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Dr. Amy Staples: Adjunct Advocacy Southern Style

by O.W. Coffman

By her own admission, Dr. Amy Staples, a full-time professor of his tory, is “one of those blessed few,” meaning she’s never done time as an adjunct professor.

The tenure-track educator, nonetheless, is no stranger to the inequality issues that plague adjuncts, including the estimated 270 part-time instructors who are employed at her own school, Middle Tennessee State University (MTSU) in Murfreesboro.

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Technically Speaking

Creative Uses for Textbook Companion Web Sites

by Denise R. Boyd

In today’s competitive textbook market, it’s difficult to find a textbook that doesn’t include free access to a companion Web site. These sites are packed with useful study tools, many of which can be adapted for use in classroom presentations. Moreover, the prices students pay for their books includes the cost of developing them, so I have always felt obligated to find ways to use them. In my experience, there are three categories of uses for the materials commonly found on companion Web sites: (1) for ungraded, self-directed student reviews of textbook chapters; (2) as graded assignments; and (3) as presentation tools in the Internet-wired classroom or computer lab.

As most experienced instructors know, self-directed use of available study materials is often the variable that separates successful and unsuccessful students. Students who are inclined to use every available means to learn and achieve in your class should benefit from explicit instructions from you as to how to use the study tools on the companion Web site effectively. First, you might recommend that, after reading each chapter, they take chapter quizzes found on the sites until they achieve perfect scores. Alternatively, these quizzes could be used along with the chapter objectives displayed on the site to preview chapter content. Second, most sites include some type of electronic key term flash cards. These are especially helpful to students who like to make such tools themselves as the electronic cards can save them a great deal of time. Third, you might urge students to visit the computer lab for an on-line review of to-be-tested chapters prior to coming to your classroom for an exam. This strategy might be more helpful than reviewing at home because learning is often linked to the setting in which it occurs and to the emotional state the learner was experiencing during the learning process. Both the lab setting and the student’s state of anxiety about the imminent exam are closer to the actual setting and emotional state that will be associated with taking the exam. As a result, recall should be enhanced. Of course, you should point out that such a review will likely help only those students who have already studied extensively for the exam under less time-pressured conditions.

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Lesko Blog

Auld Lang Syne

Posted: December 31st, 2007

First off, Happy New Year to all of our readers! I am looking forward to 2008 as a pivotal year in the life of the Adjunct Advocate and our AdjunctNation.com webpage. This new year marks a turning point for our company as it does, I imagine, for many of you. My hope is that we can all meet the year with thoughtfulness, enthusiasm and compassion for ourselves as well as for others.

And speaking of thoughtfulness, we've revamped the Forum section of the AdjunctNation.com website. We've added several new forums: The Campus Cafe, Rate Your Students, The Dish on Department Chairs and Deans, The Book Nook and Shoptalk. In doing so, we're hoping to open up the forums to a wider spectrum of users, and provide those users the opportunity to discuss a wider variety of topics. I am particularly excited about the Campus Cafe and Rate Your Students forums. In both, visitors have the opportunity to comment on, literally, just about anything that comes to mind.

I am also excited about the Shoptalk forum. Like our "shoptalk" column in the Adjunct Advocate magazine, this forum focuses on unionizing. I get questions all the time from part-time faculty who want to know if there are other part-timers with experience forming unions. In this forum, visitors can ask their questions, and present their opinions. What I hope is that it will be a place for people to connect and share information about all of the education unions, as well as independent unions and non-affiliated unionizing drives.

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