A researcher who was surveying high school students about “cheating” was confronted by a student, “Before I can tell you if I have ever cheated, you must define cheating.” The researcher explained to the young student that, for example, sitting next...

Copyright Law: "Fair Use" Exemption - The Four-Factor Determination Test

The Technology, Education and Copyright Harmonization Act of 2002 (H.R. 22157) — commonly referred to as the TEACH Act—revised Title 17 of the United States Code providing a much needed technology update.

Every teacher in a situation with graded activities must think about the possibility of cheating (also known as "academic dishonesty" or "academic misconduct"), and make some plans for dealing with it.

Essay mills are companies whose sole purpose is to generate essays for high school and college students (in exchange for a fee, of course).

While the students are taking their exam, you look up from the paper you're grading and see a student repeatedly looking at another student's exam. When your eyes meet his, he appears nervous. What should you do next?

Disruptive classroom behavior has become a major concern on college campuses all across America. A double-edged sword, it impedes the instructional process for teachers and interferes with the learning process of students and it should not be ignored.

The Students' Perspective

Based on responses from 21 College of Business (COB) Faculty members, the following disruptive student behaviors are the most commonly observed infractions within our College.

Disruptive Faculty Behaviors: (listed in order of frequency of mention)

Best responses to student behavior

Experience and evidence now confirm that, when present, material that highlights differences does have positive effects on a number of learning outcomes.

Teaching in the diverse classroom in a global economy means more than addressing issues of diversity or multi-culturalism. We must be aware of how we treat our students, of how our students treat us, and of how our students treat each other.

In an effort to keep our classrooms in good working order, Rob Peters of the IT staff has taken on the responsibility of weekly and bi-weekly classroom maintenance.

"To imagine that content matters more than process is to imagine that the car is more important than the road."

Despite IT cutbacks, the number of universities in the process of upgrading to smart classrooms—those wired for wireless and other techno-marvels—has been on the upswing for some time.

Effective learning objectives.

A new skill set, one that depends less on good search and more on the power of collective networks.

Following are some suggestions to make the transition between classes and the general classroom experience more pleasant:

Top ten good teaching requirements.

(Student Achievement Correlated with Teaching Attributes)

Professors debate whether laptops are a help or hindrance in the classroom

There are Five Basic Elements to Building a Strong Relationship.

When it comes to college students and studying, the general rule most first-year students hear goes something like this.

Blogs have grown increasingly popular among college instructors and their students. They serve a variety of purposes, all aimed helping students learn.

YouTube videos are online resources that can be incorporated into classroom instruction to provide effective learning opportunities for college students.

There are some courses in the university where laptops are essential items for students in the class. My class is not one of them.

Allaying Student's Anxieties About Tests

Allaying Students' Anxieties About Tests: Part I - General Strategies

Anxieties About Tests: Returning Exams

It's a fundamental question of fairness. The Golden Rule, treat others as you would be treated, is as appropriate in test designing as it is everywhere else in life.

Maximize learning through tests.

Are you confused about what the biserial correlation number on a Scantron report is, and what you're supposed to do with it?

Hi all, this is a tricky situation but I think the very best plan is to call 911. That puts in place the police and paramedics coming to assess the situation.

FERPA Defined Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) – What college teachers need to know is that FERPA prohibits them from sharing information about students’ educational records

Youtube Video

“Most of the students entering College this fall, members of the Class of 2011, were born in 1989. For them, Alvin Ailey, Andrei Sakharov, Huey Newton, Emperor Hirohito, Ted Bundy, Abbie Hoffman, and Don the Beachcomber have always been dead.

"Thank goodness I was never sent to school; it would have rubbed off some of the originality." - Beatrix Potter

I'll be honest. I did not graduate at the top of my class. In fact, I was so close to the bottom, my sheepskin had a tail.

If I could offer you only one tip for the future, sunscreen would be it.

Does how you dress in the classroom say anything about your teaching style?

www.RateMyProfessor.com currently contains nearly 4 million ratings of 590,300 professors representing 4,858 schools.

“I have a theory about vests…Vests are for protection."

On the first day of exams my student sent to me…

The Value of Learning the Names of your Students

Phase 1: You are listening to jazz — Your first day at work is great. Your fellow teachers are wonderful, your classroom is cute, you love your students, and your principal is the best!

