Is this situation at all like what you’re experiencing? Class sizes are steadily increasing, students need more opportunities to practice critical thinking skills, and you need to keep the amount of time devoted to grading under control. That was the situation facing a group of
That’s what they were first developed for (clear back in the ’70s, would you believe), and in the beginning they were used to assess written work. Now teachers are finding them useful in assessing a wide range of classroom activities and assignments: oral presentations, Web
Instructional strategies acquire names, labels that describe what the strategy involves—active learning, problem-based learning, cooperative learning. Sometimes the strategies gain popularity. They become widely used, and so do the terms that describe them. After a while teachers stop describing what they are doing in class.
Herreid and colleagues have asked themselves the question raised in the title. To answer, they surveyed the more than 1,300 teachers on the Center’s listserv (mostly biologists and faculty who teach health-related subjects), asking them to identify their favorite case and say what made it
Teaching requires more than just a keen mind; it also demands emotional energy, and that is particularly true for new teachers. But what emotions do they experience? Are those feelings more positive than negative? Are certain emotions associated with particular teaching approaches? These are all
In a small study undertaken in three sections of intermediate macroeconomic theory, MacDermott compared three assessment policies in terms of their impact on the cumulative final exam score: 1) three in-class exams each worth 20 percent of the grade; 2) three in-class exams with the
Any instructional practice that is new to you, such as group testing, giving students a role in creating a classroom policy, or getting students involved in assessment, is not just a new activity that requires attention to a new set of implementation details; it’s a
It’s good to regularly review the advantages and disadvantages of the most commonly used test questions and the test banks that now frequently provide them.
In spring 2012 Angela Starrett, a mathematics instructor at the University of South Carolina Upstate, was teaching calculus, business calculus, and several other higher-level math courses. To provide students with extra support, she invited them to text her when they had questions. They took her
In a recent Magna Online Seminar, Ollie Dreon, associate professor in the School of Education at Millersville University of Pennsylvania, recommended varying assessment techniques in the online learning environment to motivate students and provide opportunities for multiple means of expression (a key principle of universal
