Linh Do

Syllabus speed dating as a first-day, ice-breaker exercise? Maryellen Weimer, an emerita professor at Penn State Berks, who is responsible for Teaching Professor Blog, offers this and a number of other activities for the first day of class.  You may find resources from Faculty Focus, the site her blog is associated with, useful as well.

For Ryerson resources on what to do on the first day of class, see this handout from the Learning and Teaching Office.

If you’re teaching CMN 314, I recommend Sandra Rosenberg’s ice-breaker exercises, detailed in the “Teaching Tips” page of this blog.

                                                                                                            Eltpics

In an article in the Chronicle of Higher Education, James M Lang weighs the advantages of rich class discussion using online polls against the risk of smartphone distraction. The article links to a variety of valuable resources on online polling and device distraction and includes a brief list of sensible approaches to handling student smartphone use in the classroom.