Questions tagged [teaching]
This tag is related to the role and duties of a teacher, an academic instructor, tutor or a teaching assistant.
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What are the roles and responsibilities of an adjunct faculty?
Is adjunct faculty's duty limited to teaching? Do they have any role in course design, grading, etc.?
What are the other responsibilities, as an adjunct faculty?
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Is the academic job market in developing / former Eastern Bloc countries welcoming towards young foreign researchers?
Though I am at the very beginning of my PhD journey, I am somewhat disturbed by the apparent lack of tenured positions in the US and Western Europe, especially concerning the humanities. All these ...
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MOOC / video integration into classroom schedule
Please forgive the rambling intro...
Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) are all the rage when people write about teaching. So many articles have been written about MOOCs killing universities while ...
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What should I do when teaching maths for unmotivated undergraduate students?
After completing my Phd in an area in pure Maths and going back to my country, I got a job as a math lecturer at a university, where maths is not the main subject for students there. Maths is like ...
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Does your Alma Mater and U.S. News Rankings Really Affect Future Job Opportunities?
I'm in the process of trying to decide on which graduate program to attend. I am pursuing a Master's level degree in Computer Science in hopes of furthering my web development career. I would love ...
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How can teachers reduce student suspicions in discrepancies and irregularities of grading?
From experience, many teachers dislike it when students compare grades, but that often shows the discrepancies and irregularities in the grading system. What other methods should teachers implement in ...
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What is the proper method to give credits in lecture material
To prepare the lecture material. I use the book, my own slides, but I also take a few slides from MIT or other top universities open courses.
What is the best way to give credit?
I must provide ...
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Could my visiting instructor position be terminated due to low course reviews? Full time instructor position is not going well at all
I'm a fourth year doctoral student in Applied Experimental Psychology who earned a Master's prior to enrolling in my program (which my Ph.D program accepted on full). Long story short, my funding ran ...
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Are automated online quizzes effective for formative feedback to students
I would like to increase my use of formative feedback (feedback showing students whether they understand material correctly without impacting their grades) and would like to integrate it with online ...
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How to deal with a student who most likely has a mental condition, and keeps arguing with me in class?
I am a TA for an introductory computer programming course at a university in the US. There is one student in particular who, during lecture, will argue with me about every point I make, which eats up ...
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Is it acceptable to publish student names with the label 'stupid question', on a publicly-visible website?
While I was browsing faculty websites, I came across this page (new link: http://www.pdmi.ras.ru/~iaroslav/teaching.php?screen_check=done&Width=360&Height=640). Near the bottom there is a ...
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Our teacher is encouraging us to use cracked software
I'm taking a course named Numerical and Computational Methods Based on Mathematica (Or in Chinese: "基于Mathematica的数值计算方法"), but Wolfram Mathematica is a bit expensive for me to afford. On the first ...
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None of 25 students at question session before exam has a question. What should lecturer do?
In a comment on another question Josef shared an anecdote.
And just another anecdote: A few weeks ago, there was a question hour at the last lecture timeslot before the exam. About ~25 of more than ...
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How should I deal with very negative feedback from some students?
I am a lecturer of a computer course in a university. Two months (almost 20 hours) of lectures have already finished. Very recently, I planned to get some feedback from my students on my lectures.
I ...
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Strategies for teaching with facial aphasia (inability to recognize faces aka prosopagnosia, face-blindness)
I'm a math grad student in my first year, which means that I have not yet taught a class (in my program first years grade or provide one-on-one tutoring for students who struggle in calculus). I have ...
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How to deal with a student who harasses the (inexperienced) teacher during class?
I am a young teacher at college. I have to go way too long, I know but I have the following problem.
In one of my classes, I have this guy who pecks at me for everything I say. He is surely ...
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My math students consider me a harsh grader. Is my teaching attitude wrong?
I am a math major grad student at a big public school, and we need to do TA every semester.
I got assigned to lower level classes last couple semesters, and it's been quite difficult for me. Even ...
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What to do about top students making other students lose confidence?
About once a year, I end up with a section with a student who is well ahead of others in the course. Often, these are students auditing the course, but sometimes are senior students attending 100-...
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How to explain a bad grade to a delusional student?
There is a student who attended a seminar where they were supposed to study an assigned research paper and deliver a presentation to the class. Their presentation was very low quality. Four (!) ...
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Handling Disruptive Student on the Autism Spectrum
I have a student who's on the autistic spectrum. He exhibits several disruptive behaviors in class, such as
Inability to moderate his volume/interjections: he will shout out questions and comments ...
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How to care less about teaching?
Fifth year math grad student as of this Fall. ABD, currently on target for six years in total.
I have very strong feelings about the way courses should be taught, graded, and organized. I have ...
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Should I prepare new homework exercises each year, 20% of the final grade is homework?
This year I prepare a new course (in programming, but it could be any other course). I spend a lot of effort in creating homework exercises. This is fun, but also very time-consuming.
I wonder if I ...
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How to deal with students staying hours past the end of office hours?
Background: I am a fourth year math graduate student working as a TA for an introduction to proofs course with a focus on analysis.
I really enjoy the teaching component of my position as a graduate ...
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Understanding an abnormal grade distribution
I have three years of experience teaching as part of a team (many teachers, some with more experience, agreeing on a syllabus and preparing the tests together), but this year is the first time I am ...
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In case of in-lecture quizzes, is it unreasonable to fail students who are late or absent?
