Confusion and Learning
We’re heading into the last leg of the semester, and many of us have students working on the most complex projects and concepts in our courses. If we were to walk in the students’ shoes a bit we would see that they are working on complicated culminating components in...
“Your Conspiracy Theory Assignment Changed My Life”
I have, in the past, asked ENG 112 students to research a debunked scientific theory or conspiracy theory that people still believe today. As they research, they must create a theory about why some folks to continue to hold that belief despite it being proven false....
Ekphrasis Into the Arctic at the Dennos
Into the Arctic is a traveling exhibit that's at the Dennos Museum until the end of the calendar year 2017. The exhibit provides incredible vistas of northern Canada painted en plein air under sometimes incredible conditions. In the videos that accompany the exhibit...
Is it Reasonable?
The Dodecahedron is a character from the book The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster. He lives in the city of Digitopolis at the base of the Mountains of Ignorance. On page 148 he has this conversation with Milo and the Humbug. “I’m not very good at problems,”...
Have you Facetimed your pet lately?
If you aren’t closely involved with a college student who is far from home, that might seem like a funny topic for a teaching blog. However, that’s not a rhetorical question. Semester after semester, I have my students create a blog. Their first entry includes a...
Emotional Appeals
For the past week or so, my ENG 111 students have been coping with some problems I’ve set for them as they construct research posters for next week’s NMC student conference on Hunger and Homelessness Awareness. I’ve asked them to include a pathos image (one that...
How Can I Get My Students to Start Fighting?
I read an article in the New York Times this week called "Kids, Would you Please Start Fighting?" and I was struck by the thesis of the piece, especially as it relates to argument writing courses. The author discusses how argument is the genesis for creativity, and...
Abandoning the Plan
My first teaching job was at a public high school outside Chicago, and every week I had to submit that week’s daily lesson plans to my department chair. These plans included objectives and activities for each of my classes each day. I did this for the first two years...
Fatal Flaws, Errors, Mistakes
This week in my mythology class we discussed Oedipus the King, the famous ancient Greek tragedy about a man (a king) who discovers that he accidentally, unknowingly killed his father, slept with his mother, and had offspring who were also his siblings. The day of that...
The Holy Grail
Do you <3 your textbook? If you don’t, your students probably don’t either. What would it be like to teach a course with text materials that did exactly what you want them to do? This is the Holy Grail of the OER project. Yes, the price of textbooks is insane...