Understanding fear, its causes, and its impact on students can be important for educators who seek ways to help students manage their fears. This paper explores common types of student fears such as performance-based anxiety, fear of failure, fear of being laughed at, and cultural components of fear that impact learning. The cognitive, emotional,…

Videorecording analysis can help improve the teaching of college literature and other subjects. Here, I concentrate on specific analytical strategies that I have been teaching my graduate students since 1994, and I cite my students (including their graphical charts) to illustrate what important lessons they have learned through careful study of…

The authors critically analyze how the concept of the drama triangle--part of the game theory associated with transactional analysis--can be used by post secondary instructors teaching online to build a sense of community and decrease students' dependence on instructors in discussion forums. The article begins with an overview of sense of…

Teachers are encouraged to critically evaluate their philosophy of teaching and to help students recognize and examine their implicit ideas about education as well. This critical evaluation entails examining assumptions about teaching and learning, investigating the implications that follow from those assumptions, and considering alternative ideas…

We describe an active learning exercise intended to improve undergraduate students' understanding of statistics by grounding complex concepts within a meaningful, applied context. Students in a journal excerpt activity class read brief excerpts of statistical reporting from published research articles, answered factual and interpretive questions,…

University education in the United States has become an increasingly global environment. In the classrooms of a modern university students and teachers from literally all corners of the world come together and reshape the face of higher education. Without a doubt the multicultural classroom of the 21st century necessitates fresh pedagogical…

Personal response systems (PRS)--also called student response systems (SRS), or more commonly, "clickers"--can be a catalyst for transformation of a learning environment from one of silence to one rich in dialogue and interaction. But how is this transformation achieved? In this paper, we present three case studies of instructors who use PRS in…

The new majority of faculty in today's colleges and universities are part-time, yet sizable gaps exist in the research on their needs, interests, and experiences. Further, the peer-reviewed scholarship is largely quantitative. Principally, it focuses on the utility of the adjunct work force, comparisons between part-time and full-time faculty, and…

The goal of this article is to describe a continuum of levels of reflection. It briefly focuses on Deanna Kuhn's research into the development of scientific thinking and Robert Kegan's Object-Subject Theory of Development applied to the problems of inspiring students to be able to reflect. Assignments for improving students' ability to reflect are…

The author studied the pedagogy of Socrates looking for teaching techniques that help maintain students' interest in an ongoing discussion. Socrates' use of such strategies as asking probing questions, expanding the discussion into its relationship to other ideas, assuming the role of the devil's advocate, and spending time on group maintenance…

The author discusses the importance of incorporating research into undergraduate curricula. Pedagogical approaches include faculty-directed research projects, off-campus internships, and research-oriented courses (R-courses). Examples of R-courses are reviewed, and an introductory microbiology course that teaches first year students "how to do…

This article provides a reflection on a team-teaching experience in which performative dialogues between co-instructors and among students provided a pedagogical framework within which comparative analysis of textual traditions within the classical tradition could be optimized. Performative dialogues thus provided a model for and enactment of…

This article reflects on the authors' experiences during a pilot year of an innovative core curriculum at a state research university and their attempts to create a "collaborative community" characterized by transformative pedagogy. It discusses their students' and colleagues' resistance to their inventive, albeit time-consuming and sometimes…

At the reference desk, librarians engage in an often predictable sequence of instruction with students that centers on assisting students with focusing their topics before they can move to the information collection stage. It is an area of instruction that is often taken for granted and that most faculty are unaware of, but it is critical for…

An important component of student-centered learning is students' ability to connect to their own experiences and to build on their initial perspectives. In this collaborative project, two courses, one in foreign language and one in meteorology, use online postings and threaded discussions to guide the student in a self-study of progress, learning,…