Author: Nardina Mein
The summer has flown by as it always does, and we find ourselves getting ready for the Fall semester. Please remember that the OTL is here to help faculty with your start up activities related to teaching and learning. Do you have questions about Blackboard? Thinking about teaching online next semester? Want to [...]

Author: Julie Thompson Klein
In our last two newsletters we introduced The Disciplines Speak, a series of reports from disciplinary/professional societies on the changing nature of faculty work, followed by a discussion of the scholarly nature of curriculum development. In this issue we focus on pedagogy. For some disciplines, the scholarship of pedagogy is part of [...]

Author: Kristi Verbeke
Course portfolios can be very effective tools for analyzing and improving one’s teaching and learning. In his discussion of course portfolios, Cerbin (1994) emphasizes that assessment in higher education is often not truly focused on the link between teaching and student learning. In a world where faculty are already over-burdened with demands and [...]

Author: Annette Feravich
Over the last decade, colleges and universities have called serious attention to increasing reports of cheating and plagiarism. In the past year, The Chronicle of Higher Education published several articles identifying 34 business students at Duke University, 46 dental students at Indiana University, and at least 19 army cadets from the US Air [...]

Author: Bill Warters
Many departments and colleges are encouraging faculty to develop fully online courses. Faculty who take up the challenge will certainly want to take advantage of the workshops and computer lab resources offered by the Office for Teaching and Learning here at WSU, such as:

Moving Your Course Online (a seminar exploring the pedagogical aspects [...]

Author: Kimberly Conely
“I think the most important thing I learned as I grew older was that you can’t get anywhere without help. That means people have to want to help you, and that begs the question: What kind of person do other people seem to want to help? That strikes me as a pretty good [...]

Authors: Julie Thompson Klein and Dina Mein
Wayne State University’s Technology Resource Center (TRC) has been named an “exemplary model of digital learning and teaching with new technologies” by the international Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Collaboratory, known by the acronym HASTAC. It joins a distinguished roster and interactive Google map of institutions and projects that [...]

Author: Anne-Marie Armstrong
Many people assume that any text available electronically is automatically accessible to screen readers, tools that convert text to speech for the blind and visually impaired. However, this is not necessarily true and sometimes screen readers have a difficult time interpreting text in Microsoft Word. Here are some tips for making sure students [...]

Author: Anne-Marie Armstrong
Students who fall asleep, students who have emergencies, books that don’t arrive, small classes, large classes, emails, office hours, communities of learners, running out of time, running out of material, excuses, poor study habits, disrespect—these are just a few of the topics covered in Angela Provitera McGlynn’s book, Successful Beginnings for College Teaching: [...]