Rick Magee is an associate professor of English at Sacred Heart. He won the Excellence in Teaching Award in 2015 and has a reputation for being one of the most effective and most popular instructors on campus. I wanted to see what he was up to, so I could steal some of his best ideas. […]
Before considering some of these techniques, it’s important to dispel a couple of myths. For one thing, there’s no such thing as “fixed intelligence.” Some people might have an easier time with math or the piano, but everyone can learn, provided that they commit to it. In her book Mindset: The New Psychology of Success, […]
James Lang, the author of four books and a regular contributor to The Chronicle of Higher Education, has just published a remarkable new book on teaching and learning, called Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning. Lang, professor of English and director of the Center for Teaching Excellence at Assumption College, takes his […]
After hearing about how the communication platform Slack is taking over the business world, I decided to see what all the buzz was about, with the hope that I might use it for some administrative tasks. The platform seemed a little too involved for the standard academic committee, but I was delighted to see that […]
On Thursday, January 21, Dr. Anita August and the Writing Across the Curriculum program hosted a talk for faculty on race, writing, and literacy with guest speaker David E. Kirkland. Kirkland is Associate Professor of English Education in the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development Department of Teaching and Learning at New York […]
It used to be that video games were something you did after studying or even as a reward for a few good hours of coursework. But that dichotomy might be coming to an end, at least if Bob McCloud has his way. McCloud, associate professor of computer science at Sacred Heart, gave a presentation on “Gamification” […]
Many courses require students to give a formal presentation of some kind. There are a lot of good resources on the web, but I thought I’d go to a more local source: Cory Robinson. He won the presentation contest held by the Honors Program this past spring. Here’s the interview I did with him. Students […]
Research consistently shows how a focus on students and learning is better than focusing on instructors and teaching. Here is an opinion piece from the New York Times on how learning is improved by a more engaged teaching style. The impact is true overall, but it’s more pronounced for women and minorities. What has always surprised me […]
It’s not every day that an assignment becomes a campaign. That’s exactly what happened last month in my American Government course. We have been working on various public policy issues — immigration, energy, gun control, etc. During one of our last meetings before spring break, I asked the students to come up with a public event […]
You might ask yourself, how could anyone possibly fill 419 pages with instructions on how to read? The answer is quite easily, actually. First published in 1940, Mortimer J. Adler’s How to Read a Book became a best-seller, translated into at least 5 languages. It was substantially revised and expanded, with the help of Charles Van Doren, […]
Steven Michels 