“This is going to be very casual,” I tell each student at the beginning of their neurophysiology oral exam. “I’m going to ask you some questions; feel free to take your time and reference your notes.” My experience with oral exams began in high
When I first began teaching philosophy, I had a standard comment on assignments for students whose writing was unclear:
While you understand the content, you are having trouble getting down on paper what you know. Note the areas that I marked as
You’re teaching an intro class; it’s three weeks into the semester, and you’ve just returned a high-stakes assessment to the students. The next time you look at your inbox, there’s an abundance of email from students wanting to make appointments because “they worked really
Several years into my 30-year career as a professor, I had an experience that ultimately upended my entire approach to teaching. I came to see the conventional classroom in a whole new way—as a sensory deprivation chamber—and developed a hands-on antidote I call “thinking
Three hundred sixty–degree (360°) video provides an opportunity for students to have an immersive experience of a location they’re studying in class. Prices have dropped to a point where institutions generally have 360° cameras available for instructors to use. Students can play 360° videos
Learning requires effort and is often difficult, but the exact relationship between learning, effort, and difficulty is complex and often misunderstood by both teachers and students. The misunderstanding can lead both groups to behave in ineffective and even counterproductive ways. In this essay, I
Formative writing assessments, like writing-to-learn activities, provide instructors with valuable and ongoing insights into student learning. Often ungraded, these activities or assessments can create opportunities for instructors to generate formative feedback that helps students see where they are in the course, what they are
Two of the most important developments in education over the past 10 years are (1) the emergence of digital tools that allow faculty to assign students new and interesting learning activities and (2) the proliferation of open educational resources (OER) to broaden access to
To begin with a statement that will surprise absolutely no one: one of the major challenges of general education reform is turf anxiety—the concern among various departments and disciplines that a new curriculum will not adequately represent their fields to ensure class enrollments that
There are three types of assessments. A diagnostic assessment comes before learning, is ungraded, and measures prior knowledge of the upcoming learning material. It can be used to determine what needs to be taught. A summative assessment comes at the end of learning, is
