University of St. Thomas

Teaching Tips for all Instructors

The Center for Faculty Development supports instructors with links to teaching tips, paper and online subscriptions to educational magazines and journals, as well as a collection of archived articles on teaching methods for instructors.

Teaching tips for first day, first semester, etc.

• From the University of California - Berkeley:  Tools for Teaching -- the first day of class  http://teaching.berkeley.edu/bgd/firstday.html
• From the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, Graduate Student Development Web site, suggestions for tips for those first few weeks:  http://www.unl.edu/gradstudies/current/dev/gta_handbook/preparing/ 

Syllabus guidelines

• From the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching at Iowa State University  the Learning-Centered Syllabi Workshop, a site authored by Lee Haugen:  http://www.celt.iastate.edu/teaching/syllabi.html#intro

Course design

• From the Center for Instructional Development and Research at the University of Washington --some ideas for what promotes student learning:   http://depts.washington.edu/cidrweb/Bulletin/Learning.html
• From the Center for Teaching Excellence at the  University of California Santa Cruz  http://teaching.ucsc.edu/tips-design.html
• Based on the book Creating Significant Learning Experiences by L. Dee Fink, 2003,   Jossey-Bass.  Available in the Center for Faculty Development Library.
• For a short article "Integrated Course Design," on this model of course design "Integrated Course Design," (IDEA Paper #42, March 2005). PDF/Adobe Acrobat go to  http://www.idea.ksu.edu/papers/Idea_Paper_42.pdf

Advice on group work

• From the University of Central Missouri, Team Based Learning web site, ideas on how to make student groups effective learning teams:  http://faculty.ucmo.edu/teambasedlearning/
•  From the Cooperative Learning Center at the University of Minnesota:  http://www.co-operation.org/
•  From the web site of Karl Smith at the University of Minnesota, the basics about cooperative groups:  http://www.ce.umn.edu/~smith/docs/CLHks.pdf

Ideas for promoting good discussion

• From the Center for Teaching Excellence at  the University of Montana:  http://www.umt.edu/cte/tips/discussion.htm   
• From the Center for Teaching at Vanderbilt:  http://www.vanderbilt.edu/cft/resources/teaching_resources/activities/discussions.htm 

Using active learning in the classroom 

• From a text Tools for Teaching by Barbara Gross Davis, 1993,  Jossey-Bass (available in the Center for Faculty Development Library—many chapters are available on line as well including this one on lecturing:  http://teaching.berkeley.edu/bgd/delivering.html
• From the Indiana University at Bloomington Teaching Handbook:  http://teaching.iub.edu/wrapper_big.php?section_id=lect
• From the Center for Teaching Effectiveness at the University of Delaware:  http://cte.udel.edu/instructional-topics/engaging-students.html
• From the Center for Teaching Excellence at the  University of California Santa Cruz  http://teaching.ucsc.edu/tips-active.html

• From the Center for Teaching and Learning Services at the University of Minnesota: A tutorial on ways to use active learning strategies with PowerPoint presentations; includes 12 active learning strategies.  http://www1.umn.edu/ohr/teachlearn/tutorials/powerpoint/index.html

Giving feedback, grading writing

• From Flinders University, Australia: 
  http://www.flinders.edu.au/teaching/teaching-strategies/assessment/feedback/

• On grading writing from the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching at the University of Michigan:  http://www.crlt.umich.edu/gsis/P7_1.php

• About grading writing – from the Center for Writing Excellence at the Ohio State University:  http://www.faculty-commons.org/cwe/?s=grading+writing&submit=Go

• Non-graded feedback; classroom assessment techniques

• The key text about classroom assessment is  Angelo, T.A. and K.P. Cross. 1993 Classroom Assessment Techniques: A Handbook for College Teachers.  2^nd ed.  San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers. This text has detailed descriptions of 50 different CATs including instructions on how to implement them and examples of use in various courses.  The text categorizes CATs by the type of goal the CAT helps you assess.  Additionally this text contains a self-scorable Teaching Goals Inventory.  Available from the Center for Faculty Development Library.
• From the Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence at Penn State University—an article introducing Classroom Assessment and discussing several techniques “An Introduction to Classroom Assessment Techniques” by  Diane M. Enerson, Kathryn M. Plank, and R. Neill Johnson  http://www.schreyerinstitute.psu.edu/pdf/Classroom_Assessment_Techniques_Intro.pdf 
• The FLAG (Field-tested Learning Assessment Guide) site, created by the National Institute for Science Education housed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison,  provides extensive descriptions of several CATs, including the Minute Paper and Concept Mapping.    http://www.flaguide.org/cat/cat.php  For the Minute Paper description specifically, go to:  http://www.flaguide.org/cat/minutepapers/minutepapers1.php

• From the Teaching Effectiveness Program at the University of Oregon:  This site gives short descriptions of such CATs as the  One-Sentence Summary; Word Journal; Directed Paraphrasing; Application Cards.   http://tep.uoregon.edu/workshops/teachertraining/learnercentered/assessing/cats.html