This one gave me some great practical tips, encouraging!

We explored how you might implement “The Effort Audit” in your intermediate-level, in-person media analysis course. The focus was on how this activity emphasizes process over product, encouraging students to reflect on their efforts, recognize the importance of learning, and develop a growth mindset. We discussed how it promotes reflection as a…[Read more]

It felt like the bot and I were in couples therapy, practicing active or mirror listening! Frequently the bot used my exact words in its response, which was affirming as well as frustrating — I wanted new ideas from it, not just my own concerns.

In our conversation, you shared your initial reactions to section 4.4, particularly the importance of recognizing fixed mindset impulses and being open to growth. We discussed the challenges of AI use, especially the burden of fact-checking AI-generated work and how setting ground rules can help. You highlighted the potential of using AI for…[Read more]

4.1 Tutor Summary

In our conversation, you shared that while you haven’t had direct experience with AI in the classroom yet, you’re aware of the need to account for this technology’s growing presence in education and beyond. You expressed valid concerns about the potential impact of AI on the development of writing skills and the risk of people…[Read more]

As to anti-racist pedagogy, for a course I teach about every two years, I recently jettisoned a textbook I had used many times previously (excellent, but it had gotten ridiculously expensive; I had always allowed students to skip the latest edition and use a cheaper older version of the book, nut those used copies were becoming harder to find). It…[Read more]

“Grit” is clearly a great tool, or resource, to call upon, to support a growth mindset, to not let failure get you down but experienced as a learning opportunity, the “not yet” framework. But it may obscure the materials conditions of students lives that make it difficult to live by the motto “if at first you don’t succeed, try, try, again”,…[Read more]

Since there were times during the pandemic when I recorded introductory videos — and even short lectures — I am used to making these kinds of things and not too uncomfortable with it. In an intro video, I want to keep a fairly informal affect (though I tend to introduce myself to students as Professor and using my surname, not my first name) and…[Read more]

Since the pandemic, I have continued to post a welcome video on Blackboard and send a welcome email before the course begins, and I’ve also made sure to post and include on syllabi info on additional campus services (health & wellness, counseling, food pantry, etc.) whereas before the pandemic I included accessibility, tutoring, but fewer other…[Read more]

I did my undergraduate degree at a private art school in a large city several hours away from where I grew up, thanks to generous need-based financial aid, some merit scholarship, college work-study jobs, and a more or less manageable student loan (it seemed daunting at the time). I had just turned 18, lived in a dorm for a few months then with…[Read more]

I agree that giving students some latitude in research papers, writing assignments, and the like to choose a topic they really care about and want to learn more about, improves motivation. (Can make it harder to grade a set of papers all on disparate topics, though!) I try to frame these as opportunities not only to demonstrate what they already…[Read more]

Like many others posting to this board, I try “icebreaker” activities that help me learn the students names and their interests (and each others’ names and what they have in common). Since I teach media studies, my “getting to know” you questions tend to involve your favorite movie, TV show, favorite when you were a kid, preferred source of news,…[Read more]

How to shift from ‘I don’t want to to this’ to ‘I want to do this.’ Someone else mentioned that having a sense of humor helps; it does help me get over it if I find myself avoiding or procrastinating on a task, to be able to recognize that the task isn’t so big or scary after all and laugh a little at my resistance to it. In graduate school, one…[Read more]

I have little doubt that a broad general education curriculum including courses outside a major field of study is important. A filmmaking student, for example, might not immediately see the value of the math and science they must take, but I would think that it they turn up to be useful when doing carpentry to build a set, doing budgets for a…[Read more]

I have always favored in writing assignments, having students write drafts, get feedback (and perhaps a low-stakes grade), and revise (for a higher stake grade). But in larger classes, it sometimes just isn’t practical to require this. In classes where I have multiple low-stakes grading opportunities (anything — quizzes, discussion board, very…[Read more]

I always mix low-stakes and high-stake assignments, and I design quizzes or very short writing assignments as building blocks of a midterm, final, or longer paper. I call the low-stakes assignments “rehearsals” or “practice” or “warm ups” in advance of the higher-stake graded assignment. In a recent course, for an assessment, I tracked closely…[Read more]

Great reminder. Especially when teaching large classes with significant writing assignments, giving thorough feedback can be very time consuming; I might even find myself giving much more thorough feedback when I start grading, and burning out, giving less, to those on the bottom of the stack. Giving myself an assignment, so to speak, regarding…[Read more]

When I was teaching for the very first time many years ago, I recall that I was afraid of making a mistake in front of my students. But it was tiresome to be nervous and so vigilant all the time, and I learned that one could use mistakes productively. Something as seemingly trivial as a typo on a Powerpoint slide can be recognized and corrected in…[Read more]

Years ago, my late father once said to me something to the tune of “I bet you can predict the final grades students will get, after meeting them the first day.” Ouch. That’s a pretty extreme “fixed” mindset. I recall it took me a few minutes to really process what he was saying, and I responded sharply that if that were the case, I wouldn’t be…[Read more]

I love the Beckett quote too, the opening lines of Worstword Ho — with a grain of salt. “Try again. Fail again. Fail better” sounds great but it also carries with the constant existential crisis of so much of Beckett. Reminds me of Sisyphus, rolling the boulder up the hill, only to see it roll back down, for all eternity. Most of us are more…[Read more]