"Faulty Ching" conference

That is, what I learned at the Fall Teaching (& Learning) Conference:

• Use formative assessment to inform my understanding of student learning. (check)
• Use journaling to record successful/effective teaching and things upon which to improve. (check)
• Ask students, "How will this impact your future practice?" (or "What will you do differently now?"). (check)
• Use collaborative journaling with colleagues, especially across institutions, to find common themes upon which to build the basis for presentations and/or articles.
• There are 9 intellectual standards for critical thinking (we should get the Set of Twenty One Thinker's Guides): clarity, accuracy, precision, relevance, depth, breadth, logic, significance, fairness.
• Techniques for achieving critical thinking:

1. dialogic questioning (use students' answers to foster discussion)
2. Socratic questioning (requires your questions to be specific & detailed, students' answers to be interpretive or making new inferences, & your follow-up to summarize & talk about what has not been resolved)
3. make the application of knowledge in new & different contexts transparent
4. have the class debate the pros/cons & then switch perspectives with a follow-up discussion on the evidence for which side was more persuasive
5. give examples that challenge assumptions
6. have students explain the essence of the readings by using metaphors
7. have students back up their answers with page numbers or a website or quote from the readings
8. have students assume the characteristics of something non-human (like a virus and bacteria in the health sciences or gravity in physics)
9. have students explain concepts to different audiences/levels.