I am teaching a large undergraduate class this semester. One day a week (same day every week) we have a quiz. The syllabus doesn't specify at what moment of the class period the quiz will be given. It ...
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Teaching a blind student MATLAB programming
I teach a first year undergrad class in MATLAB programming, and one of my students is completely blind. Quite amazingly, the student memorises the whole chapter before class and regurgitates with the ...
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Is there a standard of professionalism in academia requiring me to hide self-harm scars if I'm otherwise comfortable leaving them exposed?
I'm a student intending to stay in academia, and I'm reaching the stage where I've begun to TA classes. If all goes well I'll be teaching courses for the rest of my career, so I want to make sure I'm ...
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How should I admit a teaching mistake without losing authority?
I made a small mistake while teaching a very simple concept. It was mainly a numerical mistake, and the essential parts of the concept were well illustrated. I want to admit my mistake and even though ...
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Do academic integrity pledges work?
Our students are asked to sign an "academic integrity" pledge with each assignment and exam, vowing that they have not given nor received unauthorized assistance on the assignment.
What (peer-...
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My university requires that I take attendance. How should I treat students who arrive late to class?
I might soon teach at a university which requires that I record attendance of students, as follows:
Attendance is a requirement for the course. A person with at least 75% of attendance is eligible to ...
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Can I learn the course material for the first time while I'm teaching it?
If I'm going to give students the course X in next semester. Should I have full understanding of the subject before I teach them or can I learn about the topics before I go to the class and then teach ...
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What can professors do to encourage properly written email messages from students?
(Motivated by https://academia.stackexchange.com/questions/55082/hey-i-was-wondering-of-your-students-write-like-this)
The writing style probably [stems] from the electronic age of text
messaging. In ...
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My student told me his mother has cancer, what do I do?
Today I saw that one of my students in the class was looking very sad. He sat down at the end of class and he looked like he was in a bad mood. After all the students left the classroom I called him ...
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What are the pros and cons of giving students assignments to write Wikipedia articles?
The Wikimedia Foundation initiated an education program at U.S. universities that in 2010 encouraged government, law, and public policy students from 33 classes at 22 programs to contribute to ...
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Should I answer students' questions immediately or teach them to ask better questions?
I'm teaching an online lab (to accompany an in-person course) to undergrads in their 3rd or 4th year of an engineering curriculum this semester. The aim of the lab is not to teach them any particular ...
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Would I get into trouble if I give out "too many" A grades?
In the next semester, I will be teaching for the first time
a seminar course which is composed of about 25 students.
I am not sure how to respond to prospective students
who have asked me about the ...
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What do instructors need to know to accommodate Muslim students?
Increasingly, my school has been recruiting students from Central Asia, so I see 1-3 Muslim students in each section.
Near the end of the last term, one student asked for leave for some religious ...
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Are there tools to prevent students from cheating on a programming exam administered on computers?
I'm teaching an Introduction to Computer Science Course, where we mainly do C programming. I've been assigned a lab for teaching the course, but there are more students than available computers. Also, ...
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Keeping your throat comfortable after hours of lecturing
After lecturing for 3-4 hours my throat is often quite sore. Some days, I must lecturer for 6 hours (in past semesters, I've had some days which require lecturing for 8 hours). The problem is that for ...
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Professor is upset about student comments about her lectures. What should I do?
One of my former supervisors is upset about student feedback for her lectures. There are two problems:
If she provides complete slides with information, students complain that she reads from the ...
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Why doesn't academia incorporate spaced repetition in higher education?
There are many publications explaining advantages of spaced repetition. I found a summary of some of them here.
While a lot of studies show many advantages of spaced repetition, it is not formally ...
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What methods can be used in online exams to genuinely test the students' knowledge and capabilities?
There has been a lot of talk about online teaching in relation to covid-19 and campus shutdowns.
This question isn't about that though: my question is about what ways online examinations should be ...
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Should Professors and by extension their TA's, hold student athletes to the same standard?
As a former student athlete at the high school level who played football, the academic requirements asked of me were no different than that of my fellow classmates. I never asked for any special ...
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To what extent is the students' perspective on the lecturer credible?
I am giving a master course with another colleague, but since I am more experienced in the subject, I took the most difficult lectures.
My lectures contain a lot of mathematical equations and require ...
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Children in the Classroom
As a new semester of school approaches I have begun updating my syllabi for the classes I teach. I have lately used a clause in the syllabus about no children in the classroom as I feel it is a ...
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What to do when other professors place unfair demands on my students?
A recent question asked how students should deal with professors who "think their class is extra special". Putting aside the question of how good students are at judging what an appropriate workload ...
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Is it ethical to ask students to proofread a textbook?
I will have a draft of a new textbook ready for the fall semester. It is an engineering class.
I very much want feedback from the students concerning the quality and usefulness of the material.
What ...
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Special Needs student with disruptive behavior (racial slurs towards teacher)
There is a student at a university of a friend of mine who has Asperger's Syndrome, which is a milder form of Autism. My friend, who is a teacher there, has told me that the student mostly does OK ...
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Is it appropriate for my professor to include gender offensive material that is unrelated to the class subject matter in the course notes?
My accounting professor created a large binder full of notes for us to use instead of an actual textbook. He created it, and since he's the head of the accounting department at my university, he has ...
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What makes a good chalkboard?
I've encountered lots of chalkboards through my career, and they vary widely in quality. Some write smoothly and erase cleanly; for others, the chalk squeaks and the eraser just smears.
I assume ...
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