Good Teaching

Good Feminist Teaching

How to Teach Theory

Activities and Exercises

- Closing or Checkout

- First Day Exercise

- Grade Contracts

External Links

- Teaching Centers

- Developing Courses

- Learning Styles

- Running Discussions

- Test Writing

- Other Stuff

University Teaching Enhancement Centers

Stanford University's Center for Teaching and Learning - Excellent articles on active learning, test writing and grading, multiculturalism, cooperative learning, etc. Great site!

UC Irvine Instructional Resource Center's Teaching Resource Guide - Excellent articles on lecturing, active learning exercises, articles on good teaching, course development, and assessment. Another great site!!

Center for Teaching Excellence - University of Maryland's center. This website has great resources for using active learning in large lecture classes.

National Institute for Science Education - University of Wisconsin hosts this organization's website. The website has a great section on collaborative learning and most of the information can easily translate from science classes to other kinds of classes.

Center for Teaching and Learning - University of Minnesota's center. This site has tons of resources for virtual classrooms as well as some useful material for surviving being an adjunct, becoming a new assistant professor, etc.

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Developing Courses

Syllabus Tutorial - University of Minnesota Center for Teaching and Learning; *excellent*

Developing Goals and Objectives - Roundworldmedia.com; for developing on-line courses, but still useful for offline courses.

Teaching Goals Inventory - On-line test to help determine teaching goals and teaching style

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Learning Styles

Index of Learning Styles Questionnaire - Very useful; from North Carolina State University

Learning Styles Survey - Diablo Valley College

Four Learning Styles - From Diablo Valley College; helps interpret survey, but good general information

Learning Styles Chart - From a Catholic preparatory school; very clear and helpful

Learning Styles and Multiple Intelligences - SupportForLearning.org; HERO - higher education and research opportunities in the UK

Learning Styles - Another typography --> Activist, reflector, theorist, pragmatist

Kolb's Learning Styles - EFA; Education Faculteit Amsterdam

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Facilitating Classroom Discussion

Effective classroom facilitation is essential to good teaching. But most of us stumble through group discussion, work on intuition and on the models we had as undergraduates, regardless of their effectiveness. Here are some links that give excellent advice about facilitation skills in the classroom. Note that these discussion techniques from the University of Oregon's Teaching Effectiveness Program assume an understanding of critical thinking as defined along Bloom's Taxonomy.

Discussion Facilitation Tips

Sliding Groups - Sliding up and down Bloom's Taxonomy

Feedback Discussions - teach effective discussion skills

Nominal Group Technique - uses anonymity to promote open discussion

Master Facilitator Journal

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Test Writing

Writing Multiple Choice Test Items - From Eric Digest
Writing Multiple Choice Tests - From Illinois State University Center for the Advancement of Teaching
More Multiple Choice Item Writing Do's and Don't's - From Eric Digest
Multiple Choice Tests - From Murdoch University Teaching and Learning Center
How to Write Tests - From University of Lethbridge; good directions for essay questions

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Good Teaching:

     1. Creates room for students who have different learning styles.

     2. Creates room for students who are at different cognitive levels.

     3. Makes your teaching methods transparent. Do not assume students understand the connection between an in-class exercise and the material it is designed to cover; do not assume that students automatically see the value of the exercise or its connection to their performance in class or their real lives; do not assume that students see the teaching objective or the pedagogy behind what you're doing. Explain it to them. This makes work meaningful to them, rather than making it feel like busy work. If you cannot explain why you're doing something, then rethink the exercise or the assignment because you're probably doing it out of some sense of obligation to a tradition or you're probably using it as a mechanism for managing the classroom, in which case, the students are right -- it is busywork.

     4. Emphasizes critical thinking skills. IMO a lot of people don't understand what critical thinking skills are. They think, based on the words "critical" and "thinking," that it simply means getting your students to be critical and getting your students to think -- that is, getting your students to do more than memorize. Critical thinking skills actually entails pushing your students up along Bloom's taxonomy from the lower order to the higher order thinking skills. Ideally, if you use the language of Bloom's taxonomy in your exercises, exams, lectures, and discussions, then the students will move beyond "will this be on the test" kinds of questions. There are other taxonomies and models of critical thinking, of course, but if you want your students to learn critical thinking, you have to teach them what that means.

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Good Feminist Teaching:

     1. Teaches to where the students are. Bad students are like bad dogs; it's not their fault, it's their owners' fault. Remember that by the time you get a student in your class, they've been through 12 years of public school (with the few exceptions of private school kids) and television viewing where intellectual curiosity is beaten out of them. It is unfair to expect students to behave any differently without showing them what they are doing is incorrect.

     2. Gives students as much ownership and responsibility for the class as you can, while giving them boundaries and guidelines for doing things. The more decisions they can make about what they want to learn or read and how they want to be evaluated, the more invested they will be in the process and the more empowered they will be as learners and thinkers.

     3. Gives students as many options as possible. Options for learning, grading, participating, speaking. The institution of the academy put teachers in "power-over" positions with students; giving them options helps decenter that. Also, giving options creates an openness in the class. The types of options I've used include: grading contracts, choice of exam type (multiple choice, essay, take home), an option to make up their own essay question, choice between making an assignment pass/fail or graded, choice between having certain exercises be anonymous or self-identified, choice between participating and opting out.

     4. Validates all students' experiences and feelings, regardless of how wrong-headed you think they are -- but good feminist teaching allows you to challenge students on their experiences without invalidating them.

