Most teachers still lecture a lot despite evidence showing that straight lecture is less effective than teaching approaches that more actively engage and involve students. I don’t think that conclusion rules out didactic instruction. Sometimes it makes sense to just “tell” students about the content.
Let’s never read student writing again. In fact, let’s not even talk about it.
Not because student writing is dull or unworthy of serious readers. No, let’s stop talking about student writing because it doesn’t exist—or at any rate, shouldn’t exist.
Saint Leo University’s master’s degree programs in Education and Educational Specialist both have qualitative research courses that students find challenging. The courses are especially challenging for those students enrolled in the online programs where they do not have the opportunity to watch how others conduct
A previous column on how hard it is to sustain instructional change has got me thinking more about the change process. For years I’ve suggested that our efforts to change need to be more targeted. So often we change by doing some of this, a
Long before the written word, humans relied on stories to entertain, instruct, and preserve cultural traditions. Storytelling is a fundamental way that humans communicate, and yet it is often left out of the college classroom. Rather than telling students stories about how something works or
Many instructors realize the value of teaching students fundamental concepts rather than focusing on details. A certain number of basic facts may have to be memorized, but beyond that it is generally more important to have students learn how to apply those facts to solve
Every year I teach a compulsory first-year course on the basics of psychology, which includes an introduction to developmental psychology. Lately I have also been teaching a follow-up elective course on child development. When I discovered that many of the students in the elective had
As new courses begin, there’s another batch of students and lots of new names to learn. A few among us manage to learn names with, what appears to rest of us, considerable ease. Others have developed surefire methods that work for them but not anyone
Most online instructors fall back on tried-and-true writing assignments and the LMS discussion forum to facilitate student engagement with material. But papers do not provide the opportunity for students to engage with other students on their ideas, and discussion forums track the conversation into pre-established
When our teaching focuses entirely on learning outcomes, we can become narrowly focused on seeing our students as skillsets. This can lead us to break learning into smaller and smaller parts so that we can successfully measure student “success.” But if, as Palmer emphasizes, we
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