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/
Apr 28 2016
Thirsty for Strong Instructional Practice? Providing individualized attention to students in “real time” (synchronously) is an important aspect of university teaching, and meeting with students face to face (F2F) is a time-honored and institutionalized way of making this happen. Yet, traditional “office hours,” in which a professor announces times in which students may drop in …
Permanent link to this article: https://sites.msudenver.edu/sips/sip-3-14-office-hours/
Apr 21 2016
Thirsty for Strong Instructional Practice? Do you ever assign your students articles or book chapters to read prior to class, expecting or perhaps hoping for an engaging conversation, only to end up sounding like the economics teacher in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off? ….. “Anyone?….Anyone?” It can be disheartening and even infuriating when students do not …
Permanent link to this article: https://sites.msudenver.edu/sips/sip-3-13-the-snowball/
Apr 07 2016
Thirsty for a Strong Instructional Practice? Supplementary instructional materials such as websites or YouTube videos can enhance student engagement and enrich course material, but are also difficult to integrate into a course without overburdening students or taking up too much time in class. Assigning these materials together as a whole group might actually diminish interaction …
Permanent link to this article: https://sites.msudenver.edu/sips/sip-3-11-centers-in-university-classrooms/
Feb 05 2016
Thirsty for Strong Instructional Practice? Have you ever planned a class discussion only to find just a few students participating? Small, structured group discussions often work much better than whole class discussions. But, how can you provide this structure in a way that gets every student actively involved? Take a SIP of this: Gallery Walks …
Permanent link to this article: https://sites.msudenver.edu/sips/sip-3-3-gallery-walks/
Jan 28 2016
Thirsty for Strong Instructional Practice? Do you notice the energy and motivation your students bring to class discussions and activities wane when it’s time for them to write an assignment? Do you get bored reading the same thing from student to student and even semester to semester? Using an assignment menu can reinvigorate both you …
Permanent link to this article: https://sites.msudenver.edu/sips/sip-3-2-assignment-menus/
Nov 12 2015
Thirsty for Strong Instructional Practice? While it may seem like freshmen students only land in First Year Success courses, the truth is that they are scattered throughout all disciplines and course levels. What does the population of freshmen look like at MSU Denver this fall? 50% are white, 50% are of other races/ethnicities. The average …
Permanent link to this article: https://sites.msudenver.edu/sips/sip-2-13-tips-for-successfully-engaging-with-first-year-students/
Nov 05 2015
Thirsty for Strong Instructional Practice? Students today too often are taught isolated, static “facts” that belie the complexity, interconnectedness, and rapidly changing nature of knowledge in the “real world”. If we are to successfully prepare our students for life after academia, where answers are seldom clear-cut or permanent, we much teach them to grapple with …
Permanent link to this article: https://sites.msudenver.edu/sips/sip-2-12-teaching-students-to-embrace-uncertainty/
Oct 22 2015
Thirsty for Strong Instructional Practice? If you ask instructors what their students could do to help their learning, many will lament that “students don’t prepare for class time.” Indeed there is a consistent (and long) record of studies showing that less than a third of students adequately prepare for class. In a fairly broad survey, …
Permanent link to this article: https://sites.msudenver.edu/sips/sip-2-10-just-in-time-teaching/
Oct 08 2015
Thirsty for Strong Instructional Practice? One-minute quick-write activities ask students to stop what they are doing and produce a written response in only one minute. This technique can be used to collect feedback by asking them to identify what they thought the most confusing point of class was or to voice a question that was …
Permanent link to this article: https://sites.msudenver.edu/sips/sip-2-8-one-minute-quick-writes/