This is the text of the Commencement address by Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, delivered on June 12, 2005.

A professor stood before his philosophy class and had some items in front of him.

The spring semester is over. Final grades are posted, and committee meetings are on summer hiatus. And so ends my third year, sixth semester, and 33rd month as a college faculty member.

As more mature adults pursue career changes, educators must be ready!

This entry on my blog should prove two things: (1) I lead a relatively boring existence and (2) I spend way too much time thinking about teaching.

PowerPoint is versatile in allowing us to add multimedia (graphics, sound, audio, video, text, animation, etc.) to our presentations for keeping online students’ rapt attention.

Faculty who regularly use group work are always on the lookout for new and better ways of handling those behaviors.

If you would like to gain a better appreciation of your own learning style and those of your students, you might consider completing the Learning Styles Questionnaire

In the space of one generation, college students have gone from studying with highlighters and wire notebooks to laptops, netbooks and, now, iPads.

Many students are heading back for the second semester of college this week. How the semester goes will depend heavily on the quality of the courses they've chosen.

If you use PowerPoint in teaching your class, you probably have run into the following dilemma: you want to follow good slide design practices and keep the slides 'clean and simple'

Like most faculty members, we began our academic careers with zero prior instruction on college teaching and quickly made almost every possible blunder.

Students who exhibit an unrealistic sense of entitlement often demand a significant amount of instructors’ time and energy.

Teachers who have a delegator teaching style tend to place much control

If you use PowerPoint in teaching your class, you probably have run into the following dilemma

A learning environment will happen, whether intentional or not…so why not go about building a positive environment, intentionally. —Rodrick Lucero

A search on the Web for the word syllabus will turn up more links to Web sites that give you more tips for creating a syllabus than you would ever need or want.

“That is what learning is. You suddenly understand something you’ve understood all your life, but in a new way.” - Doris Lessing

Professor Hatch's mantra: When in doubt: read the syllabus….

Students learn best when incentives for learning in a classroom satisfy their own motives for enrolling in the course.

Are there any drawbacks to having your students learn to do something—or to respond to specific stimuli—so automatically that thinking about it becomes unnecessary?

Social media needs to be introduced within a context that will invite participation. While I don’t have a magic formula for generating participation, I do have some observations on what can help:

As the semester settles into the grind of a weekly working pace, teachers can use learning psychology to recapture flagging interest or re-energize the classroom routine.

TED Talk

"This may surprise you, but students were engaging in sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll long before Facebook, and will long after Facebook is not of interest to anyone," Mr. McDonald said.

Decoding Letters of Recommendation

We hear a great deal these days about “accountability” in the academy, although few consider this at all mysterious.

A professor taking his daughter on a series of campus visits finds many of his colleagues less than helpful.

Given teaching loads and the regular demands of academic life, it’s not realistic to expect teachers to take classes, but when they do, what they learn about teaching is extraordinary.

Since there is no significant decrease in the male population in America, why have men turned to places beyond or other than the college campus?

Consider these startling research findings regarding today’s female college students. They have been growing in numbers and as a percentage of total undergraduate students for more than two decades and now constitute a majority;

RateMyProfessors.com needs no introduction to most instructors. The problems with the site are equally well known.

In the early 1980s, the Soviet Union began letting some of its citizens emigrate to the United States. A surprisingly large number of those that came over were talented engineers, drafts-people and factory production workers.

Being remarkable is difficult because you often must take small steps rather than rely on huge leaps. Small steps are not for the impatient, though.

It was the semester I was given a huge auditorium and 60 students to lecture to, and also the same semester I FINALLY accepted the fact that out of any given class there would be 10% excellent students and 10% clinkers.

Teaching evaluations have become a permanent fixture in the academic environment

The middle of the semester is an excellent time to ask your students to think about, and comment on, their perspectives on the course and on your teaching

The social patterns previously described in the Teaching Tip: A Welcome Routine draws students into your learning activities.

It’s a typical day in your class. As you lecture...

Elliott West doesn't seem like the coolest guy on campus. With his tweed coat and thinning hair, he appears to be the stereotype of a studious professor, only truly at home among library stacks or in a dusty archive

Research expectations for university faculty have been rising for over half a century

About eight years ago, students taking Alice Cassidy’s Biology 345 course were asked to create a learning portfolio as their final project for the course. The portfolio was intended to help students demonstrate their learning in creative ways

Social media has allowed anyone to become a video producer. The result is an explosion of high-quality teaching videos.

