I recently finished up my last semester teaching international college students, and subsequently handed the reigns over to some new instructors I’ve trained during the past few months. One instructor who shadowed me during the Fall term, a NASA liaison at our university, is trying teaching on for size during the next year, and she…
I’ve had the book Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning by Brown, Roediger, and McDaniel on my bookshelf for almost 2 years, and I’m just now making a dent in it (I swear I’ll finish it over winter break!). Before I get too far into it, though, I wanted to note a few…
As promised last week, in this post I’ve provided the materials I created to help prepare my students for their TED-style talks (it also doesn’t hurt to have a few copies of Talk Like TED by Carmine Gallo on hand- I have 3 copies that I bring to the classroom for student use). I’ve also…
Recently I was asked by a local college to teach a faculty development workshop for part-time instructors. I eagerly agreed, and the entire event was everything I’d hoped it would be. As a group, we all shared our best kept teaching secrets, and many of those ‘secrets’ had to do with time management, so I…
Let’s talk about adding some spice to the college classroom. No, I’m not talking about a tasty fall treat, although I’m sure I’ll hear plenty of holiday-themed speeches this semester (and I’d bet money someone might even give a speech about Pumpkin Spice Lattes). I’m talking about making changes to my Public Speaking course to…
I love it when the faculty development courses I take during the summer not only help me to teach classes more effectively and understand more about technology, but also help me with what my friends have lovingly deemed my “side hustle” (a.k.a. writing, blogging, and working on the Happy Professor brand). It seems everyone has…
As a student, did you ever Christmas tree a test (ie. choose answers at random so your scantron bubbles took the shape of an evergreen) and receive a decent score for not knowing much of anything? Did you ever finish a course at the end of the semester and wipe your brain clean of all…
During the past few days, I’ve been called and emailed by adjuncts needing advice. During those conversations, I realized I’ve learned a few more tricks to being happy, efficient, and effective as an adjunct instructor. It’s only been a year since Happy Professor was published, but here are some of the new tips that weren’t…
This happens. I’ve learned this lesson before (I even wrote about it in my book), and I had to learn it again a few weeks ago. Here’s the situation: I now split my time between working at home teaching online classes, and teaching on campus in the morning three days a week. I wasn’t getting…
Today marks the official start of the second week of college classes (at least at most Central Florida colleges), and with the uncertainty of a new workload and new students, comes the excitement to be in the classroom again. I’m loving my new students at UCF, but I’m also getting used to teaching in the…