Teaching resources

The Faculty Room

Ideas, formats and time-savers for people who teach at university level — shared by people who get it.

Assessment
3 July 2026·3 min read

Grade the 60th paper like you graded the first

By the fortieth submission, the standard you started with has quietly drifted. It isn't carelessness, it's what a vague rubric leaves to a tired evening. Here's how to grade the last paper the way you graded the first.

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Course design
21 June 2026·7 min read

Using AI for course design without dumbing it down

The fear is fair: most AI writes bland, generic, lowest-common-denominator content. But the dumbing down doesn't come from AI — it comes from AI that ignores your course. Here's the difference, and how to use it without lowering the bar.

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Teaching
18 June 2026·5 min read

\"Activities are just games\" — and other myths that keep the lecture on life support

There's a quiet prejudice in higher education: that classroom activities are playtime, fine for schools but beneath a serious university. It's wrong — and it's costing us the most rigorous teaching we could be doing.

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Teaching today
15 June 2026·2 min read

Your students have changed. Why our course formats haven't kept up.

The empty seats aren't laziness. Students have changed — and the lecture is losing a competition it didn't know it was in. Adapting is the obvious answer; affording to experiment is the hard part.

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1 June 2026·3 min read

From case studies to simulations and exams: 15 university-level activity formats

How many genuinely different activity formats have you used this year? A tour of fifteen rigorous, classroom-ready formats — and why the hard part was never the list, it's the fit.

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