When watching a movie, you might use the first few minutes to decide whether you will like it or not. This same phenomenon also happens in the classroom: the initial moments often set the tone for the entire session. Many educators discuss using the first
Instructors in face-to-face courses can roughly gauge how well students understand the material by facial expressions and audience response systems. This immediate and informal feedback enables them to adjust their teaching in real-time. But this is not the case in asynchronous courses. Students have to
Many research studies have underscored the importance of teaching presence in asynchronous online courses, with the benefits including higher student satisfaction, reduced isolation, and enhanced emotional engagement (Oyarzun et al., 2018).
It is the first day of the semester in a junior-level preservice teacher course, and 40 students sleepily shuffle in and choose spots at a table with their safety blanket—their friends. As I announce to not get too settled, I am met with muffled groans.
We often think of learning in individualistic terms. The student cognizes in their brain and performs some solitary task to demonstrate learning. For this work, they receive an individual assessment. These assumptions and practices are common regardless of how student-centered the teacher is (Barr &
“Are those handouts for us?” my student asked, gesturing toward the copies of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 29 that I’d carried into class. “Nope,” I replied. “They’re for the Brit lit class that I teach after yours.” “Oh, OK.” he said, disappointedly.
Gamification has been shown to improve student learning (Brull, 2016), and one of the best apps for facilitating gamification in the classroom is Mural, an online collaborative whiteboard with hundreds of engaging, colorful activity templates. It is one of my favorite teaching and learning tools
I must confess, I’ve always been skeptical about group work. Raised in East Asia, my K–16 education relied heavily, if not exclusively, on lectures. Even during my graduate studies in mathematics at a flagship public university in the US, my classmates and I rarely engaged
Computers have made it easier for instructors to use simulations in their teaching. These are usually self-paced and fully automated, allowing the instructor to step back and watch students work. But this automation tends to illuminate the randomness and sudden changes that happen in a
Faculty lament that students often use Google searches rather than academic sources for research. But now there are AI tools that both restrict their searches to academic publications and manage the results to greatly speed up the writing process. Perhaps the most powerful of these
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