The author began working with preschool-aged children long before becoming a professor, and nearly every element of the author's approach to teaching in higher education is rooted in early childhood theory and practice. In addition to provocations, he seeks to activate the "whole student," promote peer supports, and incorporate…

At a conference last fall, Kirsten Dierking came across "College Girl: A Memoir," a book by Laura Gray-Rosendale that tells the story of a brutal sexual assault she experienced as a college student. While she purchased a copy of the book, it sat unopened on her desk for a while; also a victim of brutal rape in college, she was not sure…

Making classes larger saves money--and public universities across the country have found it a useful strategy to balance their budgets after decades of state funding cuts and increases to infrastructure costs. Where this author teaches, in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences at California State University, Northridge (CSUN),…

Maureen Curtin, associate professor in the English and Creative Writing Department at the State University of New York (SUNY) in Oswego, reports in this article on an initiative that is designed to spur teams of faculty and visiting artists to teach "intellectual issues" through students' storytelling. The courses were part of the…

The push for increased use of online teaching in colleges and universities has been gaining momentum for some time, but even in that context the recent enthusiasm for MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses), free online courses that often enroll tens of thousands of students, is remarkable and rightly dubbed "MOOC Mania." As with so many…

This author is dropping out from the first college course he has taken in more than 20 years. As a tenured professor, he obviously does not have much to lose from this decision. On the other hand, nobody really seems to care anyway whether he is participating or not. He has been MOOC(h)ing of late. Definition of this lovely neologism? Taking part…

With America's military out of Iraq, and funding for global military operations on the decline, thousands of newly discharged men and women are trying to figure out "What's next?" Most of the Soldiers, Marines, Airmen, and Sailors joined the military before their 21st birthday, and it is often the only job they have ever held. While it is true…

Student ratings, first introduced into the college classroom in the late 1920s, have long symbolized the often uneasy relationship between undergraduates and their professors. Certainly, research about student ratings has been exhaustive over the last 50 years. Several thousand studies have been published, many concerned with issues of validity…

The author went to graduate school during the height of the culture wars, when the debate over the place of cultural literacy in the curriculum and the legitimacy of the great books approach was still raging. The first college class that he taught was structured around the theme "education and the making of knowledge," with E.D. Hirsch and Paulo…

Considers how what one is shapes what one knows about the world, and how one can become aware of the conceptual shackles imposed by one's own identity and experiences. Discusses the construction of knowledge by the interaction between the questioner and the world. (SLD)

Describes a project at Bergen Community College, New Jersey, that attempts to develop a "sense of place" in students so that their private stake in a place can become a public concern and a personal issue. (SLD)

Discusses learning as a complex and messy process, and uses the ideas of Paolo Freire to describe the college teacher as one who faces students "face to face" as a knower facing other knowers. The neighborhood of education is the minds of students; faculty members are the transients in this neighborhood. (SLD)

Teaching portfolios, now largely used for evaluation of college teaching, can also be viewed as a form of action research, opening their use to other purposes, including examination of institutional, faculty, and student needs and demands; the dynamics of race, gender, and sexuality in structuring classroom interactions; and the relationship of…

The Americans with Disabilities Act requires reasonable accommodations for the disabled in public and private colleges and universities. Faculty must understand the difference between equal opportunity and equal treatment. Specific suggestions are made for teaching learning-disabled, mobility- impaired, visually-impaired, and hearing-impaired…

If universities were serious about enhancing student learning, they would explore other ways of organizing work, including reorganization of the curriculum into learning communities that enable learning to span the disciplines, creating classrooms that promote collaborative learning experiences, and using forms of assessment that encourage shared…