There are ways to make lectures more participatory, more engaging for your students. This tip describes 4 ways to increase active-learning in a basic lecture-format class.

"Professor Marlin's Rule: If you have an open book test, you will forget your book. If you have a take home test, you will forget where you live." - Anonymous

Is there a way to close the semester with a inspiring class that doesn't require a ton of planning or energy?

One of my friends describes grading as being nibbled to death by ducks. The final ritual of a long semester may well feel that way.

Are your group projects in need of a little assistance…helpful hints are listed below!

We have previously reported on various iterations of having students do quizzes in groups. The study referenced below adds to the growing number of evidence-based reasons for doing so.

Student Emails

Do your students expect to be provided a guide at the beginning of the semester summarizing all of the important things they are going to be tested on by the end of the semester?

Regardless of the type of discussion, one of your most important facilitation goals is keeping it on track.

From those students who need no prodding when it comes time to sharing their thoughts—to those whose thoughts can’t be pried out of their shells with an oyster knife—there's likely to be a mixed bag of personality types in every class you teach.

Do you consider yourself "name-learning challenged?" Do you find it difficult to think of a student's name when the two of you meet? Or is it harder for you to match faces with the names of students on your class roster?

Do you have it all figured out? Do you know what you’re going to do on the first day of class? Are you going to jump right in with your first lecture, or are you going to save that for the second day?

“Examinations are formidable even to the best prepared, for the greatest fool may ask more than the wisest man can answer.” —C. C. Colton

"Lectures should be organized in [ways that aid] comprehension and retention"”

Instructors do a lot of research, but seldom do we go straight to the source, even though incorporating innovative sources offers students memorable learning opportunities.

How many times have you stood at the front of a lecture hall half way through a critical presentation only to be greeted by the silent scream: Stop it! You're killing me!

The following is a brief summary of an article that appeared as a posting on the Tomorrow's Professor (SM) Mailing List. The author, Mary McKinney, Ph.D. suggests some methods for instructors to ease stress by setting boundaries.

Email is a fact of life and for many of today's technology savvy students, life without it is beyond the scope of their experience. As a college or university instructor, you can expect your in-box to be inundated.

We've all had the experience, probably both as teachers and learners, of drifting off part way through a presentation.

What do most college professors have in common with Billy Joel, Reverend Billy Graham, Bill Murray, and Bill Clinton? Few of us are named "Bill," so that's not it. Rather, it is our occupational dependence on our voices

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Depending on the type of discussion you are having, your role will vary.

"They can send me to college but they can’t make me think." - Bumper sticker seen in the CSU College of Engineering parking lot.

Just a couple of facts [to] make [this] abundantly clear. According to the National Center for Educational Statistics, between 2001 and 2003 only 54 percent of the faculty hired were appointed to full-time positions

For many years, tenure has been a popular target for critics outside of higher education. What's different today is that even some leaders of academe are calling for radical changes in tenure, and even for its abolition.

Thanks to new technologies of brain imaging and major breakthroughs in cognitive research, neuroscientists now know more about the functioning of the human brain than ever.

Study finds alarming rise in narcissism, self-centeredness in 'Generation Me' The Associated Press

Of all instructional methods, lecturing is the most common, the easiest, and the least effective.

The characteristics of traditional age (18-to-22-year-old) college students—a group sometimes called the Millennials—have been described by Howe and Strauss as individuals who:

Conservatives complain that college professors lean left when it comes to politics -- and the data mostly show that's true. But new research suggests the personal politics of academics have little effect on what their students think.

Or what about this hoary chestnut: students today are impatient, incapable of waiting, and demand instant gratification, and any delay or requirement that effort be expended simply leads them to click off to some other site.

If you have ever wondered why “youngsters from Japan, Korea, Singapore, Chinese-Taipei, Hong Kong-China, and Macao-China all demonstrate deeper content knowledge a couple of interesting explanations are provided below.

Values can collide when members of different generations work and learn together. Having a better understanding of others can make the working and learning environment more productive

"Time and time again, the experts say money means nothing if you don't love what you do."

An advanced degree really can be worth millions of dollars in earnings over the course of a career. In fact, almost any step forward in education results in a significant upward bump in income