Notes on Teaching and Learning

In our Faculty Feature series, the Kaneb Center interviews teachers around campus to learn about what motivates them, discuss techniques they use in their classrooms, and share bits of wisdom with others in the Notre Dame community and beyond! This edition, we feature Joyelle McSweeney from the English Department.   Tell us a little about yourself. […]

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Beginning and sustaining an engaged class discussion is a notoriously difficult enterprise for new teachers and if you are teaching a contentious topic, passionate outbursts and heated debates can create even more challenges. Like many other aspects of teaching, preparation is critical for establishing a welcoming but ordered environment for students to participate in debate […]

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Surveys have shown that students benefit from the enthusiasm and expertise of faculty who bring their research into the classroom.  The incorporation of research into the classroom can also promote an inquisitive approach to learning and provide a model for critical thinking. But as we know, it can be difficult to bring research into the […]

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Most people enter graduate school with very little (if any) teaching experience. One major component of learning to be an effective teacher is the chance to serve as a teaching assistant (TA). TAships are supposed to be an opportunity to observe a professional teacher in action and get hands-on experience with certain aspects of teaching […]

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There are many studies, some linked at the end of this post, which argue for the benefits of eliminating (or at least limiting) laptop use in the classroom, advocate for old-fashioned hand-writing as a superior note taking practice to that of electronic transcription of lectures, and argue that college students are just too prone to […]

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