Faculty Development Library

What We're Reading:

The following books were selected for their value in advocating teaching excellence and are available in the Library to be checked-out:

Facilitating Seven Ways of Learning

James R. Davis & Bridget D. Arend

Made to Stick

Chip Heath & Dan Heath

Make It Stick

Peter C. Brown & Henry L. Roediger III

Make Just One Change

​Dan Rothstein & Luz Santana
Dan Rothstein and Luz Santana advocate that making one small change can refresh and revitalize your instruction. The “one change” is to teach students to ask their own questions. Rothstein and Santana (2011) promote this change by providing a (fairly) simple technique called the Question Formulation Technique (QFT) which is a seven step process to guiding students into creating their own questions about the topic at hand. Here are the steps:
  1. Create a question focus (not a question but a statement or intriguing phrase).
  2. Tell students the rules for producing the questions.
    1. Ask as many questions as you can.
    2. Do not stop to discuss, judge or answer any questions.
    3. Write down every question exactly as it’s stated.
    4. Change any statement into a question.
  3.  Allow students time to produce questions.
  4. Have students categorize their questions into open and closed questions.
  5. Have students prioritize their questions based on importance, interest or another feature.
  6. Next steps - have students research, answer, or do something else to put their questions into action.
  7. Give students time to reflect on the process and their questions.
 
How could you do this with a Hybrid or Online class?
  1. Create a discussion board that provides the prompt with the statement or intriguing phrase.
  2. Have students post at least three questions (at least one open) that they want to know or need to know in order to further understand the topic in the prompt. They should organize their questions in order of importance, interest or another feature that you tell them in the prompt.
  3. In a group discussion, have each student repost at least three questions that stood out to them that were posed by other students and identify two from this new list that they will answer.
  4. Then ask students to reflect on their questions and responses and encourage students to reply to each other, but don’t give them a number of replies they have to post.
  5. Encourage thoughtful discussion by posing additional questions in replies to students answers and reflections so that organic conversation occurs.
 
You can find more about this book (which is available in the Faculty Development section of the HCC library) and the QFT by visiting http://rightquestion.org/. On this site, you can find more in-depth explanations, examples and even a few PowerPoint presentations to help you explain the technique to your students.
 

Small Teaching

James M. Lang
I borrowed the book Small Teaching by James Lang (available at the HCC library) from Amy Chase Martin and I found it extremely helpful. It is amazing that these little things can be so powerful. I implemented many strategies from the book straight away without making major changes in the course.
One strategy I found very useful is to solicit the prior knowledge of my students at the beginning of each individual topic. I asked students to work in small groups and spend 5-7 minutes writing down what they think they already know about the subject, and took another 5-7 minutes to solicit the responses and discuss them.
This activity helped me correct any mistaken perceptions they had and also activated their prior knowledge that I wanted to build on or reinforce. A small change, but so powerful, try it!
- Dr. Yang Yu, Instructor and Coordinator, Geography, Social Sciences at HCC

Teaching College

Dr. Norman Eng
In his book, Teaching College, Dr. Norman Eng blends his experience in marketing and education to bring faculty a new way of thinking about how they teach. Here are 5 tips Dr. Eng gives for teaching college: 
  1. Ask students “what should I know about you and the way you learn?”
  2. Use name tents to learn students’ names and help them learn each others. Make sure you ask them to write their name on the front AND the back.
  3. When you “cold call” a student, if they don’t know the answer, don’t let them opt out! Give them a chance to pass, ask another student the same question, and then ask the first student to repeat, summarize or add to the 2nd student’s response.
  4. Instead of doing reading quizzes, consider doing QQCs - Question, Quote, or Comment. Ask students to come up with a question, quote or comment related to the reading so they can focus on the reading but you can keep them accountable for doing the work.
  5. Consider putting your lecture component in the 2nd half of class, instead of the beginning. Give students a problem and let them use their prior knowledge to explore and discover before telling them about it.

Teaching Naked

Jose Antonio Bowen
Teaching Naked, by Goucher University President Jose Antonio Bowen, is a great guide to supporting your face-to-face classroom instruction with technology. Teaching Naked is Bowen’s term for the authentic face-to-face interaction between students and instructors that can only happen in the classroom.
Bowen examines the current state of affairs in higher education in America and argues that face-to-face teaching is the brick-and-mortar college’s greatest product and strength. The book is grounded in strategic teaching principles and the authentic use of technology as a tool for instruction.
Here are 3 ideas Bowen discusses in his book (which is available in the HCC library).
  1. Send weekly emails to students to summarize class activities and introduce them to the next lesson. This will open a direct line of communication between you and your students. The key is consistency, so make sure to do this every week!
  2. Expose students to content before they come to class using online resources such as YouTube, iTunes U, and Khan Academy rather than lecturing in-class. (Mediasite is available to record content here at HCC.!) Video lectures, podcasts, and news articles can often do a better job at introducing students to the content than lecturing. Lecture only on the most important or challenging aspects of the content and let students explore it in group activities.
  3. Design your class more like a video game - incorporate the right amount of challenge and provide support to keep students engaged and motivated.

What the Best College Teachers Do

Ken Bain