Successful speaking assignments?

We'd love to hear about your successful speaking assignments. Did you assign short speeches to motivate stronger paper drafts? Mini-lectures? Group presentations? Debates? Share your ideas for getting students the speaking experience that they need in the classroom.

Welcome to "Teaching at Southern Miss"

Over the past year, I've had the opportunity to teach the speaking portion of the Southern Miss Quality Enhancement Plan Faculty Seminar. One of the themes that continues to pop up in our discussion is what a luxury it is to get together with colleagues and talk about teaching for 2 hours every week during the 10-week class. With research and service pressures, we know how difficult it is to find the time and the energy to think about good pedagogical practices. Although I suspect many of us will still find it a struggle, there is some interest in creating a blog devoted to teaching at Southern Miss.

Here are some of the postings that you might consider contributing:

• Good ideas for connecting with students in the classroom
• Tricks to managing/engaging the large lecture section
• Struggles that you have encountered in the classroom
• And, of course, anything else that comes to mind.

The point is not to create a space for griping, but to create a space for sharing solutions to common problems. In the end, by pooling our teaching resources, perhaps we can all find the energy necessary to continue that balancing act that we call academia.

Happy teaching!

Wendy