I just taught a dear friend how to knit, and in doing so I revisited how very challenging it is to teach something you can do easily.
Knitting, like so many of the skills we teach, including concrete skills like running a lathe and
With the academic year nearly over and final exams upon us, it’s a good time to consider how we assess student knowledge in our courses. Cumulative finals are still used in many courses, but a significant number of faculty have backed away from them because
Four of us who teach four separate courses (statistics, English, reading, and College Success) met to discuss student PowerPoint presentations and how they could be improved. Based on our experiences, we identified these common problems: slides overloaded with words and data; students who read their
Goals for my First-Year Seminar students include proficiency with a host of study skills as well as course content based on what we call “learning about learning.” To support new college students in understanding what, exactly, learning is, my colleagues and I introduce a number
In “Calculating Final Course Grades: What About Dropping Scores or Offering a Replacement?” (The Teaching Professor March 2014), the editor notes that “some students … assume that course content is a breeze, [so] the first exam serve[s] as a wake-up call.” (p. 6) In two
Students have been known to do annoying things in class: they come late and leave early; they talk to each other but won’t answer teacher’s questions; they look at the teacher but with emotionless faces. Behaviors like these and others can get under a teacher’s
Students now arrive in our classrooms with a wide array of electronic devices. They also arrive used to being able to use those devices wherever and whenever they please. Should that include the classroom? The research is pretty conclusive that most students don’t multitask well
In their 1995 Change magazine article, “From Teaching to Learning—a New Paradigm for Undergraduate Education,” Robert B. Barr and John Tagg described the Learning Paradigm, which emphasizes learning over teaching and student discovery and construction of knowledge over transfer of knowledge from instructor to student.
Edward McGee, coordinator of instructional technology and distance learning at Central Virginia Community College, offers the following recommendations for fostering a Learning Paradigm in an online learning environment.
One of the challenges of the online classroom is finding ways to connect with students, to build relationships as you might in a face-to-face environment. To achieve this, you might want to look beyond your LMS to some tools that can engage, connect, and inform.
