Registration Delay and Instructors for Labs & Lecture

First in a series of “What I’m reading” posts these are articles I’m working my way through in the Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (JoSoTL).  Here are the highlights for me:

    • “Registration Delay and Student Performance” – interesting assumption “The amount of time a student delays in registering for a course is a measure of diligence that in turn correlates with his/her final mark.” Limited application at MCUG.
    • “Does it Matter if Students Have the Same Instructor for Lecture and Lab Sections? An Analysis of Introductory Biology Students” – spoiler alert – no it doesn’t matter. Interesting article b/c of focus on liberal arts college. This piece caught my eye: “Finally, one cannot ignore fear as a motivating factor. Tenured professors have less to worry about if they let their attention to a single lab section slide than does an adjunct teacher whose career advancement may depend heavily on proving that he or she can teach his or her only lab section effectively. Notably, there was only one instance in which a professor’s perceived effectiveness in the labs dropped, and this drop occurred the year after the professor was granted tenure.” (p. 11)

My takeaways:

  • Would be interesting to see the impact of late registrations due to delayed add/drop timelines impacts student learning.
  • Research in the 2nd paper looks like professor H made a significant improvement in his/her teaching. Would be interesting to track these metrics for a longer term and wider range of faculty.