“Yes, and” as Teaching-Learning Methodology

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Omar Ali and Nadja Cech present ‘Yes, and,’ a concept derived from improvisational theatre, as a teaching-learning methodology that supports engaged experiential learning. In this approach, the leader of the group and co-participants affirm each other and creatively build on what any and all bring to the conversation and activity at hand. The approach can enhance academic excellence by cultivating confidence, creativity, and collaboration.

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Why Literature? Or Any Discipline?

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Why do you teach what you teach? Why should students study what you teach? How do you help them see that? To answer this for my own discipline, I’ve been researching recent apologias for literature, defenses of reading or teaching literature written since, say, around the turn of the century.

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How can we get students to talk to each other in class discussions, rather than just to the teacher?

Getting Students to Talk to Each Other, Rather than the Teacher

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In class discussions, students often speak only to the teacher—and the teacher responds to every point. Inspired by Stephen D. Brookfield and Stephen Preskill’s Discussion as a Way of Teaching, I’ve written a structured protocol for class discussion that gets students talking to each other. So far, it’s leads to much more give-and-take among students.

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Photo of book by Hans (2014 CC0)

How Can We Get Students to Read Well?

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Students face strong motivations to skip or skim readings. In courses where reading is integral to the intellectual work of the discipline, that severely undermines learning. How can we get students to read and read well? In this post, I share some scenarios worth pondering and a link to an article I’ve written on teaching critical, contemplative, and active reading.

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Why Plagiarism Doesn’t Bother Me At All: A Research-Based Overview of Plagiarism as Educational Opportunity

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Gerald Nelms explains how student plagiarism is very often less of a cut-and-dried crime than it appears. Research shows that successfully avoiding plagiarism—while also paraphrasing and integrating material from sources—requires complex skills that take time and practice to develop. We can see instances of plagiarism as opportunities to help students learn these skills.

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