Stay tuned for the end-of-term life update below the main content! Conflicting Lesson Results One of the most frustrating things about teaching is just how unpredictable a lesson plan can be. If you’ve been teaching the same content to different groups of students for any length of time, you’ve probably had this experience: You carefullyContinue reading “One Lesson Plan, Two Results”
Tag Archives: teach
Report On Self-Assessment Grading
If you’ll recall, this semester for my New Semester’s Resolution, I was trying a more collaborative approach to grading that requires students to set goals by modifying my provided rubric and then evaluate their own work according to that rubric, so that they self-grade their assignments. At this point, students have submitted their first self-evaluationContinue reading “Report On Self-Assessment Grading”
Perceiving Academic Journals
I started college in 2005, just at the cusp of learning management systems; things like Blackboard were in use, but most courses still had physical syllabi passed out on day one, and most assignments were still printed out on paper and handed in physically. In the same way, online journals were increasingly popular at theContinue reading “Perceiving Academic Journals”
Flexible Deadlines Are Awesome
Since I started experimenting with penalty-free flexible deadlines, which was shortly before the pandemic (good timing on that one!), the regular question I’ve gotten was how to avoid the work piling up when students inevitably turn in lots of late work. The answer is actually that the flexible deadlines prevent grading from piling up ratherContinue reading “Flexible Deadlines Are Awesome”
Rethinking How We Teach Paraphrasing
When you teach a course on writing research, of course you do a lot of work with source handling. I suspect that most of us were taught summary, paraphrase, and quotation as a set, and many of us were given exercises that drilled us to do each of these things with a source on command.Continue reading “Rethinking How We Teach Paraphrasing”
The Most Important Lesson Your Students Can Learn From You
Notice I said “can learn from you” not “that you can teach” in the title. That’s because this lesson is not one you explicitly teach. It’s not on tests. I’m not even sure how you’d assess it. But it’s important. The most important lesson your students can learn from you is this: Grace. Grace isContinue reading “The Most Important Lesson Your Students Can Learn From You”
Dr. Cox’s 3 Rules For Peer Criticism
Peer criticism is unquestionably important for learning, especially in writing. It’s also unquestionably tricky to implement effectively. To help out, in this post I offer three simple rules you can use to guide a peer criticism session. There is a lot against us in the traditional classroom when we try to implement peer criticism. ThereContinue reading “Dr. Cox’s 3 Rules For Peer Criticism”
Teaching Against Deficiency
There’s been a lot of talk about “ungrading” and, of course, most of us are probably aware by now of the growing body of research that shows how standardized testing is not a useful measurement of student learning and may actually be doing harm to students. I don’t have anything really conclusive to say aboutContinue reading “Teaching Against Deficiency”
Talking Disability and Accessibility in the Composition Classroom
Like many instructors, my composition students generally finish the semester making a multimodal/multimedia presentation of their topics to the rest of the class. I love this assignment; it’s creative, it’s real-world, it’s student-driven, it’s everything I love in an assignment. Let me explain the assignment a little: my students deal with “local” issues in theirContinue reading “Talking Disability and Accessibility in the Composition Classroom”
Algorithms and Class Policies
For years, I’ve used the same late policy: work accepted up to a week late, 20% reduction in grade, no questions asked. And it’s been a pretty effective policy. I’ve been criticized for it being both too lenient (“They need to learn deadlines are real!”) and for it being too strict (“20% off even ifContinue reading “Algorithms and Class Policies”
Dr. Cox's Desk 