Inspired by the premise of Ken Bain’s What the Best College Teachers Do, I wanted to talk to students about their best college teachers. The goal is to reflect on their experiences in a variety of college classrooms to find key actions that a college teacher displayed toward them or for them, so that we can learn how students believe they are best supported for learning. 

In this format, I sit down with a college student to ask a few simple questions about what they think makes for an effective college instructor. I’m curious if we can learn just one thing from each student, that might help us try something new, or double down on an activity or approach that students like and that they know helps them to learn.

Today, we meet Allie, and learn about the teachers that have helped her learn and made her feel like she matters. Allie shares about the importance of monitoring student’s performances and taking note of when something in their behavioral patterns shift, as well as how much she enjoys working, and working hard, for teachers that both notice her personally, and talk about meeting high expectations. 

Inspired by the premise of Ken Bain’s What the Best College Teachers Do, I wanted to talk to students about their best college teachers. The goal is to reflect on their experiences in a variety of college classrooms to find key actions that a college teacher displayed toward them or for them, so that we can learn how students believe they are best supported for learning. 

In this format, I sit down with a college student to ask a few simple questions about what they think makes for an effective college instructor. I’m curious if we can learn just one thing from each student, that might help us try something new, or double down on an activity or approach that students like and that they know helps them to learn. 

In this conversation, I talk with Zaria about being a college student and what she thinks makes for an effective college teacher. She talks about being a woman of color, and often times the only person of color in her classes, and how she thinks teachers may form initial opinions, as well as the ways in which she likes it when teachers take the time to learn more about their students as young adults. 

Inspired by the premise of Ken Bain’s What the Best College Teachers Do, I wanted to talk to students about their best college teachers. The goal is to reflect on their experiences in a variety of college classrooms to find key actions that a college teacher displayed toward them or for them, so that we can learn how students believe they are best supported for learning. 

In this format, I sit down with a college student to ask a few simple questions about what they think makes for an effective college instructor. I’m curious if we can learn just one thing from each student, that might help us try something new, or double down on an activity or approach that students like or know helps them to learn. 

In this episode, we meet Sam who shares how impromptu presentations, facilitated comfortably, were really helpful in getting him to read and study the materials as well as feel like he was learning by sharing and teaching. Also, he describes how much a simple check-in from his teachers made him feel like he mattered.  

We end this academic year with an episode focused on the end of a class - what are some ways to meaningfully wrap a semester long course? I did not find a lot of great research on this topic, but certainly some valuable proposals and ideas in the literature - nothing that was measured or lead to changes empirically. Many of these ideas for the last class center on the shared humanity across teachers and students - what can we think about and discuss and making it to the end of what should have been a challenging but engaging course over three to four months. In that space, a lot of consternation and realizations can happen; pausing to discuss those and think through what went well and what could be better is a great way to close out a course meaningfully. 

The Last Class

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.3200/CTCH.53.4.165-166

First Day and Last Day

https://www.jstor.org/stable/27561976

Knowing Where You’re Going: Planning for Meaningful Course Closure

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/87567555.2017.1279586

Have you ever thought about how much time and energy kids pour into their video games, and thought “if only they cared half as much about their learning” they would be so successful? Many scholars and educators have shared that thought too - and they have turned to gamification to close that gap. Gamification in college classrooms involves using key tenets of games for learning. The research is also showing some trends that it helps students feel more in charge of their learning and that they favor it compared to more traditional or status quo course experiences. In this episode, we’ll review some of these trends, and I will share a bit about how I use gamification in my own classrooms to help students feel like they are succeeding and earning their grades. 

Gamification enhances student intrinsic motivation, perceptions of autonomy and relatedness, but minimal impact on competency: a meta‐analysis and systematic review 

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11423-023-10337-7

https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/epik/vol3/iss1/4/

Exploring College Student Experiences in a Kinesiology Course Using a Gamified Grading SystemScience to practice: Does gamification enhance intrinsic motivation?https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14697874211066882

If we want students to understand what and how they are learning, beyond simply recalling content, then it seems imperative that we explicitly include meta-cognitive and self-regulated learning strategies. Asking students to report on their plans and goals, reflect on their time management and progress, and then think back to what they did that helped them or didn’t help them are all important steps to encourage self-regulated learning, which can lead to strong lifelong learning beyond the college classroom. Especially in the present moment where generative AI tools can write the essay for students, we want them to be able to think about their thinking and how and why they learned something, beyond simply turning in the product that represents their knowledge. 

Learning how to learn—Implementing self-regulated learning evidence into practice in higher education: Illustrations from diverse disciplines

https://bera-journals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/rev3.3339

Supporting thinking about thinking: examining the metacognition theory‐practice gap in higher education 

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10734-022-00904-x

Fostering self-regulated learning in higher education: Making self-regulation visible

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1469787420982378

A central theme across these impactful teaching tactics we’ve explored in these time-outs is the value of focusing on relationships in our classrooms. For this episode, I wanted to focus exclusively on the value of a strong mentoring relationship between advisors and graduate students; this is teaching also, sometimes in a classroom, sometimes in a lab, and sometimes over coffee or on a walk around campus. The way we mentor and teach our graduate students has a significant impact on their mental health and well-being. 

Evidence for a mental health crisis in graduate education:

https://www.nature.com/articles/nbt.4089

The PhD Experience: A review of the factors influencing doctoral students’ completion, achievement, and well-being

https://www.informingscience.org/Publications/4113

The long lonely job of homo academicus

https://www.boisestate.edu/bluereview/faculty-time-allocation/#:~:text=The%20first%20phase%20of%20the,unrelated%20to%20teaching%20and%20research. 

We want to know what you've been thinking about on your own "Time Out's", or reflections away from teaching. Do you have questions, ideas, or comments? Send us an email and share your thoughts with us a [email protected].

We can make simple and straightforward adjustments to help students really feel like they matter. Mattering is a psychological concept. When we feel like we matter is a specific context, we feel like people are paying attention us, that we are important, and that others depend on us in that setting. Researchers have explored mattering with faculty and students, and the findings highlight that the best college teachers really think of their students as human beings first, with complex lives that can add to the learning they wish to have occur in their courses. We’ll review two studies on mattering in college classrooms in this time-out, and identify how creating an environment where students feel like they matter can lead to improved student outcomes.                                                                                                        

Faculty Perceptions of Mattering in Teaching and Learning: A Qualitative Examination of the Views, Values, and Teaching Practices of Award-Winning Professors: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/07342829211057648

Post-Traditional Students’ Perceptions of Mattering: The Role of Faculty and Student Interaction: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07377363.2022.2108642

We’re taking a time out today to reflect on learning through reflection - how can we learn what and how our students are absorbing the information in our carefully designed courses? Dr. Blanton will highlight two studies in the journal Teaching of Psychology that have implications and suggestions for instructors across the humanities and sciences. 

Two articles anchor the discussion for this time-out:

Dr. Conrad’s paper on self-reflections in a memory course: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0098628312465863

And Dr. McGrath’s paper on office hours and learning reflections in a statistics course: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0098628313514186