Monthly Archives: October 2011

Active Learning About Plagiarism

Posted on October 31, 2011 by

All my syllabi contain the usual policy statement about plagiarism — refer to the catalog for the university’s definition, don’t do it, if you do do it you might fail the course. And as is the norm for information that’s … Continue reading →

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The Age of Non-Exploration

Posted on October 26, 2011 by

I am continually frustrated by students’ reluctance to experiment with the user-friendly technological tools that I give them. Most recently this has been demonstrated in my blog-based Europe1914 simulation and in a class that is piloting a new learning management … Continue reading →

Posted in Academia, Chad Raymond, Group Collaboration, Online Classes, Social Networking/Media | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Step aside, Spielberg…

Posted on October 25, 2011 by

It’s always with a certain reticence that I tell people about my one video on Youtube, both because I’m a generally unassuming sort of person and because I know it’s not a great piece of work.  However, I’ve reached the … Continue reading →

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Color-Coded Grading

Posted on October 19, 2011 by

Following Chad’s post earlier this week about using rubrics, i thought I would share a method for grading papers that a colleague shared during a workshop. Following the stoplight method of green is good, red is stop, and yellow is … Continue reading →

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More on human nature

Posted on October 17, 2011 by

Following on last week’s discussion about when do people learn, as against their nature, I found myself after class having exactly the same conversation with a student.  The assessment for my module on ‘negotiating politics’ is a reflective piece, where … Continue reading →

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Using Rubrics As Teaching Tools

Posted on October 16, 2011 by

In the early years of my teaching career, I adopted rubrics to speed up grading of student writing, but I’d see the same mistakes, from the same students, on paper after paper throughout the semester. The content of the rubric … Continue reading →

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The Advantage of the Long Course

Posted on October 12, 2011 by

Last night my 8 week US politics course finished up–its the same credits as a 16 week course, but we meet once a week for 4 hours for 8 weeks, so everything is condensed. These types of courses are primarily … Continue reading →

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More on Changing the Environment

Posted on October 11, 2011 by

Last week I was discussing the international system in my introduction to international relations course. I had run through various examples of systems (airplane, farm, family, religion) in the previous class, and was attempting to explain how a change in … Continue reading →

Posted in Activities, Chad Raymond, Exercises, International Relations | Tagged | 4 Comments

Building groups

Posted on October 10, 2011 by

This was something I tried last week in my Negotiating Politics class, to start getting people (inter)active.  Since several of the activities later in the module require the class to break into smaller units, I randomly allocated people into four … Continue reading →

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Do I have a Right? A game on Civil Liberties

Posted on October 5, 2011 by

This is a neat little game from I Civics where you control a law firm that specializes in civil liberties and rights.  Your job is to assemble a team of lawyers with different specialties and then arbitrate between potential clients, … Continue reading →

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