The following website from the University of Oregon's 'Teaching Effectiveness Program' includes a discussion of the benefits of using student feedback to improve a course:

"Student feedback is an invaluable component in the wide array of tools that can be used to improve teaching. By gathering midterm feedback, courses can be adjusted mid-stream to make them better learning experiences for students. Through careful consideration of end of the term feedback, courses can be improved each year. Asking for student feedback connects students and instructors and creates a sense of good will."

from www.uoregon.edu/~tep/resources/assessment/usingfeedback.html

This issue of "Speaking of Teaching" discusses forward-looking assessment which encourages instructors to "...focus on how students will use course material in meaningful ways, not on how much material you can cover, and how well students remember what was covered in the course".

http://ctl.stanford.edu/Newsletter/testing_grading.pdf

The ArtsOne TA Meeting on Oct. 17, 2008, focused on marking students' papers and commenting on their writing. Attached you will find the handouts provided during that meeting.

For some interesting reading on critical thinking, check out the following link to the Skeptic's Dictionary - a website that approaches thinking with the opinion that "skepticism is most valuable when seeking and evaluating information".

http://www.skepdic.com/refuge/ctlessons.html

What is active learning?

The Center for Teaching and Learning at the University of Minnesota writes:

We might think of active learning as an approach to instruction in which students engage the material they study through reading, writing, talking, listening, and reflecting. Active learning stands in contrast to "standard" modes of instruction in which teachers do most of the talking and students are passive… Students and their learning needs are at the center of active learning.

See the website below for a further discussion of active learning, tips on how to carry it out, and videos scenarios.

http://www1.umn.edu/ohr/teachlearn/tutorials/active/what/index.html

Looking for a fun way to teach and review vocabulary with your students?

The attached article, from the "Teaching Professor" online, provides step-by-step instructions on how to use game shows to test vocabulary.

For a discussion of rubrics see:
http://www.oct.ca/publications/professionally_speaking/march_2005/evalua...
Scroll down to “Good Rubrics”. This section will discuss the ICE rubric model which focuses on Ideas, Connections and Extensions.

"True research papers are more than a loose collection of anecdotal memories or a patchwork of data pulled from several books. But while new to most first-year students, a research paper can be incredibly exciting, rewarding, and even comforting to write... Research papers come in all shapes, sizes, forms, and disciplines..."

A deeper discussion of genre is continued at the OWL at Purdue:
http://owl.english.purdue.edu/workshops/hypertext/ResearchW/genre.html

What do you NOT know about how students learn?

During your discussion sections you may encounter disengaged students. Individual reasons for disengagement may occur; however, Donald Harward takes a micro approach to understanding the structural and institutional causes of disengagement.

He argues: “What all this reveals is higher education’s failure to attend to the most fundamental of our responsibilities: the development of the whole person — intellectual, emotive/behavioral, and civic.”

From: http://www.insidehighered.com/views/2008/04/15/harward

What could you do more of to build on how students learn?

There are multiple ways of organizing student discussions. Refer to the ArtsOne Manual for Teaching Assistants 2008-09 (pgs. 15-28) for a detailed discussion of how to incorporate “think-pair-share”, “buzz groups”, “critical debate”, “jigsaw” etc. techniques into your tutorial sessions.