If what we’re teaching is relevant to students’ personal lives, future careers, and current success, that’s motivating, Leah Hoops observes and documents with references. If it’s not, students either don’t learn what we’re teaching or don’t learn it very well. Of course, from our vantage
As noted in the Teaching Professor Blog post, student responsibility for learning can happen in three different arenas. First and foremost, students are responsible for their learning. Teachers can encourage and support learning endeavors in a variety of ways, but students must do
The imperative “Help Students Get the Dictionary Habit” is one of the headings in the 2001 edition of John C. Bean’s book Engaging Ideas, specifically in a chapter called “Helping Students Read Difficult Texts.” Bean goes on to describe the importance of annotating unfamiliar words.
Many students do not arrive in our courses with college-level reading skills. That usually ends up meaning a couple of things. First off, they don’t like
Here’s one of those articles that really shouldn’t be missed, particularly for those with interest in making teaching and learning more evidence-based. Current thinking about evidence-based teaching and learning tends to be more generic than specific. Use any active learning strategy intermittently or even regularly,
New Approaches, Instruments and Emphases
Eddy, S. L., Converse, M., and Wenderoth, M. P., (2015). PORTAAL: A classroom observation tool assessing evidence-base teaching practice for active learning in large science, technology, engineering and mathematics classes. Cell Biology Education, 14 (Summer), 1-16.
Many years ago, a higher-education publication ran a commentary from a faculty member who complained that students were bored by her lectures because she was not entertaining them enough, but that she should not have to entertain them; however, she was wrong.
Positive classroom climate can encourage students to participate, think deeply about content, and engage peers in intellectual debate. Creating a classroom climate conducive to that type of expression can be difficult. Classrooms are filled with a diverse cross-section of our society representing multiple learning preferences
Students aren’t all that excited about most of their assignments. Given the chance not to write papers, not to take exams, or not to complete group projects, most students would happily take advantage of the opportunity. But those are all assignments they’re used to, ones
And there seems to be lots of them: required general education courses in content areas the student deems completely uninteresting, those with a reputation for being hard, and others that require skills students know they don’t have and feel they cannot acquire. With all that
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