My First Year Teaching with a Global Approach: A Few Practical Tips

In Fall 2024, I moved to a new city, started a new job, and began to teach a new set of introductory art history courses. I had to become familiar with a large amount of content fairly quickly, and figure out how much to include and what to cut out. I used Thames & Hudson’s The History of Art: A Global View textbook and found many of its features to be helpful time savers in transitioning to teaching with a global approach.

The Best of Both Worlds: Using Print and Digital Tools in your AP® Literature Course

As an older Millennial teacher, I find that I am stuck between two worlds: the one I was born in and the one in which I grew up. The one I was born in was analog: paper, pencils and highlighters, and books. The one I grew up in—although it was ever-evolving—was decidedly not analog. It was keyboards, screens, and software updates. Like me, students are caught between these two worlds.

Using Courseware to Gain Meaningful Insight and Inform Teaching and Learning

I have long observed in my teaching practice that the most memorable learning tends to occur after students are able to pinpoint gaps in their own knowledge or understanding of course material. Put another way: failure is an effective teacher. However, many college-level courses are delivered in a mode of instruction traditional to higher education: lectures followed by summative assessments, such as term papers or exams. The feedback students receive is delivered and received not as an opportunity for reflection or further inquiry but as a final, definitive grade.  

Using InQuizitive to Improve Student Learning—and My Own Teaching

The world outside the classroom is changing. As students struggle to understand challenging concepts and engage with the material, psychology instructors like Elliot Berkman, PhD are turning to InQuizitive to identify their students’ difficulties, adapt their coursework, and encourage students to take control of their learning journeys.

Worried About Annual Evaluations? Utilize Media to Show Off Your Success

Rebekah Johnson taught high school Spanish for 8 years in the United States and the United Kingdom. She spent much of that time as Head of Department, training her colleagues on best practices for teaching and the incorporation of Canvas into the classroom. She earned her B.A. in Spanish and secondary education in Charlotte, NC, …

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Using Technology to Build a Better Relationship with Students 

Dave Monahan is an award-winning filmmaker, professor at University of North Carolina Wilmington, and coauthor of Looking at Movies, an introduction to film text. As part of his work on the book, he has created dozens of videos illustrating cinematic concepts and techniques. In this blog post, Monahan reflects on how multimedia learning and adaptive quizzing created a positive change in his introduction to film classes.    Dave MonahanImage Credit: …

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Doing Our Part to Ensure Educational Integrity

Mike Wright is the head of the College Department at W. W. Norton & Company. He is at the forefront of Norton’s efforts to support the success of educators and students in various ways, including overseeing the creation of equity-minded course materials, ensuring the educational integrity of those materials, and providing them at affordable prices. …

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Improve Student Engagement by Ditching Classroom Traditions

M. Chad Smith works as science coordinator and biology professor for Beaufort County Community College (BCCC) in North Carolina. He also teaches biology and environmental science courses as online adjunct faculty for Shaw University and Miller-Motte College. He discusses how he keeps his nonmajor biology students engaged by incorporating active learning in his classroom. One …

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