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Chunking Content: A Key to Learning

One failure of the traditional face-to-face lecture is that it delivers learning content in large blocks—that is, in lengthy classes of normally 50–75 minutes. As Barbara Oakley and Terrence Sejnowski (2019) note, this violates the fundamental neurology of learning. When we learn, we first put

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Interactive Lecturing: A Pedagogy of Engagement That Works

Lecture as a pedagogical approach has come under considerable fire in recent years. Indeed, critics have called lectures boring, obsolete, old-fashioned, overused, and even unfair, among other, less-flattering terms. The criticisms, however, have most often been leveled at one type of lecture: the full-class-session, transmission-model

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Classroom Dynamics as Group Dynamics

Every fall now I cull my large teaching and learning article database. Yes, it’s a filing cabinet full of paper copies. Copies were the only option when I started collecting articles. But the cabinet is at capacity, and some of the very old, outdated pieces

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When Students Are Afraid of Learning

It’s night; a boy bikes alone on a dark, empty forest road, the only sounds those of his bike wheels whirring, the cicadas singing, and the gentle breeze. He passes a large metal fence with a warning sign that reads, “RESTRICTED AREA. NO TRESPASSING. U.S.

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Inspired College Teaching

The need for inspiration came up in a conversation that started with a sigh. “Yeah, the always exciting start of the academic year is over. We’re into that long, mid-course stretch, and I could sure use some inspiration.” I admire this honest admission. Many of

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Using Technology to Avert Student Problems in Online Courses

Scenario 1: You are in your office, preparing to grade final papers. Students were required to submit them through the campus learning management system (LMS). Upon review of LMS activity, you find that several students failed to submit their papers by the due date. You

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Classroom Climate and the Syllabus

Classroom climate “profoundly shapes” the experience of both instructor and students. That’s a claim made by two authors of a study that looked at syllabi from sociology courses to see what they said about classroom climate (Valentin & Grauerholz, 2019, p. 219). They found that

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