded assignments and tests.  Typically, we assign students letter grades for these performances, but giving them more meaningful feedback can go beyond offering simply the knowledge of their results.  We may also tell them what the correct answers should have been, or we could even give them elaborated feedback by directing them back to the materials or texts, which would show them where their errors occur.  We help them focus on their learning goals and what they need to get out of the course. 

In this sense, feedback continues the learning process: an evaluation of student performance is not an endpoint!  However, to truly make it part of the learning process, we should try to get the feedback to the students as soon as possible after the performance has taken place. 

During class discussion, feedback can be instantaneous: we let our students know, right then and there, if they are on track or not.  With graded assignments and tests, though, we need more time.  I think it is a worthwhile goal to be able to hand back all graded tests, papers, and assignments to the students within one week.  Or less, if possible.  Your students will thank you for it, and they will learn more because of it.

Of course, we can also gather feedback from our students, too.  There are many strategies for doing this.  For example, we can ask them to complete a “minute paper”: give them sixty seconds to write about a particular topic and then collect them.  For example, we could ask them to write down something that was unclear in class today, or to name the three most important points from the class discussion, or perhaps what chapters they hope are not on the test! Even with very large classes, it takes no time at all to whip through their responses and find the common themes.  Then we can close the feedback loop by discussing these themes with our students at the beginning of the next class session. 

There are other ways to collect feedback, such as electronic or paper-based surveys.  But the key is that we close the loop and give them the feedback about their feedback, so to speak, as soon as possible.

As you can see, feedback is an integral part of the teaching and learning process.  If you would like some more ideas for giving prompt feedback in your classes, stop by the Center for Teaching and Learning at UNC Charlotte, and we will talk about it.   

That’s it for today, but be sure to tune in for my next podcast, where we will talk about strategies for emphasizing time on task.

Until then, so long, and remember: Teaching and Learning Matters.

Welcome to this episode of Teaching and Learning Matters. I’m Maria Yon, faculty member at UNC Charlotte. In this episode, Setting the Tone: The First Day of Class, we’re going to talk about some of the important things that need to happen on that very first class session in the semester.

For most of us whether we are experienced instructors or not, the first day of class can be both exciting and anxiety producing — maybe it’s a new course, a new format, you are going to try out a new strategy — and of course all the new faces. It’s the same for students.  They are wondering what to expect — what is the teacher like?  What will be expected of me?  Can I handle it?  Will it be interesting?  They are waiting in anticipation — and they’re sizing you up on that first day.  So first impressions count!

What you do on your first day of class will affect your students for the rest of the term.  So, think in advance what behaviors and expectations you want to establish in your classroom.  No doubt you want to establish a serious, professional classroom atmosphere where learning will take place.  You can communicate this in several ways:

First is to have a comprehensive, well-structure syllabus ready to distribute.  It tells the class that you have planned ahead — you’ve thought carefully about the goals of the course, about course content, about assessments, and about grading policies.  The syllabus should also address expectations for behavior such as attendance, tardiness, missed assignments, class participation, use of cell phones and other expectations of in-class conduct that you feel are necessary to address. 

A comprehensive syllabus shows that you are conscientious, well-organized and serious about teaching and learning.  Go over the syllabus carefully on the first day highlighting the points you want to elaborate or emphasize.  Answer any questions that students might have about the course or about the syllabus.

Second is to motivate students about the course.  This can be done in two ways.  First is to show your enthusiasm about the course and about teaching.  Enthusiasm is contagious and will motivate your students’ interest in learning the subject matter.  And sometimes, just because of your enthusiasm, some students might be inspired to pursue the field as a career!  That would be a nice tribute to you.

A second way to motivate students about the course is to make it relevant.  Explain to them how the course fits into their program of study—whether it is a course in their major or a general education requirement.  How is this course relevant to their program, and even more importantly, how is this course relevant to their lives today?  Plan some real-life, current examples to share on that first day.  And students love to hear personal stories, too, about how your work in the field applies to their lives.

