Educator’s Toolbox

Posts about instructional communication and the assessment of student learning and teacher behaviors.

  • Investing in Digital Literacy through Social Media

    Investing in Digital Literacy through Social Media

    This article was featured on the Social Media Club’s Education Blog on Wednesday, May 9, 2012. *** Entertainer Cee-Lo Green’s cat, Purrfect, has become a mouthpiece for NBC’s The Voice, a singing competion which this past Tuesday crowned its second winner. With 63,000 followers on Twitter, this feline certainly has a voice of its own – one that…

  • Reflecting on our learning about General Education

    Reflecting on our learning about General Education

    Five members of the Queens University of Charlotte faculty attended the 2012 AAC&U’s conference on General Education in New Orleans: Chip Bowen, Suzanne Cooper-Guasco, John McArthur, Lynn Morton, and Jeff Thomas. Our key take-away from the conference, aptly stated by our distinguished colleague from the English department:  An excellent General Education program has clearly defined…

  • Adding Image Headers in Moodle

    Adding Image Headers in Moodle

    Navigating courses in online platforms can raise all sorts of issues for students and their instructors. At Queens University of Charlotte, we use Moodle to create opportunities for course management online. As I’ve been seeking to understand the way that students navigate through this digital space, I began to realize that signposts were as important…

  • Adjunct faculty are educators, too.

    Adjunct faculty are educators, too.

    49% of college instructors nationwide are classified as adjunct faculty. Adjunct faculty are seen as peripheral to higher education, but play a vital role in student education. Community colleges are leading the way in developing programs and professional development opportunities for adjuncts. At North Shore Community College in Massachusetts, the college developed a one-year adjunct…

  • Designing Multiple Pathways to Learning

    Designing Multiple Pathways to Learning

    One of the key trends impacting colleges and universities today is the need for multiple pathways to participation in an institution. At the City University of Seattle, faculty and administrators tackled this issue head on. At AAC&U’s conference on general education, Elizabeth Fountain, David Griffin, and Melissa Mecham described their university’s approach to a multiple…

  • One word to promote general education renewal (it’s not “jobs”)

    One word to promote general education renewal (it’s not “jobs”)

    A general education outcome that reads, “through a diverse set of course, students explore various disciplines as part of an integrated education that causes them to connect and apply their learning across the curriculum,” might in practice mean, “We teach what we want. Students take courses willy-nilly. If they happen to relate, well, that’s cool.”…

  • Strategizing Faculty Engagement in Curricular Reform

    Strategizing Faculty Engagement in Curricular Reform

    A Tale of Two Universities: Faculty members and administrators at Boise State University and Miami Dade College joined forces in this session to share their two stories. Their hope was that the similarities between reform processes at two dissimilar institutions could suggest a few best practices for faculty engagement. Here are four overarching strategies with…

  • Threats to Curricular Innovation and Faculty Engagement

    Threats to Curricular Innovation and Faculty Engagement

    We have to face the fact that we have designed curricula that no longer resonate with our students and do not promote the learning the need to succeed in today’s society, says Susan Gano-Phillips, Professor of Psychology at University of Michigan-Flint. Faculty should be able to engage with general education in a way that causes…

  • Creative Inquiry: engaging students in real-world problems

    Creative Inquiry: engaging students in real-world problems

    The creative inquiry project at Clemson University has the goal of “a research project for every student,” says Barbara Speziale, Associate Dean for Undergraduate Programs at Clemson. It supports a intensive, discovery-oriented approach to learning for all students. At Clemson, creative inquiry is for all students at all levels. Faculty and staff mentors work with…

  • A Rich Archive Creates Better Reflections of Learning

    A Rich Archive Creates Better Reflections of Learning

    E-portfolios are bodies of work that rely on collection, selection, and reflection, says Kathleen Blake Yancey, Professor at Florida State University.The e-portfolio has the ability to bring together multiple types of learning in a single place. It can showcase a deliver curriculum, an experienced curriculum, and a lived curriculum (which may or may not be…