I’m a big fan of Bonni Stachowiak’s Teaching in Higher Ed podcast and was thrilled to be a guest on this week’s episode. Among many other things, we talked about how to get student feedback and how to use this feedback to improve your class.

At the end of the show, Bonni asked me for a few recommendations and it shouldn’t surprise any of my regular readers that my first was the Piazza discussion forum software. It’s free, students love it, and it often saves instrutors time because you only have to answer the same question once for everyone. I also recommended a plugin for the Apple Mail program called ForgetMeNot. It scans your mail after you press send, and before the mail is actually sent, it warns you if you mentioned attaching something but didn’t actually attach anything. I used to make this mistake all the time and now I never do.

My third recommendation was for one of my favorite kids’ books: Finn Family Moomintroll by Tove Jansson. It’s part of a series of stories about troll-like creatures who live in a wild magical land. The style and plots and characters are unique, and as appealing to 6-year-olds as they are to 60-year-olds.