Finally, make good use of the entire class period on that first day.  Don’t treat it as a throw away day or dismiss it early.  Only if you treat class time as a precious commodity will students see it in that way.  In reality, by the time you cover your syllabus, introduce the class with a motivating presentation, answer students’ questions, have them introduce themselves to each other,  the class time has been filled.

One last note, good planning is the key to effective teaching, even on day one — plan this first day as carefully as you would plan for any other class session. 

I hope this has been helpful. Have a great semester.

Thanks for listening and tune in again for the next

Teaching and Learning Matters

.

Hello there.  I am glad you could join us for this episode of Teaching & Learning Matters. I am Dr. Garvey Pyke, and we have been working through a short series on “The Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education” (Chickering & Gamson, 1987), but each of these podcasts is designed to stand alone.  Of course, I encourage you to go back and listen to all of them if you choose, but as long as you are here now, let’s keep going. 

We are up to the third principle,  encouraging active learning.   Active learning is a phrase you have probably heard a lot.  Ideally, we want our students to apply what they have learned in written and oral forms (Chickering & Gamson, 1987).  Students need to be active and involved and be able to demonstrate that. 

Just as we talked about in the last two podcasts about increasing faculty and student interaction and student-to-student interaction, an easy way to encourage active learning in the classroom is through discussion.  It does not matter if this is a face-to-face classroom discussion or an online discussion using a learning management system such as Blackboard or Moodle: the idea is to get students actively involved in speaking about course content, making assertions, and supporting their arguments with what has been learned in class. 

Some faculty like to have students engage in journaling as a form of active learning.  Journal exercises can align with your course goals and personal teaching style, too—whether you have students write reflection pieces on how well their projects are going or ask them to keep a learning journal on ideas that stump them.  There are many different directions you could go with this. 

I want to add that I personally did not always like journals very much as a student, but as an instructor, I have found them to be invaluable.  So part of professional development is learning where our own biases may be in order to see the value of different teaching methods that we did not always enjoy as students.  By offering students a variety in our classrooms, we seek to make them more engaged and active.

Student presentations, portfolios, essays, classroom debates, small group activities … these are all ways to encourage active learning.  You could even try showing students how to take notes more effectively, particularly when reading the textbook.  Many students do not know how to take notes in your discipline, and all textbooks are not created equal.  Therefore, it may be a good idea to take a couple pages out of the textbook and illustrate, using a document camera or overhead projector, how to highlight, annotate, and take note of  very important ideas.  Active note taking just might be the best skill they ever learn, and it turns a fairly passive activity, reading, into an active one.

As you have been listening to this podcast, you have probably thought of at least a few ideas to implement in your own classroom.  I would definitely encourage you to jot these down right now.  See?  You are getting actively involved in the learning.  And then you can likewise get your students involved. 

Need some more ideas for encouraging active learning in your classes?   Stop by the Center for Teaching and Learning at UNC Charlotte, and we will talk about it.   

That’s it for today, but be sure to tune in for my next podcast, where we will talk about strategies for giving students prompt feedback.

Until then, so long, and remember: Teaching and Learning Matters.

Welcome to “Teaching & Learning Matters.” I’m Dr. Maria Yon from the Center for Teaching and Learning at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte.  Thanks for tuning in to this important session.  Why is it important?  Obviously, as teachers, we must understand our students in order to connect with them.  Moreover, the generation of students who sit in our classrooms today are different from the generations that preceded them – and certainly different from most of us.

You have probably heard the word “millennial” batted about.  It’s a term used to describe the generation born between 1982 and 2002.  The key to being successful with millennial students is to understand how they view the world and use that knowledge to motivate them in ways that work.  As teachers, we need to meet them where they are and they will achieve our goals.

So, I’d like to give you a few tips for working with the millennials. First, provide a lot of structure.  Clearly state your course goals and give detailed instructions and guidelines for assignments.  Furthermore, assess progress toward meeting goals often and offer lots of positive encouragement. Otherwise they are easily discouraged.

