Resources
Incorporating Wikipedia into the curriculum as a collaborative environment or primary source affords students with the opportunity to develop their media literacy, improve their writing skills, and learn appropriate ways to use Wikipedia as an academic resource.
Clickers can be used to increase student-student and student-instructor interactions, to assess student preparation and learning, and to probe students' opinions or attitudes.
Podcasting is a digital technology that allows listeners to download course audio and video files, including both instructor-created and student-created content, through the RSS-based subscription mode and listen to them anywhere, anytime.
How can instructors ensure that students come to class with course assignments prepared and readings completed?
From Indiana University: Having students work in groups lets them practice the skills they are learning. Speaking in front of the whole class can be scary, and combined with the tension of speaking to the teacher, the situation can be downright terrifying to students. Breaking them up into groups not only develops social skills useful in the professional environment for which they are training, but gives them a chance to perform in a supportive environment before a test or even before having to do homework on the topic on their own. Includes: Organizing the Groups; Designating Roles in Groups; Sharing Group Results
Games help people develop a disposition toward collaboration, problem-solving, communication, experimentation, and exploration of identities, all attributes that promote success in a rapidly-changing, information-based culture
From Vanderbilt Univeristy: The first day of class is your opportunity to present your vision of the class to prospective students. It is helpful if you can introduce yourself as a scholar and educator and provide insight into how you will teach the class and what you will expect them to contribute to the learning process. Links to: The Inviting Classroom; Course Expectations and Requirements; Additional Resources; Summary Checklist
How can I tell what my students are thinking? Classroom Assessment Techniques (CATs) are feedback devices to help us determine how much, how well, and simply how our students learn.
Full-length videos and video clips can be very useful in teaching. However, it is important to consider ahead of time what you hope your students will learn from the videos.
Click Here for Book Review Abstract: We have long been encouraged to look to education, especially higher education, for the solution to social problems, particularly as a way out of poverty for the talented and the hard working. But in its appointed role as the path to upward mobility that makes inequality more acceptable, higher education is faltering these days. As funds for public institutions are cut and tuition costs soar everywhere; as for-profit education races into the breach; and as student debt grows wildly; the comfortable future once promised to those willing to study hard has begun to fade from sight. So now is a good time to take a more serious look at the ways class structures higher education and the ways teachers can bring it into focus in the classroom. In recent decades, scholarly work and pedagogical practice in higher education have paid increasing attention to issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality.But among these four terms of analysis -- and clearly they are interrelated -- class is often an afterthought, and work that does examine class and higher education tends to focus only on admissions, on who is in the college classroom, not on what happens there. Class and the College Classroom offers a broader look at the connections between college teaching and social class.It collects and reprints twenty essays originally published in Radical Teacher, a journal that has been a leader in the field of critical pedagogy since 1975. This wide-ranging and insightful volume addresses the interests, concerns, and pedagogical needs of teachers committed to social justice and provides them with new tools for thinking and teaching about class. (From the Publisher)
Wabash Center Staff Contact
Sarah Farmer, Ph.D.
Associate Director
Wabash Center
farmers@wabash.edu