Oct 27 2016
Thirsty for a Strong Instructional Practice? Lecturing is typically the most efficient but not always the most effective means of ensuring student learning. While listening to a lecture students are passive learners and student engagement with the material is typically low. In addition, researchers have found more attention lapses by students in a lecture setting …
Permanent link to this article: https://sites.msudenver.edu/sips/sip-4-10-cooperative-learning-strategies-using-jigsaw/
Oct 17 2016
Thirsty for a Strong Instructional Practice? Why do we assign group work? How does it benefit students? How does it benefit professors? If not planned for appropriately, group work can create a lot more work than necessary for both students and professor. For students, the disadvantages of group work could mean having to coordinate schedules; …
Permanent link to this article: https://sites.msudenver.edu/sips/sip-4-9-making-group-work-work-ensuring-accountability/
Oct 13 2016
Thirsty for a Strong Instructional Practice? Have you ever seen students worrying about your class before you even start teaching? Perhaps complaining about the difficulty of the content before they even know what is expected? Have you heard students being defeatist about their own ability level, or believing that that they already know all there …
Permanent link to this article: https://sites.msudenver.edu/sips/sip-4-8-challenging-students-mental-models-dealing-with-expectancy-effect/
Oct 06 2016
Thirsty for a Strong Instructional Practice? As most faculty have experienced, many MSU Denver students arrive at class over the span of 15-20 minutes–some early, others late. This is particularly true in bad weather, and for what can be called “rush hour classes” (those that start at 8:00 am and 5:00 pm in particular). This …
Permanent link to this article: https://sites.msudenver.edu/sips/sip-4-7-making-the-most-of-class-arrival-time/
Sep 29 2016
Thirsty for a Strong Instructional Practice? In education, we hear a lot about “student engagement” and how important it can be for student success. Our definitions of “engagement” tend to vary according to our role on campus, however. For faculty, engagement can mean coming to class, participating in group discussions, or completing homework. For administrators, …
Permanent link to this article: https://sites.msudenver.edu/sips/sip-4-6-what-is-student-engagement/
Sep 29 2016
Thirsty for a Strong Instructional Practice? Last week the SIPsquad offered some perspective on the management of instructor frustration in the face of challenging student behavior. This week, the SIPsquad offers up some tactical advice that will allow instructors to immediately and positively engage in behavior correction for good outcomes. We are doing our students …
Permanent link to this article: https://sites.msudenver.edu/sips/sip-4-5-productive-interactions-with-frustrating-students/
Sep 22 2016
Thirsty for a Strong Instructional Practice? Have you ever heard something like, “What degrees do you have?” “I am an A student and I don’t agree with this grade.” “Actually, I recently read ____ and it said ….” Comments like these can result in feelings of frustration for professors. Those feelings can become barriers to …
Permanent link to this article: https://sites.msudenver.edu/sips/sip-4-4-managing-feelings-of-frustration-toward-students/
Sep 08 2016
Thirsty for a Strong Instructional Practice? Do you ever find class becomes dominated by a few student voices? Have you struggled to figure out how to maintain those few students’ enthusiastic interest in the class while making space for others to speak up as well? Or there is the other version of student voice – …
Permanent link to this article: https://sites.msudenver.edu/sips/sip-4-3-managing-narcissistic-students/
Sep 01 2016
Thirsty for a Strong Instructional Practice? A while back, the SIPsquad took a stab at offering some thoughts on strong notetaking practices for your class. You can guzzle up this SIP (and all others) at The Well, and, for your convenience, you can read it below: This SIP was very well received—but the SIPsquad has …
Permanent link to this article: https://sites.msudenver.edu/sips/sip-4-2-class-notetaker-redux/
Aug 27 2016
Thirsty for a Strong Instructional Practice? We put tremendous time and energy into formulating our course assignment guidelines and scoring criteria, as well as communicating them to students. Unfortunately, our students often aren’t actually reading or understanding them. When we create course documents that are inviting to our diverse student population, we can increase the …
Permanent link to this article: https://sites.msudenver.edu/sips/sip-4-1-creating-inviting-course-documents/