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February 17, 2010, 2:00 pm
What’s on your mind?
How’s your semester going?
Do you need advice or feedback about something related to life and work in higher ed?
Do you have advice or feedback to share about something related to life and work in higher ed?
What would you like to see covered at ProfHacker?
Let us hear from you in the comments!
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10 Responses to Open Thread Wednesday!
Jason B. Jones - February 21, 2010 at 10:27 am
William–not sure! I haven’t seen one yet that I love.
Stan Burnett - February 17, 2010 at 3:37 pm
I want to know if anyone has strong opinions, one way or the other, about Nota Bena (http://www.notabene.com/). Is it worth the money? How does it compare with MS Word?
Thanks!
William Patrick Wend - February 19, 2010 at 5:21 pm
the baseball caps
Yeah, I suggested students get rid of the caps/hats/etc when entering class, but I am not enforcing it.
I don’t mind the under the desk texters that much to be honest. My thinking on it is, I’d rather they spend 20 seconds and send out a text than be distracted all lecture by the need to send that Very Important Text to whoever. Just be discreet. I am pretty up front about this, and, for the most part, my students are good about it.
Jessica - February 17, 2010 at 3:59 pm
I would love to see a post about interpreting student evaluations that are heavy on stats and light on narrative. I am now at an institution that has about 10 questions on the numerical evaluations and 3 on the narrative. By the time the students get to the narrative evals, they are worn out from the bubblefilling and they don’t tend to write much (my old institution had 2 questions on each and the narrative evals were very detailed and helpful). I truly believe that these evaluations can be useful in improving my teaching, but I am not so sure about how to understand this sea of numbers.
Billie - February 17, 2010 at 4:44 pm
Courtney, this sounds like it should fall under the “disruptive student” category of posts we have at ProfHacker. Thanks for the suggestion (but sorry you are experiencing these type students). We’ll pull something together.
Courtney - February 17, 2010 at 4:05 pm
I write my own evaluation instruments that emphasize narrative and administer them on a different day from the institutional evaluations.
Jessica - February 17, 2010 at 4:12 pm
These stressful experiences often lead us to react in ways we know are ineffective (and even, as you note, undermining the class). What I have been trying to do lately is to make students even more responsible for their learning than I was doing before. I use more directed group work (and by directed I mean work that has to produce something for the class as a whole) than I used to, and I rarely do a straight lecture. This tends to minimize the problems you mention because 1. the rest of the students are just as bothered by disruptive students as you, and the more of an interest they have in censuring disruptive behavior, the more likely they are to do it; 2. sometimes what we consider “unwilling/irritating” students are looking for more involvement, and channeling their involvement into something more productive than rolling their eyes at me helps. This is especially true of encouraging them to disagree with me in a sophisticated way.
Of course, this does not mean my classroom is an ideal space of joy, but it does at least make it so I do not lose my temper embarrassingly.
William Patrick Wend - February 17, 2010 at 3:04 pm
I asked last week, but didn’t get any replies, but what is a good WordPress plugin for displaying my CV on my domain?
Courtney - February 17, 2010 at 4:01 pm
Seeking tips for dealing with chronically unwilling/irritating students (the baseball caps, the eye-rollers, the under-the-desk texters, the asleep, the studying-for-another-class, the droolers–the UNENGAGED). There are never many, but they really get under my skin! My current strategy is to ignore the behavior as long as possible, then eventually lose my patience:
1. stopping my lecture/activity,
2. inviting the Unengaged to leave the room if s/he would prefer,
3. reiterating my policy on not taking attendance,
4. acknowledging to the class that the topic is absolutely less entertaining than
5. asking for ideas about the topic’s value/purpose
Motivated as it is by my ego and temper, I suspect my response is problematic. What do you do?
William Patrick Wend - February 21, 2010 at 12:37 pm
Yeah, me either. I will keep looking.