Scott Arciniegas

Who, me? Not angry, simply calling attention to a point made in the course materials that does not reflect the facts as I, or any of the other discussion participants who've responded, have experienced them. I'll quote this time: "Many of these students can be described as "having a chip on their shoulder" rather than just plain "angry" (the pronoun "him" is being used here because hostile and angry students will almost exclusively be male). Your first strategy should be to let the student know that you recognize him..." This isn't a matter of "PC" sensitivity to a careless use… >>>

While certainly a dynamic and sensitive spoken communication style in the classroom is key, to often I see instructors underestimate teh importance of there written communication skills. Whether in lecture slides, assignment sheets, syllabi or email's, they let shoddy grammar, spelling an punctuation slide. While its often lamented that today's young students lack the ability to rite in proper english, certain errors scream out, and at least one student will always catch them, even if they don't always point them out. At tat point, the instructor looses credibility and the weight of authority in correcting similar mistakes in the students'… >>>

Okay, so a follow-up here, and possibly a controversial one... A while back there was an email making the rounds, allegedly the wisdom of a University professor (of Wisconsin, I think? I must find that email...a web search produced no relevant results). In it, he had a list of common complaints from students, among them the ubiquitous "I don't test well." His retort was scathingly unsympathetic: essentially something along the lines of "every day on the job is a test. If you don't test well, you will fail not just tests, but in your career as well." Harsh, to be… >>>

While I've long made a point of trying to put the course material in a professional-workplace context for my students, this statement phrases it so much more succinctly than I ever have. I plan to quote it. However, sometime it can be difficult to make this case. I teach foundation level courses; the material I teach is, indeed, the foundation upon which all their subsequent courses will build. But, just like it is nearly impossible to see the foundation of a completed, occupied building, so too can it be difficult to see foundation-level visual arts/design principles in completed, professional-level design… >>>

What are the thoughts of the educational community on the practice of building extra credit questions into a quiz/test? I have done it in the past, in the hopes of allowing students who would otherwise "bomb" the test to bump up their grade a bit. My experience has been, however, that it actually further polarizes the result. Those students who would have gotten A's anyhow now get monstrously high scores...and the poor performers, lacking a solid knowledge-base for the regular credit questions as they do, lack the knowledge base to get the extra credit as well. Any thoughts or other… >>>

This is a common refrain heard from students whose "summative evaluations" have gone less than optimally...students who've, quite frankly, bombed a test: "I just don't test well." And it drives me nuts. It's difficult to tell when it's the truth and when it's an excuse; and, as most of us are not diagnosticians, it's beyond the scope of our job descriptions and skill sets. We simply can't make that leap and determine whether or not the student has, for instance, a learning disability (although we can encourage them to seek out our institutions' diagnosticians or outside resources). But, all that… >>>

Some subjects, such as the visual arts, make teaching in certain modalities seems almost natural (and, of course, I acknowledge that my own learning-style-based bias is showing in that statement); to teach the history of visual arts in a kinesthetic mode seems, I don't know...forced. Or pehaps I'm not clear on how teaching the subject matter in a kinesthetic mode would work. The course material mentioned taking the classroom to a new location, throuwing a ball while studying, chewing gum during lecture...in each of these cases it occurs to me that the lecture, reading and lecture (again, respectively, are still… >>>