Episode 46: How to Have Positive Teaching Evaluations
As I was reflecting on what I should write about to end the quarter, I was also attending a workshop on reforming teaching evaluations. So, this post is not actually about how to get positive evaluations from students, but rather how to make the teaching evaluation...
Episode 45: Conversations with David Spight, Director of UCI Undergraduate/Undeclared Advising
In a previous post of my Dennin Insights blog, I discussed the value of general education (GE) courses and how they are designed to expose students to different academic disciplines and potential areas of study. This topic came up again during a recent conversation...
Episode 44: Being Good Enough Part II
In my recent blog post, When is a C Good Enough?, I discussed being more explicit regarding what “excellence” means when looking at a student’s entire career and how a distribution of grades can still represent excellence. In response to that post, a colleague...
Episode 43: Conversations with Julie Hudash, CEO and Founder of Team Kids
In many of my previous posts, I highlight the fact that the role of the university is to support students and empower their success. With this goal in mind, UCI promotes partnerships with many outside organizations and institutions to offer diverse pathways for our...
Episode 42: When is a C Good Enough?
When is a C good enough? This question may be a strange one for a top university to ask, but it strikes me as critical. For some context, a few weeks ago UCI hosted the Waypoints Symposium. This meeting brought together representatives from over 30 institutions to...
Episode 41: Conversations with S. Ama Wray, UCI Professor of Dance and Creator of Embodiology
One of the central themes that I’ve repeatedly come back to in this blog is the question of how we as instructors can design courses that offer students the flexibility to explore and forge their own pathways to success while also creating a system in which we can...
Episode 40: Online Course Quality
Across higher education, there has been a lot of talk about how the pandemic has changed things, especially in regard to technology and course design. It is certainly true that the conversation around online courses has taken on a whole new flavor. Having been...
Episode 39: Conversations with Brett Sanders, UCI Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Research Lead at FloodRISE UCI
As instructors, one of our main goals is to help students develop their problem-solving and critical-thinking skills. In previous Dennin Insights posts, I’ve discussed our responsibility to produce self-motivated, independent lifelong learners. Unfortunately, when...
Episode 38: Self Motivation: Where Does It Come From?
Since it is still January, I feel it is okay to do a post that reflects on New Year’s resolutions. New Year’s resolutions make me think about the question of internal versus external motivation because they are an interesting combination of both. It is external in...
Episode 37: Tools and Creativity—The Role of AI
Tools and creativity. These seem to be two consistent definitions of what it means to be “human.” Considering pre-historic records, we have the amazing creative work of cave paintings that exist alongside the incredible stone, wood, and bone tools made to create...
Episode 36: Presentation Matters—But Not Necessarily the Way You Think
One of the most difficult things to navigate in this world is the fact that presentation matters. This is particularly challenging in a society that claims to value the individual but then penalizes individual expression in the places where it can impact your...
Episode 35: What to do with Prerequisites?
As you can tell from past blogs, I often draw my topics from things I hear faculty saying. And one common refrain I’ve heard throughout the years is faculty commenting on the fact that students never seem to learn what is expected of them before they get to their...
Episode 34: Raising the Standards Through New Grading Practices
Standards and academic rigor are two challenging topics that I keep coming back to in these posts. On the one hand, it is exciting to hear people quote my statement, “Broader standards, not lower standards.” On the other hand, I recognize the incredible challenge...
Episode 33: The Importance of Kindness
As I thought about my first blog post of the fall quarter, I struggled with a concept I wanted to communicate. I finally landed on the idea of kindness, and I hope my post captures the sentiment I wish to express. The topic of kindness came to mind as I reflected...
Episode 32: Rethinking the Classroom as a Team- Part 4
This is the final installment of the series based on the panel I hosted with UCI coaches and School of the Arts faculty on April 20, 2022 (watch the panel recording here). The focus of this final reflection is best summarized by the question: How long should you be...
Episode 31: Rethinking the Classroom as a Team- Part 3
This week’s post is part 3 of the series inspired by the panel I hosted with UCI coaches/artists on April 20, 2022 (watch the panel recording here). In this post, I would like to focus on an interesting idea that a coach shared as a lesson they learned from...
Episode 30: Rethinking the Classroom as a Team- Part 2
Listening to coaches speak during our panel on April 20, 2022 (watch the panel recording here), I was struck by how often coaches’ actions are actually “feedback” to a player that they are not doing well! One of the most obvious is the action of taking a...
Episode 29: Rethinking the Classroom as a Team- Part 1
On April 20, 2022, I hosted a special panel that brought together a group of UCI coaches, art directors, and dance faculty to discuss different approaches to teaching a class. This panel generated a number of surprise thoughts, and I decided to dive in and explore...
Episode 28: Setting Standards is Hard!
In these blog posts, I have written about standards from a variety of perspectives. When I first shifted from student to instructor, I remember being struck by how challenging the concept of standards really was. A core challenge I see over and over results from...
Headliner: Episode 27: Is the Classroom a Team?
Most people that listen to me talk about teaching are probably tired of hearing me compare it to coaching. This is part of the reason I added a comparison to conducting an orchestra to my repertoire, despite having never actually conducted for real! However, as I...
Episode 25: Flexibility—What Is It Really?
Throughout the pandemic, we have repeatedly asked for instructors and students to remain “flexible.” But, what does flexibility in the classroom mean moving forward? I fear that this word has been used in so many different contexts that it can cause confusion for...
Episode 24: Leveraging Instructor Strengths
In my last post, I made a reference to a strength-based approach to student success and the importance of having a growth mindset when approaching the design of education. In this post, I want to highlight the implications of these approaches when applied to...
Episode 23: The New Year
I have been struggling with what to write for my first blog of 2022. Then, inspiration struck when reading the excellent post by my Division of Teaching Excellence and Innovation colleague, Andrea Abersold. If you missed it, go read her post (and any others you...
Episode 22: Introducing the New Student Excellence Center
In this blog, I have focused on issues of student success directly connected with course design, learning environments, and other key aspects of the student experience. Of the essential elements that comprise the student experience, meaningful connections and human...
Episode 21: The Anteater Virtues
It is so exciting to be welcoming students back to campus this week! The energy is amazing and is providing a real sense of renewal. For me, it was particularly powerful to kick off the week with Convocation and to be out on Crawford Field in front of roughly 5,000...
Episode 20: Are Standards in Conflict with Equity and Inclusion?
Recently, I read an interesting article that was published on New Discourses back on March 8, 2021. The article, “The University of California Drifts toward Conformism: The Challenges of Representation and the Climate for Academic Freedom in the Country’s Greatest...
Episode 19: Time—The Finite Resource
One of the most rewarding aspects of starting this blog has been the opportunity to notice trends in my own thinking that have become crystal clear through the writing process. One recurring theme that seems to come up again and again for me is the idea that time...