Active Learning

student studying in library

Journaling Assignment

Students will complete a series of short essays about the idea of fairness in different ethical theories. Students will reflect in writing on the following question: what is fairness or how does this idea contribute to, support or challenge my idea of fairness? Another question

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Understanding Figures, Tables, Graphs, and Charts

“If a picture is worth a thousand words, it should be given that much of your time,” says Edward Tufte. Biology professor Amy Wiles says it was what got her started thinking about the importance of visual representations in her field: “Students needs to be

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Learning from Stories

The pedagogical literature deals with so many aspects of teaching; some topics are covered regularly, others not so often, and some only rarely. This may be the only article I have encountered with the goal of offering “a general, interdisciplinary ‘how-to’ . . . for

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Learning to Paraphrase and Read Deeply

It isn’t always easy to put the ideas of others into your own words, especially if you don’t completely understand what you’re trying to paraphrase. But even though it’s a struggle, it’s often worth the effort. The process of doing so almost invariably deepens the

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Laptop Zones

Laptops and tablet devices of various sorts are everywhere in college classrooms at this point. Students use them to take notes. Keying is quicker than writing notes longhand, and typed notes are subsequently easier to read. Faculty have two legitimate worries; students are using their

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What Instructional Methods are Being Used in the Classroom?

The ongoing lecture-active learning debate has generated considerable response in public venues, on social media, and in faculty conversations. These exchanges need to include accurate information as to the instructional methods actually being used in courses. Is lecture as dominant as it once was? How

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Twitter Assignments

A number of faculty are now using Twitter in their classrooms, with positive effects. Here are two examples using different approaches.

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The Success of Four Activities Designed to Engage Students

How can we engage students who are enrolled in large courses so they become active learners? I used four activities designed to get students involved, support their efforts to learn, and personalize the material in an introductory psychology course. How well did they work? For

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The Phases of Inquiry-Based Teaching

A central goal of education is teaching critical-thinking skills. Inquiry-based teaching is an excellent path to this goal. Based partly on the philosophy that “humans are born inquirers,” the method focuses on student discovery over pushing information from the instructor. Along the way, the students

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Active Learning Wins

For many years now, highlights from individual research studies that compare the effects of various active-learning strategies with lecture approaches have appeared in The Teaching Professor. Consistently, the results have favored active learning. But beyond a couple of small integrative analyses, what we’ve had so

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