We expect a lot of students as learners these days. Knowledge acquisition now means more than just receiving information. It involves students in actively constructing knowledge using what they know to make sense of the new content and its application. Learning at its best requires
Students must comply with lots of educational requirements. They take “required” general education and major courses. Sometimes the sequences of those courses is also mandated. In most courses students must submit required assignments on specified due dates. Policies mandate student actions, such as attendance, participation,
Online teachers generally assume that student discussion and collaboration should occur in a learning management system’s (LMS’s) discussion forum. But for certain uses, online whiteboards work better than the LMS due to their fundamentally different design.
Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, relatively few instructors had used web-based conferencing for teaching and learning. With the shift in the spring of 2020, many instructors suddenly found themselves teaching online courses, and many others found themselves teaching onsite with some students using videoconferencing to
“Student learning is remarkably complex . . .” So begins the second sentence of a lengthy article proposing a research-based conceptual framework that identifies cognitive challenges to learning and how teachers can respond to them. The framework rests on three premises:
A learning contract is a negotiated agreement in which a student develops an individualized learning plan with their instructor’s support. Learning contracts provide students with choice about how to complete class assignments within the framework of the course learning objectives (Knowles, 1986). There are five
Now that many of us have moved to a hybrid or online format, the conversation around student-to-content and student-to-student engagement has taken on a new level of significance and intention. We have developed a reading graphic organizer (RGO) that increases students’ reading comprehension, assesses their
As fall 2020 draws to a close, the reactions to remote learning are reverberating loudly. They include not only outrage and despondency but also gratefulness and appreciation. Student surveys taking the pulse of learning experiences look very much like the evaluations of teaching we in
During the pandemic the support we’ve received from and been able to offer to colleagues has offered a sliver of light during a season of darkness. We’ve had the joy of being there for each other. How could those of us teaching for the first
Dear Student,
Fall 2020 is in the books. How did it go?
Few residential students looked forward to the thought of another term of remote learning or socially distanced face-to-face classes. It is just not the same thing taking a class scattered around a large
