Articles

Reflecting on the report from the National Student Clearinghouse regarding first-to-second year college persistence rates, Michael Neitzel, senior contributor to Forbes magazine, notes that while there has been a slight increase in student persistence, this modest increase suggests many institutions’ retention efforts did not yield the desired results. Instead, nationwide, gaps in persistence remain. Neitzel identifies five major gaps in persistence that invite deeper exploration […]

Student and Educator Zoom Fatigue  Tired of logging into Zoom for endless college meetings? Anxious about getting back onto the Zoom platform in the upcoming semester? Exhausted from sitting in your home office chair staring at the screen? Got Zoom Fatigue?  Like our students, many of us have already experienced Zoom Fatigue from both distance meetings and teaching, and therefore we have some understanding of […]

As a mathematics teacher, I have often had students tell me, “Professor, it always seems so easy when you are explaining it, but when I get to the quiz/test, I just can’t do it.” As I learn more about the cognitive science behind learning and retention, I have come to understand the pain, but also the potential, behind such a statement. We know that when […]

I returned fall quarter feeling broken. I had hoped some time off would help my marriage and my mental state. But I felt exhausted and overwhelmed. I barely slept or ate. I was grinding my teeth and having nightmares. In class, I daydreamed because I didn’t really want to be there. I already have a bachelor’s degree from Wilmington College, but I’m back in school […]

When I started college as a freshman engineering student, I knew I would have a little trouble with the transition from high school to college. What I didn’t know was that my main challenge would come from distractions. There’s a mall only five minutes from campus, and when my friends wanted to hang out there, I wouldn’t say no. Other times we’d play video games, […]

Our lives need support from others to gain success. The book, On Course, consists of numerous habits and ideas on how we can achieve the fullest potential out of life. I believe that the most important idea I have learned from the book is employing interdependence because it allows me to increase the quality of my relationships and highlights my reliability to others. First, employing interdependence […]

For many years I didn’t think much about my future goals. I surely didn’t have any dreams or expected outcomes. I just went through life one day at a time without much direction. It wouldn’t be until I met my wife, Sonya, that my life started to change. I began to realize that I had way more potential than I thought. She helped to guide […]

In almost any math course I teach, one of the most common problems students identify is that of taking tests.  Even students who seem to be learning well during a specific unit can suddenly perform dismally on a unit examination. To help them do better on my tests, I used an exercise from the On Course text’s Facilitator’s Manual. I did this activity one week before we were […]

National surveys of college faculty reveal that their number-one instructional goal is to promote critical thinking (Milton, 1982; Stark et al., 1990), and national reports on the status of American higher education have consistently called for greater emphasis on the development of college students’ critical thinking skills (Association of American Colleges, 1985; National Institute of Education, 1984).  While the call for critical thinking has remained […]

The educational system can sometimes be tough on us teachers.  We’ve got certain concepts to plant in our students in a set amount of time-we can only hope that what we plant will flourish.  Students themselves, of course, come in all shapes and sizes, both physically and intellectually. Some are quicker, some slower to grasp what we’re presenting. Willy-nilly, we tend to reward the quicker […]

During my first semester in college, I was enrolled in a first-year English class. In high school I was usually able to pull off an A on my honors English papers without much work, and I thought I was a pretty good writer. So when I turned in my first college essay, I was expecting to get an A, or at worst a B.  However, […]

Are you a culturally responsive teacher?  Are you selecting instructional activities to celebrate and appreciate diversity in the classroom? These are bold conversations that we must have with ourselves to assure that diversity elements are infused in the curriculum. One of the greatest challenges is the tendency to teach the way we were taught. I recall textbook and reading assignments in which contributions from people […]

In 2002, I hit rock bottom when I moved into a homeless shelter. For the next four years, I cycled in and out of one shelter after another. There, I saw how people can become passive and numb, with no life or hope left in their eyes. They smell bad, walk with their heads down, and are filled with negativity. Their only goal in life […]

When I began college, I was unmotivated and chose to blame others for my problems and my shortcomings. I was so much smarter than everyone that I didn’t need to do all the work that everyone else did; at least that’s what I thought. My favorite pastime was staring blankly at a television, rather than attending lecture or doing assigned homework. I figured everything would […]

