As educators, we assume that students are learning what we teach. But students often do not learn as much as we expect, and high-stakes assessments reveal their knowledge gaps when it is too late to ...
Research has shown that using formative assessment to inform instruction is one of the most important components of good teaching (Rosenshine, 2012). While many teachers rely solely on questioning and discussion techniques to gauge a ...
In the fall of 2017, Niki Bray had a problem. The University of Memphis instructor and instructional designer was tasked with redesigning and teaching an Intro to Kinesiology course that had failure rates of 43 ...
Please show me innovative teaching strategies I can actually use! As educators, we are often seeking new and exciting ways to engage our students, only to find that our teaching load leaves little time for focusing ...
I use a daily quiz that has a two-fold purpose: first, it tests the students’ knowledge of the day’s reading material; and second, it provides a focus for the lecture and activities scheduled that day ...
Do you use auto-graded multiple-choice and true-false quizzes and exams? If so, why? Is it because you’re convinced that these forms of assessment are rigorous and authentic instruments for measuring student learning? Or is it ...
Educators concerned with the quality of learning and instruction have called for a greater focus on students’ thinking to inform instruction and have offered a variety of pathways for achieving that aim (Brookfield, 2017; Robertson, ...
Research shows that checking for understanding is perhaps one of the most important components of a teaching sequence. Most teachers provide instruction on a topic and follow up with some questions. On a good day, ...
A lot of students are terribly optimistic about the grade they'll be getting in a course. They start out imagining that they're going to do very well, especially if they've decided it's an easy course. ...
This article starts with the results of a question 170 students in cell biology courses answered during the first week of the semester: “What percent of the information you have learned in your university courses ...