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Anna Smol

~ Department of English, Mount Saint Vincent University

Anna Smol

Tag Archives: Atlantic Universities Teaching Showcase

An exercise for active reading of the syllabus

20 Sunday Aug 2017

Posted by Anna Smol in pedagogy, Publications, Teaching

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"Think Like a Professor!", active reading, Atlantic Universities Teaching Showcase, Atlantic Universities' Teaching Showcase Proceedings 2010, course outline, higher ed, It's in the syllabus, syllabus

"Piled Higher and Deeper" by Jorge Cham www.phdcomics.com

“Piled Higher and Deeper” by Jorge Cham http://www.phdcomics.com

 

It’s syllabus-writing season! Here’s an exercise I devised several years ago that I’m still using to promote students’ active thinking about course policies — and faculty understanding of how students perceive course requirements and regulations. The article explaining my exercise was published in the Atlantic Universities’ Teaching Showcase Proceedings 2010, pages 55-59.

The abstract follows, and a link to the full article is given below.

Abstract
“Think Like A Professor!: Student and Faculty Perceptions of Course Policies”

The “Think Like a Professor!” exercise is designed to enliven introductory classes while presenting course policies and regulations to students. The exercise pulls students out of their passive role as receptacles of course information, puts them in the instructor’s place, and asks them to apply the instructor’s course policies in various scenarios based on real incidents. The exercise accomplishes several goals, including establishing appropriate modes of interaction among students, asking students to read and extract information, requiring students to apply, analyze, and synthesize facts and ideas, giving students insight into how their actions are perceived by faculty and others, and giving faculty feedback on their regulations and a view of student attitudes and values. Students are encouraged to see that course policies and regulations have a purpose that is applicable to both students and instructors.

Think Like a Professor! Student & Faculty Perceptions of Course Policies [pdf]

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Think like a Professor! — or, how to defeat syllabus boredom

26 Tuesday Aug 2014

Posted by Anna Smol in pedagogy, Publications, Teaching

≈ 4 Comments

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"Think Like a Professor!", Atlantic Universities Teaching Showcase, Atlantic Universities' Teaching Showcase Proceedings 2010, course outlines, course policies, higher education, It's in the syllabus, phdcomics.com, SoTL, teaching, university teaching

"Piled Higher and Deeper" by Jorge Cham www.phdcomics.com

“Piled Higher and Deeper” by Jorge Cham http://www.phdcomics.com

It’s the beginning of the semester for most university professors. Do you dread having to stand in front of your students reading from your course outline? Do you feel it’s a futile gesture, knowing that many of them will forget or ignore the information in the syllabus? In order to defeat the boredom of the syllabus run-through, I’ve devised an exercise called “Think Like a Professor!” that I’ve been using with my first-year classes for several years now. It gets students reading, analyzing, and applying information from the very first day of the course while giving you insight into their attitudes and values. It enables students to become more aware of how their actions are perceived by faculty and to understand the reasons for various course policies. And it should model for students the kind of collaborative and respectful interactions that you are aiming for in your course.

My discussion of this exercise was published in the 2010 Atlantic Universities’ Teaching Showcase Proceedings. I reprint the first 3 paragraphs here; if you want to read the rest of the essay, follow this link and scroll to page 55 in the pdf.

***

Anna Smol, “Think Like a Professor!: Student and Faculty Perceptions of Course Policies.” Atlantic Universities Teaching Showcase Proceedings 2010. Vol. XIV. Ed. Shannon Murray. 55-59.

It’s the first day of class, and we all know the drill. The course outlines, with requirements, expectations, and policies detailing how your course will be run, must be handed out. You need to get your students to read what must look to them like the fine print of a long contract – one of several outlines they’ll be collecting in the first couple of days. Especially for first-year students just out of high school, course outlines may present a confusing array of do’s and don’ts: all assignments must use APA, or was that MLA? No late papers will be accepted, but sometimes late papers will have points deducted. You must have a note for absences, but some profs don’t take attendance. You have to write all the assignments to pass, but didn’t someone say that you could do extra assignments for additional credit?

For the course instructor, the necessity of going over the course outline can deflate the liveliest of introductory classes. You may find yourself standing in front of the class on the first day, plodding through each requirement and every policy statement, declaiming against errors and misdemeanours while your students’ eyes glaze over. Or, you can hand out the course outlines and tell your students to read through them on their own – in theory, not an unreasonable expectation; in practice, one that seldom works.

