The Class Recap: Some Advantages of Regular
E-mail Contact
Peter J. Capuano, TA, Department of English
E-mailing classes is nothing new. We have all e-mailed our students from time to time to inform them of the occasional syllabus change or to remind them of important due dates, etc. In a recent semester, however, I experimented with a more regular form of cyberconnection by sending a “class recap” e-mail after each meeting of my Studies in Fiction course. What I found was that this simple technique made me a better teacher and my students better learners. (Full Story)
Rethinking Discussion Leadership
Edmund Russell, Associate Professor of Science, Technology, and Society and History
If you are like me, you have been looking in the wrong place for ways to improve class discussion. I have read books and attended workshops on the topic, and almost all the advice focused on managing students in the classroom— probing with questions, encouraging the silent, quieting the dominant, and so on. All those skills are important, but experience has convinced me they are not the most important. (Full Story)
Stephen Arata, NEH Distinguished Teaching Professor
Counting on teaching, as Steve writes, “to keep me intellectually supple,” he models for his students “the peculiar combination of surrender and critical detachment that worthwhile literature asks from us as readers.” (Full Story)
Mitchell Green, Cavaliers’ Distinguished Teaching Professor
Mitch writes, “teaching is inquiry, not my inquiry. In building a syllabus, my focus is not ‘What do students need to know about this topic?’ Rather, it is ‘What questions about this field shall we pursue that are most likely to make us all obsessed with finding answers?’” (Full Story)
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The Class Recap: Some Advantages of Regular E-mail Contact
Rethinking Discussion Leadership
Stephen Arata, NEH Distinguished Teaching Professor