End of Semester Readings

Two interesting articles came across our virtual desks recently. You might want to take a break from the end of semester flurry of activity to read one or both. Learn how teaching portfolios help professors share their classroom practices and how a syllabus can transform your students’ experiences.

Professors Aren’t Good at Sharing Their Classroom Practices. Teaching Portfolios Might Help
EdSurge News, November 23, 2016

Jeffrey R. Young writes about various initiatives to encourage sharing of classroom practices and considers the use of teaching portfolios as a means of capturing and sharing the struggles faced by and strategies employed by colleagues across disciplines.

One instructor notes: “These portfolios bring those internal workings out in ways that a syllabus or course evaluations could never capture” Read more in the full article.

DIY Syllabus: How to Move Beyond the Transactional
Vitae, November 26, 2016

If you are already thinking about the start of the spring semester, the third in a series entitled DIY Syllabus might appeal. In DIY Syllabus: How to Move Beyond the Transactional, Kevin Gannon examines how to take our syllabi from merely conveying information to explaining to students how the course going to excite, interest, challenge, and transform its participants.

He concludes: “If we mean what we say about higher education being transformational, as opposed to merely transactional, then our syllabi – the very gateway to our courses and what they offer to students – should unabashedly proclaim that belief. ” Read more in the full article.

Happy reading and happy holidays from all of us in TCDC.