Summer Book Club on Connected Teaching

Summer Book Club on Connected Teaching

CELT is hosting a summer teaching book club on Harriet Schwartz’s book Connected Teaching, starting at 12pm on Wednesday, June 23rd and meeting every two weeks through the rest of the summer. We’d love for you to join us for the conversation about this book that explores the connections between teaching and relationships which is central to Lasallian pedagogy both online and face-to-face. A few of the interesting topics will be:

Connected teaching when there isn’t enough time
Assessment as a relational practice
Setting appropriate boundaries with learners
Power and relationships in the classroom

The kinds of questions that make a great midterm evaluation

The kinds of questions that make a great midterm evaluation

Whenever I advise someone on assessment, I always start with the question, “What do you want to know?” The same question makes a lot of sense when thinking about course evaluations and midterm evaluations. While most instructors don’t have control over final course evaluations (I suppose the idea is that the questions asked are what administrators want to know), we by and large do have control over the questions we ask on midterm evaluations. Richard Talbert, chair of mathematics at Grand Valley State University in Michigan, has an elaborate system for tracking student perceptions over a whole course, but the questions he uses would be great for any kind of mid-course check-up. The statements he asks students to reflect on are…