     5. Encourages students to move beyond their experiences and opinions to voice arguments and reasons.

     6. Emphasizes process not product -- but remember that if you emphasize process and not product, that difference must be reflected in your evaluations and assessments of the students.

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How to teach theory:

One of the most difficult things for students is dealing with theory. Teaching theory is fun for those of use who are theory headed, but it can cause students to shut down quickly because they feel overwhelmed if they don't have the necessary skills. If we don't teach students to read theory critically and we focus too heavily on processing their experiences and examples without relating them to the theory under discussion, then we are deskilling them. Here is a list of teaching tips for dealing with theory and some sample exercises to illustrate. Remember, far too frequently the students have never been given tools to read or process theory, so it's best to start with small building blocks. Remember also that you have to move students consciously through the various stages of Bloom's taxonomy until they get the hang of it.

     1. Start with collaborative groups doing worksheets that lead them directly through the material and help them to make connections. These worksheets usually emphasize lower-order thinking skills of knowledge, comprehension, and application. Once students have processed the content, then class discussion can move to higher order thinking skills very quickly in the debriefing discussion of the exercise. This sort of exercise works best early in the semester to build students' confidence in talking about theory. Here is an example: WGS 4500 Feminism In America -- Worksheet on Liberal Feminism.

     2. Early in the semester facilitate a class discussion in which students offer each other advice for reading theory. Using a round robin encourages quieter, reflective students to participate. Synthesize the discussion into handout with a list of tips. This exercise is good for building a supportive communal environment in the class.

     3. Teach students to read theory metaphorically. Explain that metaphors help authors present information or positions in a condensed form and that unpacking those metaphors can allow students to identify a theorist's position, assumptions, etc. Select a difficult theory piece and ask them to identify one metaphor and analyze the metaphor as if the theory were a poem. Sometimes I assign the metaphor or passage and sometimes I ask students to find their own metaphor. Here is a sample passage from Trinh T. Minh-ha's "Yellow Sprouts" that I often ask students to analyze. If students can digest this metaphor, they usually can unpack the entire essay.

The moon breeds like a rabbit. She causes the seeds to germinate and the plants to grow, but she exceeds all forms of regulated fecundity through which she is expected to ensure the system's functioning. (p. 482)

     4. Teach students how to read and explicate key passages closely by selecting a significant passage from the article and have them explain what it means. This works best if students start in collaborative groups and then debrief collectively as a class.

     5. Teach students how to identify and interpret key passages. Do this by making a list of key passages in an article, numbering them, assigning one passage to each breakout group, ask the group to find the passage in the article and then determine as best they can what the passage means. Have groups debrief in the order of the numbered passages. By the time debriefing is ended and all the quotes are discussed, the entire article is processed. In other words, this uses the jigsaw collaborative workgroup format. Here is an example from WGS 4500 Feminism In America -- Donna Haraway.

     6. Teach students how to read for *themselves* by asking them to find a passage they found particularly meaningful and explain why they liked it to the class. This works best as a think-pair-share or a freewriting exercise.

     7. Prove to them that they are better readers of theory than they realize. With your most difficult article, ask everyone to write down the one thing they think they understand from the article. Process everyone's answer in a round robin. By the time the round is over, students usually have covered everything significant that needed to be said about the article. My favorite article to do this with is Donna Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto.

     8. Remind students that doing theory is like learning a foreign language. You can have a passive knowledge of a foreign language, which means you understand what you hear and read but you cannot speak or write it. The only way to have an active knowledge is to practice. So you have to practice doing theory -- speaking it aloud and writing it down. You might talk with a funny accent at first, but that is part of the process.

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Class Closing or Checkout

This is a closing procedure I use in as many classes as I possibly can. I got the idea for this assignment from the check-in and check-out process of CR groups from the 60s and from something I read years ago by Claudia Card at UW-Madison. I find, as with most exercises, this exercise works best if you explain its value to the students. The closing is extremely useful for a number of reasons.

   First, it gives me immediate feedback about what the students are learning and how they are handling the class.

   Second, it provides an opportunity for students who are reflective thinkers to say something in class. It also creates a sense of openness in the class that promotes community and discussion.

   Last, it gives a sense of closure especially for difficult class periods where there is conflict (friendly or unfriendly).

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First Day Exercise

     This is an exercise I use for the first day of class, particularly for women's studies classes but also for classes that might be risky or uncertain for students to take. The assignment allows students to discuss anonymously their concerns about the class on the first day (like, do feminists really hate men, or do you have to be a feminist to pass this class).

     The second goal of this assignment is to encourage students to process the syllabus in groups. On the first day of class, students frequently immerse themselves in reading the syllabus individually and so they don't hear when other students ask a question. Which means you get five different students asking the same exact question. By working in groups on this exercise, they usually answer the questions about the syllabus for each other. By the time the students are done with their group discussion, the questions they have are about genuinely confusing issues.

     Plus, it gets them in groups early in the semester. I got the idea for this assignment from Jim Eison who used to work at the Center for Teaching Enhancement at the University of South Florida.

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Grade Contracts

     I use grade contracts frequently in my classes, particularly upper division or honors classes. Grade contracts allow students to create their own individualized grading program by selecting from a predetermined set of options. Like Chinese Take-out. Two from column A and two from column B.

     I sometimes modify the options depending on the course. For instance, I often use a gender autobiography assignment for women's studies classes, but I don't use that assignment for my Contemporary Public Address class.

     Students are allowed to select their own due dates, but they must meet certain deadlines; at least 30 percent of their grade must be complete by midterm and 60 by the time we are about two-thirds through the class. Papers vary in grade depending on page length.

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