To enliven these introductory classes – both for my sake and my students’ – I present an exercise that pulls students out of their passive role as receptacles of course information, puts them in my place, and asks them to apply my course policies in various scenarios – in other words, to “Think Like a Professor!” Their task is to imagine that they are the professor of our course and have written the course outline, including all of its policies, expectations, and requirements, and that they will now be faced with various situations, all based on actual events, in which they will have to apply the rules of the course. The exercise serves many purposes: to introduce students to each other; to start developing constructive, collaborative discussions among students; to encourage them to read a text closely; to direct them to a knowledge of the rules and regulations of the course, and to gain some understanding of academic life. The benefits of the assignment are reciprocal: as the instructor, you gain insight into some of the beliefs and practices of your students. Sometimes, you may realize that you have to explain issues or revise requirements that you thought were clear and complete; at other times, your students can advise you on ways to deal with difficult problems. You may be asking your students to “think like a professor,” but this exercise also gives you access to
thinking like a student.

****

To read  more about this exercise and the issues that it raises, please follow this link and scroll to page 55.

If you have any other suggestions for overcoming syllabus boredom, please add them to the comments!

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AAU Teaching Showcase: Voicing Interpretations

15 Friday Nov 2013

Posted by Anna Smol in Conferences, pedagogy, Research

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Atlantic Universities Teaching Showcase, higher ed, SoTL, teaching

Each year, the Association of Atlantic Universities sponsors a Teaching Showcase, a conference on a specific theme dealing with teaching and learning. This year’s conference theme at Mount Allison University in Sackville New Brunswick was “Assessment: Teaching, Learning, Quality.”  As always, the conference provided plenty of opportunities to reflect on what I do in the classroom and to come away with new ideas. I also gave a paper on a project that I regularly assign in my introductory English course and that I think works very well in making students assess their skills and learn from each other. Following is the published abstract of my presentation; the full program and abstracts of other presentations can be found on the AAU Teaching Showcase 2013 site.  Proceedings from previous years are available online.

Anna Smol.  Abstract: “Voicing Interpretations: Peer Learning and Self-Assessment in a First-Year Literature Assignment”  AAU Teaching Showcase 2013. Mount Allison University. October 26, 2013.

Most literature instructors want their students to read closely, to write clearly, and to learn how to revise, as well as to participate in class discussions or to give oral presentations. I will present a two-part assignment developed for first-year English students that works towards all of these goals. The first part consists of a conventional written analysis of a short story. In the second part, students select and rehearse a portion of their chosen story to read aloud to a small group before writing a reflection on / review of their own and another person’s performance. The voicing of a passage requires that students pay attention to the author’s words rather than silently skim the text. In preparing for their readings and listening to their peers, students learn about different and often subtle new interpretations of a closely analyzed portion of a story. The final reflection / review allows students to revise their previously written analyses in the light of these new ideas, to become more aware of techniques of oral presentation, and to assess honestly how well they and others handled their own readings. I will present the guidelines that I give to students at all stages of this assignment and illustrate with examples from student writing the kind of peer learning and self-assessment that can take place. This assignment is most relevant for literature and language students but may be applicable in other disciplines that require oral presentations and the comprehension and interpretation of literary texts.

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Atlantic Universities: Teaching Showcase 2013

07 Wednesday Aug 2013

Posted by Anna Smol in Calls for Papers, Conferences, pedagogy

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Atlantic Universities Teaching Showcase, higher ed, SoTL, teaching

AAU Teaching Showcase 2013 logo.The Association of Atlantic Universities holds a Teaching Showcase every fall. This year the conference will be held at Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick. As the CFP states, “The Teaching Showcase provides a forum for people to reflect on teaching practice, discuss issues related to university teaching and learning, and share teaching strategies.” This year’s theme is Assessment: Teaching, Learning, Quality, with three types of sessions planned:  regular 25-minute sessions; extended, interactive 55-minute sessions; and quick 5-minute tips, the so-called “Furious Fives.”  Participants have an opportunity to submit papers to the peer-reviewed, online Proceedings.

Deadline for proposals:  August 10, 2013
Teaching Showcase date:  October 26, 2013

For details and submission form, go to the AAU Teaching Showcase 2013 Call for Proposals page.

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CFP: Atlantic Universities’ Teaching Showcase 2012

28 Saturday Jul 2012

Posted by Anna Smol in Calls for Papers, Conferences, Teaching

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Atlantic Universities Teaching Showcase

AAU Teaching Showcase banner 2012The annual Teaching Showcase sponsored by the Association of Atlantic Universities is scheduled to take place in Fredericton, New Brunswick on October 13.  The theme is “Conversations,” with a variety of presentation modes available.

The deadline for submissions is July 31.

The AAU Teaching Showcase is an event that brings faculty and grad students together from many disciplines to discuss teaching strategies and philosophies. It’s impossible to leave the conference without being inspired to try something new!

Details about the conference and the CFP can be found here. You can also read the Proceedings from previous years’ conferences.

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Dr. Anna Smol

This site includes my blog, "A Single Leaf," and webpages about my research and teaching in Tolkien studies, medievalism, Old English, and higher education pedagogy. Creative Commons License: <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/"><img alt="Creative Commons License" style="border-width:0" src="http://i.creativecommons.org/l/by-nc-sa/3.0/88x31.png" /></a><br />This work is licensed under a <a rel="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/">Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License</a>.

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