There has been a 40% drop in measured college student empathy since 2000 (Konrath, 2010). But is empathy really important for students? Empathy has been shown to improve test scores, develop leadership skills, strengthen classroom community, provide career skills, increase emotional intelligence, and reduce learner stress and reactivity. Given the major drop in empathy, can college students develop more empathy? Researcher Roman Krznaric believes that people can […]

After attending an On Course workshop, I was so excited about applying the new active learning strategies to my English courses that I came to think of my tool box as more of a treasure box.   First, I used “Twenty-One” to teach summarizing and jazzed up the card exchange intervals with music. Next, I had students analyze a sample essay and rubric, creating a […]

Academic Strategies for Excellence (AS198) is a three-credit course designed to assist first-year students make a successful transition to college. The course, rooted in research and best practices for guiding first-year students, helps students develop academic, personal, and professional skills.  Wesley College is a minority serving institution (MSI) with approximately 53% of its student population Pell-Grant eligible. Typically, 65% of the incoming cohort consists of […]

When I first began offering On Course Workshops in 1996, I was in for a pleasant surprise. During the very first workshop, someone spontaneously announced, “I just had the most amazing Aha!” And she went on to enthrall us all with her sudden insight. In future workshops, I started encouraging Aha’s. “An Aha can change your life,” I explained. “So, when you have an Aha […]

Twenty-three years after dropping out of high school, I finally enrolled in college. In between, I got married, worked as a waitress, had three children, and adopted a fourth. My first baby got cancer and had three serious operations between the ages of two and five. What she and the other kids in the hospital went through touched my heart, and I knew I wanted […]

I was a first-year student and enjoying college, but I was having a hard time in my electronics class. The teacher lectured about things like current, watts, volts, and resistance, and even though I read the book, took notes in class, and asked questions, I still wasn’t understanding what I needed to.  When I got back my first test, I didn’t fail but I did […]

Have you ever considered the role emotions play in the learning process? Could awareness of emotions coupled with effective feedback have a positive impact on learning? Researchers Arguedas, Daradoumis & Xhafa (2016) investigated the role emotional awareness has as it relates to both the student and the educator. In the article “Analyzing How Emotional Awareness Influences Students’ Motivation, Engagement, Self-Regulation and Learning Outcome,” the authors […]

The individual concepts of Grit and Growth Mindsets are familiar terms in the lexicon of student success. More recently, Hochanadel and Finamore have studied the interplay of these two concepts, encouraging educators  to explore the synergy created when students are provided with the tools to learn how to develop both grit and a growth mindset in order to strengthen their ability to persist through difficult […]

Watch Ashley Freeman’s story or read below…  Have you ever walked into a classroom feeling like everyone is staring at you? When you get called upon to read aloud to the class, does your heart beat like a bass drum that you hope others can’t hear? When someone talks to you, do you sweat and stumble over your words and end up feeling like a […]

As a teacher of teachers, I know how important communication in the classroom is if a teacher is to be truly effective. We who teach teachers and teachers themselves spend much of the classroom time talking and, consequently, plan presentations that focus effort on speaking, showing, demonstrating, using PowerPoint and other visual techniques-all to “cover” (a word that can mean “conceal!”) the lesson content for […]

Watch Dominic’s video or read his story below…. Enrolling in college at the age of twenty-eight was very intimidating to me. Having dropped out of high school at fifteen, I had a real problem with confidence. Even though I had a GED and was earning a decent living as a car salesman, I still doubted that I was smart enough to be successful in college. […]

STEM-H graduation rates are up by 96%, the highest increase in New Mexico. Over the past five years, San Juan College (SJC) has created a 143% increase in their graduation rates. This remarkable achievement came about by a campus wide concerted effort to address the national issue of low Community College graduation rates. Instituting a mandatory Student Success class based on the On Course curriculum […]

Have you ever wondered why some of your class sections are livelier and more engaged than others? Your 10am class is energized, asking meaningful questions, pushing each other, and generally performing at a high level. But in the very next period they’re almost zombie like, semi-responsive, and many students are barely holding on. It’s the same lesson plan. Same you. Same day. Yet, totally different […]