Teaching Hub

A Few Articles from The Teaching Professor

In case you missed them, here are some interesting articles from The Teaching Professor, a journal available to all A&S faculty with active UA+Box accounts.

“Multiple Choice Exams: An Alternative Structure” (December 2014)

Unfortunately, various analyses of multiple-choice test questions have revealed that many of them do
not test higher-order thinking abilities. Questions that test higher-order thinking abilities are difficult
and time-consuming to write. But for many teachers, those teaching multiple courses and those
teaching large sections, multiple-choice tests are really the only viable option, or at least that’s what
most faculty think. Here’s an intriguing option that still retains the efficiency of machine-scoring but
does involve more student thinking and cleverly motivates them to do this additional mental work.

“Team Teaching: Active Learning Practice for Teachers” (February 2015)

Although team teaching is often seen as too expensive these days, the benefits of this kind of teacher collaboration are unparalleled. Team teaching takes the idea of on-the-job practice to a different level by blurring the lines between our roles as teachers and learners. Team teaching isn’t a new idea, and it doesn’t replace the articles, lectures, or collegial discussions we use to enlarge our instructional understandings. However, we believe it offers teachers a first-rate active learning experience because that’s precisely the experience we had when we joined forces in teaching Basic Writing.

“Guided Tours: A Strategy That Encourages Reading” (March 2013)

Many teachers experience “the decline in reading” as the weeks of a semester progress. To remedy the decline in reading and resulting silence, I conduct “guided tours” of assigned readings.

“Millennial Students and Classroom Communication” (May 2015)

In 2000, Howe and Strauss identified the next big generation on the rise in colleges and universities and dubbed them the “Millennials.” Born between 1982 and 2002, these folks began arriving on our campuses in large numbers in the early 2000’s and continue to populate our classrooms today. Much has been written about the characteristics of these students, including that they can be prone to a sense of entitlement.

Read the current issue or view a list of articles published in the last two years. If you haven’t yet activated your Box account, visit oit.ua.edu/software/ua-box/ for further instructions.