TA Scholars

Here are the 2008-09 TA Scholars posing just outside their poster session last week at the Academic Senate meeting. We had an amazing group of people this year!

Top row (L-R): Jana Schurig (Film Studies), Tim Edgar (Geography), Danielle Ballinger (Music Education), Holly Rau (Clinical Psychology)

Third row: Russ Askren (Philosophy), Rachel Eddington (Sociology), Steve Elmer (Exercise & Sports Science)

Second row: Keri Schwab (Parks, Recreation, & Tourism), Lin Sunthonkhan (Economics), Alfred Kalyanpu (Civil & Environmental Engineering)

Front Row: Rebecca Blais (Clinical Psychology)

You can learn about their projects on the TA Scholars website.They've done some innovative things like implementing virtual labs in traditional classes, creating peer mentorship programs, comparing online and face-to-face teaching, and assessing the effectiveness of an entire program of study.

I am so grateful to have worked with this bright, creative, fun bunch of graduate students!

If you or someone you know is a graduate student at the U and would like to become involved with the TA Scholars program, please email me at beverly.brehl@utah.edu.

Here I am with this year's Scholars:

Are you facing grading hell?

Maybe you want to try the stairway method of grading, demonstrated here. Just throw everything down the stairs, and then determine the grade based on where it lands. According to the creator of this photograph, to stay current with grade inflation the top stair should be a B-, the bottom stair an A.

BUT SERIOUSLY...

We are rapidly approaching the end of the semester, and many of us are about to receive dozens, or hundreds, of papers, exams, and other assignments, which will need to be graded - and rather quickly. How can you do this efficiently, and without resorting to tactics such as throwing papers down the stairs or shooting exams out of a canon?

Probably the most important thing you can do is to ensure that you have a clear set of grading criteria and a rubric that you can use to assign grades. You can learn more about how to do this here - this article also includes a great reference list of other resources on rubrics. Another way to make grading more efficient is to avoid procrastinating - we've all done it, and then spent an entire night frantically trying to finish entering grades before they are due. Make it a pleasurable experience - pick a coffee shop or some other environment you enjoy, get yourself a snack and a comforting beverage, and give yourself a reward when you get done. maybe even throw a grading party, and get together with colleagues so that you can take breaks and refresh yourselves before diving back in. Aim to grade in several shorter sessions instead of one all-nighter - this can help to make sure that you keep your sanity, and that you don't take your frustrations out on your students.

For the future, I strongly recommend avoiding a pile of grading before it happens. One way to do this is to spread assignments across the semester. Instead of a midterm and a final, try 4 shorter exams, or even weekly quizzes. Instead of a final paper, try providing topics with staggered deadlines (e.g., Topic 1 papers are due in October, Topic 2 papers in November). This means you have less grading at any one time. In my evaluations, students report liking the flexibility these types of assignments allow, and appreciate that the material is broken down into smaller chunks. Students also seem to respond well to getting feedback earlier than may be typical. This gives students a chance to improve, and an opportunity to discuss the material and ask questions after receiving feedback - something that rarely happens after the end of the semester.

What do you do to make the grading process more efficient and less painful? Please share your stories and tips!

Have you got game?

From a young age, Millennial students have been exposed to video games. (This picture is courtesy of Sean Dreilinger.) Some of them have spent almost as much time gaming as they have in class. Can we use this to our advantage, and incorporate games into our classrooms?

Of course we can. Even for non-Millennial students, adding games to your classroom can make learning more engaging and fun, and as long as you can connect the game back to the material, students are likely to remember the lesson much longer than a dry lecture on the same topic. Although there are many ways to incorporate games into the classroom, here are just a few ideas...

1) Using a "Jeopardy" type game for review. You can download a PowerPoint template for the game on the internet (here is one such site). All you do is enter the categories and the answers (remember, contestants must answer in the form of a question). You might want to consider Bloom's Taxonomy as you match questions to the increasing dollar amounts. This game works best with a small- to medium-sized class. With my classes of 40-50 students, I split them into teams and each team member takes a turn being the contestant. The team with the most points at the end of the session wins a prize (e.g., bag of candy).

2) Although I am a newbie to SecondLife, I've been hearing a lot about the innovative ways in which it can be sued in the classroom. SecondLife is a virtual community. Students can join for free, and create their own avatars. You can create a virtual classroom, hold office hours, or create scavenger hunts (where the clues are related to your course material). SecondLife has its own economy and social networks that students can study. For a list of examples of ways SecondLife can be used, see this handout, created by a computer sciences professor.

3) Although not a video game, Barnga is a great game to help teach intercultural awareness. It's great for use in classes where you will be discussing these issues, and should not be overlooked as a community-building tool in any class, especially those in which students will be doing a lot of group work or participating in discussions.

To read some research on the use of the games in college classrooms, check out this article from the International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education.

How do you use games in your classroom? Please share your ideas!