My research on teaching and learning in higher education began when I was hired as a graduate assistant at the Searle Center for Teaching Excellence, at Northwestern University, back in the late 1990s ...

Whenever you lead a class discussion, you naturally want to see your students eagerly participating. It shows they’re engaged, and that’s surely a prerequisite for learning. But too often academics ...

Why Are Class Discussions Challenging? There are a variety of reasons that class discussions are challenging. It’s not necessarily just students being “lazy”. There could be a lot of real issues and ...

Often we as instructors look for ways to include classroom participation as part of our course design. Student participation can take the form of simply being present in class to actively discussing ...

I read with interest Anna Broadbent’s essay on the benefits and pitfalls of class participation grades. From my perch as a provost, former dean and former department chair, I find that the grade for ...