Tis the season to read your student evaluations. What is the best advice? Fellow blogger Dean Dad says to look for outliers. It’s really about spotting the folks who are badly trailing the rest of the pack. Putting much weight on the difference between the lower middle and the upper middle is missing the point. There is a terrific article about residential learning communities that also talks about fostering a sense of community at an institution. Howard Schien says, "Fostering community involves conveying an attitude that this community values intellectual engagement. Fostering community involves incorporating concepts like support, acceptance of difference, the value of lively discourse, and willingness to introduce new ideas into the classroom, into non-credit programming, and into the social structure of students’ everyday lives in the residence hall." Want to attract more majors to your discipline. Offer more courses that utilize active learning methods and engage your students. That is the advice from a report presented at the latest meeting of the American Anthropological Association.

The lofty college completion goal that has emerged as the closest thing to a national higher education strategy in a half century will not succeed without much more aggressive leadership than national, state and higher education leaders have shown so far. That is the conclusion of a report released today by three education policy centers. The report goes on to say that "it is clear that American colleges and universities must enroll and graduate more students to meet workforce needs and help ensure the country’s economic competitiveness but current funding policies are eroding rather than increasing opportunity and attainment." A new book paints an interesting picture of higher education at this point in history. It contains some rather jarring survey information about a variety of topics in higher education. Administrators are more confident than either students or faculty members about how well their institutions are educating students. Fifty-two percent of university leaders said their universities do an "excellent" job of educating, compared with 34 percent of students and only 26 percent of faculty members who feel that way. Thirty-six percent of administrators and 28 percent of faculty members said the most pressing problem in higher education is the need for more resources, while students said the biggest problem is the cost of tuition. Have you heard about blended learning? There is an interesting article in The Education Digest that illustrates how it can be used in your classroom. Lubbock has become the first test site for a different type of state data system, one that aims to move districts from collecting data solely for accountability to collecting it to improve schools. To enable schools, districts, and state officials to more easily share and use data, the TEA is developing a more flexible information-system platform. The platform will offer smaller districts a shared, state-sponsored student-information system. It will also make it easy for districts with existing systems to connect to a new data platform that will serve as the hub for district-specific data, feeding relevant student, classroom, and campus information directly to educators and enabling seamless reporting of compliance data to the state.

The pressure on students to build their resumes as quickly as possible is creating a multitude of problems. Now there is a movie that exposes the issue. The Race to Nowhere portrays the pressures when schools pile on hours of homework and coaches turn sports into year-round obligations. Left somewhat unexamined is the role of parents whose high expectations contribute the most pressure of all. Are you using team based learning in your classroom? Do you like Vegas? You can combine the two by having your proposal accepted for presentation at the 10th Annual Conference on Team Based Learning in Higher Education being held March 3-4, 2011 in Vegas. They are accepting poster abstracts until December 15. There is a good article that explains the concept of team based learning by Clark, Nguyen, Bray, and Levine. Although it focuses on nursing education, you can easily apply their approach to other disciplines. The Call for Proposals for the 2011 Great Lakes Conference on Teaching and Learning is now open. This year's conference tracks include: Scholarship of Teaching and Learning and Research/Creative Activity, Mobile Learning and New Media, and Meaningful Learning Experiences: Integrated Learning Outcomes and Assessment Measures. Proposals are due February 1, 2011 while the conference will be held in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan from May 11-13, 2011. Students and their parents are mostly to blame for poor college-graduation rates, according to a poll released today by the Associated Press and Stanford University. The better the education people get, the stronger the U.S. economy will be, the poll also shows.

Faculty have complained for years that the level of civility in their classrooms has continued to decline but what do the students in the same class think about the disturbing activities? That is what a recent study by Mupinga, Nora, and Yaw sought to determine. They discovered that allowing a cell phone to ring; using a Palm Pilot, iPod or computer for non-class work; arriving late or leaving early; packing up books before class is over; and text messaging are the five behaviors students in the study indicate are both quite uncivil and occur with more than mid-level frequency. The study also offers some strategies for dealing with the annoying interruptions. While we all hope that our students are intrinsically motivated to perform well in our classes, common sense tells us that just isn't always true. Isaacson and Was have developed a diagnostic learning approach that is designed to provide students with weekly feedback identifying specific deficiencies in their metacognition and learning strategies. Students are given weekly tests that require them to make meta-cognitive choices that will improve their test scores. Research points to a significant relationship between metacognition and learning. Millennials, born between 1982 and 2003, have been called the next “Great Generation” but what sets them apart and why do they require different teaching pedagogies? Wilson and Gerber apply generational studies to the topic and make some interesting conclusions.

Have you considered applying for Faculty Development Leave? It could provide you the perfect opportunity to write a book, conduct research, create a new class or write a grant proposal. If you have been thinking about creating an innovative class infused with active and collaborative teaching and learning techniques, the Faculty Development Leave route is for you. Take a look at the policy and contact the Center if you are looking for some additional assistance. "Studying is still largely an independent endeavor," says Jonathan D. Becker, an assistant professor of educational leadership at Virginia Commonwealth University. Is that what you have found as well? The scholarship on this topic was thin but I did find research on peer effects that suggests that college students benefit when they take classes with or study with high-performing students (Winston & Zimmerman, 2004). If you are teaching an undergraduate class, it is understood that you will have expected learning outcomes. Do you also include these expectations when you are teaching a graduate-level class? There is an interesting discussion on this very topic. As the semester winds to a close, I hope that you and your students have enjoyed a productive term. Be sure to remind your students that you are looking forward to using their feedback via the course evaluations to improve your teaching. Also remember that the Center is here if you receive scores or comments that cause you to rethink your teaching methods. Committing ourselves to continuous improvement allows us to grow as educators.

As the number of adjunct faculty continues to grow on campuses across the U.S., there is growing concern that due to a lack of training and/or time, most are not using effective teaching methods. Roger Baldwin and Matthew Wawrzynski, two faculty at Michigan State, conducted the research and stressed in an interview that they fault the conditions part-time instructors work under, and not the instructors themselves, for their failure to use effective teaching methods more often. As talk ratchets up about possible budget cuts to Texas institutions of higher education, some students are taking a proactive stance. With state lawmakers facing a shortfall estimated at $24 billion, it’s more important than ever to involve students in such discussions. At the most recent Texas State University System Board of Regents held on the LU campus last month, student leaders from throughout the TSUS voiced similar concerns and offered suggestions as well as laying out their plan of action for the coming legislative session. A new report just released notes that of students who entered higher education in 2003-4, about half had earned degrees or certificates by June 2009, says the U.S. Department of Education. As for the rest, 15 percent were still enrolled, and 36 percent had left higher education. Do you think you could recognize good teaching if you saw it? What criteria would you use to determine what good teaching looks like? Having an in-class confidential evaluation might be a good start. If you are interested, feel free to contact your Center for Teaching and Learning Enhancement at x7553.