Take advantage of their comfort level with teams.  They are used to working with others because they have done so since elementary school.  They believe that a team can accomplish more and better.  Structure activities where they can work together both in and out of class.  Because we are preparing them for the workplace, working with others is a vital skill to have and that is another reason for structuring group or pair work.

Millennials have been networking around the world electronically and are skilled at all the ways of doing so.  Capitalize on their affinity for networking.  Identify ways they might use electronic literacy to enhance classroom learning.  They may be able to help you with some ideas for incorporating technology in the course.

Provide a fun, student-centered classroom environment.  Millennials want to enjoy their work and the classroom.  They want to make friends.  Provide activities that are fun, interesting and challenging – yes, challenging.  They are up for the challenge and change.  They seek ever-changing tasks within their work in the classroom session and across a semester.  Too much routine is boring.

Provide leadership and guidance.  Millennials like adults and they want to look up to you, but you must earn their respect.  Then, they are fiercely loyal.  It’s a great opportunity for you to be a role model.  So, listen to their opinions and ideas with interest.  They don’t take kindly to being ignored.

There is much in the media about the millennial generation, the generation raised during the self-esteem movement with doting, overprotective baby-boomer parents.  Computers have always been part of their world. They seek as well as create knowledge at their fingertips.   They have the opportunity to be the next great generation.  We need that from them in this ever-changing, complex world.  The college classroom can propel the millennials in a positive direction.  They are a culture unto themselves.  I encourage you to learn more about the millennials from the many books, articles and Internet sites currently available.

Thanks for tuning in.  And remember – teaching and learning matters.

Welcome to this episode of “Teaching & Learning Matters.”  I am Dr. Garvey Pyke and today’s podcast is about the second “Principle for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education,” which Chickering and Gamson call developing reciprocity and cooperation among students.  Reciprocity?  There’s a word I always have trouble with.  To put it in simpler terms, we want to encourage student-to-student interaction in our courses. 

Oftentimes, I think it is easy for us to fall into a trap of thinking the only way we can cover a certain amount of material is if we are the only ones talking in class.  We are hesitant to loosen our grip and let students talk and interact, in fear of loosing control.  This reaction is completely natural and quite commonplace -- truly.  However, classrooms that are more participatory and democratic result in greater student achievement.  So how can we move towards involving students more?

There are many simple ways we can increase student-to-student interaction in the classroom, such as breaking them up into small groups or pairs for activities, for example, coming up with a collaborative definition of a term from the readings, or deciding on the major points on both sides of a current event, or perhaps filling in data into a table, or interpreting a graph. 

Another easy way to have more student involvement is during class discussions: encourage students to answer each other's questions instead of answering them yourself. This may take some practice -- and some getting used to -- but it is an excellent way for students to feel engaged in the classroom as full participants.  It is also a great opportunity for you to assess where your students are -- if they have any special interests that perhaps you could spend more time on, or even misconceptions that need to be cleared up.  By hearing a diversity of thoughts and opinions from the students, you can get a sense of where your classroom community of learning is, and where it may need to head next.

Of course, the idea of “creating and encouraging opportunities for collaborative learning among our students” (Chickering & Gamson, 1987) isn’t confined to classroom activities only.  Involving students in group projects or even semester-long study cohorts can be an excellent way to boost the interactivity of your course.  They can work together online or in person to collaborate.  You may even have them collaborate with students at other universities to complete joint projects.  Or have them engage in peer review of each other’s work. 

Many of these activities are very low threshold, and I am sure you can think of many more.  Or if you would like to talk to me or someone else in the Center for Teaching and Learning at UNC Charlotte to come up with some strategies for increasing student-to-student interaction in your courses, just let me know. 

And of course, be sure to tune in for my next podcast, where we will talk about the third Principle, encouraging active learning.

Until then, so long, and remember: "Teaching and Learning Matters."