Steven Volk (April 28, 2014)

“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end, yeah,” Semisonic

The end of the semester, like the first week, poses specific challenges to teachers. For most of us, it feels like we’re in a head-long rush to complete the syllabus, hand out evaluations [Check back to the “Article of the Week” from December 8, 2010 for tips on how to read your Student Evaluations], and prepare students for final exams or papers, all the while trying to achieve closure on the semester. It’s also a time when both student and faculty energy levels have bottomed out, even more so in the spring semester. It probably goes without saying that the best way to end the semester is the way that works for you. But here are some suggestions that have come up over the years from my own practice and some that I’ve taken from other teaching and learning centers. Continue reading →

Steven Volk, April 20, 2014

A recent article by David Gooblar in the Chronicle of Higher Education’s on-line “Pedagogy Unbound” section reminded me how important it is to end a class well, both individual classes (today’s topic), and the semester as a whole (which I’ll turn to soon). We spend a fair amount of time thinking about how we start a class: perhaps summarizing material from the past class, highlighting written responses to the readings that students have posted, offering a snapshot of what the day’s class will cover. But the ending is often less planned, particularly as we rush to get through the topics we had intended to cover that day.

Why is that? Probably a lot of factors are to blame, but the most common one I’ve encountered is that faculty try to put too much into the 50 or 75 minutes we have in a regular class session; we try to cover too much. Many, myself included, particularly when I was a bit newer to the game, are worried that we will run out of things to say before the clock signals the end of the class. As a result, we over-prepare … just to be sure. Of course, we never actually run out of things to say. Rather, we run out of time in which to say them. Now, when we look up at the clock, we find that there are five minutes left and we have 15 minutes worth of “stuff” still to deliver. What to do? Continue reading →