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Author Archives: Thomas Mayo
Teaching critical thinking: how, when, where.
Interesting post from the Scientific American‘s blog. Here’s an excerpt: A democracy relies on an electorate of critical thinkers. Yet formal education, which is driven by test taking, is increasingly failing to require students to ask the kind of questions that … Continue reading
Posted in Critical Thinking, Learning Communities
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Should pre-med requirements be reformed?
This is the title of Aaron Carroll’s April 11 blog post over at The Washington Monthly, which coincidentally appears at the same time as a Perspective piece by David Muller in the April 10 issue of The New England Journal of … Continue reading
Posted in Uncategorized
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First: Scantron. Now: Automated essay graders. What’s next?
From the April 4 New York Times: Imagine taking a college exam, and, instead of handing in a blue book and getting a grade from a professor a few weeks later, clicking the “send” button when you are done and receiving … Continue reading
Posted in Assessment, Critical Thinking, Technology, Writing
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Technology in the classroom: Good for logisitics. Good for learning? Maybe not so much.
There’s a report in The Chronicle of Higher Education (online: Jan. 28, 2013) about a paper that appeared in Science, Technology & Human Values (April 2012) entitled, “Technological Change and Professional Control in the Professoriate.” That’s not a very revealing title, but the abstract … Continue reading
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Plagiarism, copyrights, and things that go bump in the night
Okay, I admit it: the last phrase in the title to this post isn’t original with me. I stole it from an unknown author, although in my defense, it has by now become such a well-known phrase that it has … Continue reading
Posted in Students, Teaching Evaluations, Uncategorized
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Multiple-choice exams in a liberal-arts curriculum (Part II)
Notwithstanding the urging of the speaker at the 1984 AALS workshop for new teachers (see Part I below), multiple-choice questions would seem, at first blush, to be inappropriate in courses that emphasize synthesis of highly abstract concepts and application of … Continue reading
Posted in Assessment, Pedagogical Theory, Technology
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Multiple-choice exams in a liberal-arts curriculum (Part I)
The summer before I started teaching at SMU in 1984, the law school sent me to the workshop for new teachers that is sponsored each year by our professional association, the Association of American Law Schools (AALS). During that two-day … Continue reading
Posted in Assessment, Pedagogical Theory, Technology
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