Friday @ the Center
December 5, 2008
Course Evaluations Reminders
Now’s the time to encourage students in creative ways to complete their course evaluations. Faculty who offer participation points often have the best completion rates. Another strategy might be to ask all students who are able to take a laptop or I Phone to your final exam period and allot fifteen minutes at the end for them to fill out the form—after they’ve turned in the exam! Explaining to students why their input is important to you—going beyond, “I need you to do this so I’ll get tenure/promotion”—is the best strategy of them all. Click [here] for more information about on-line course evaluations.
December Grant Advisor Available
The December edition of The Grant Advisor can now be accessed through on-campus computers. It contains 20-25 full program reviews and over 300 listings of grant and fellowship programs. If it generates any possibilities or ideas, contact Laura Lundahl, our academic grant writer, for an initial conversation about your ideas and the grant writing process.
Engage the Senses
Last year’s winning Best Teaching Idea—“A Morning with Comrade Lenin: A Collective Workshop on the Heroes and Ideas of Communism and Socialism"—exemplifies how engaging diverse senses in the learning process allows students with a variety of learning styles to participate. It also simultaneously draws on three of John Medina’s “Brain Rules”: 1) Exercise increases learning, 2) Attention facilitates learning, and 3) Humans are visual learners. As you plan for next quarter, can you devise one new way to engage your students’ senses to enhance their learning?
And now, a word from Emily Dickinson
Before the ice is in the pools-
Before the skaters go,
Or any cheek at nightfall
Is tarnished by the snow-
Before the fields have finished-
Before the Christmas tree,
Wonder upon wonder
Will arrive to me!
Blessed Advent,
Susan
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