Teaching Strategies and Techniques

active learning in the classroom

Active Learning: A Perspective from Cognitive Psychology

In recent years, the phrase active learning has become commonplace across the academic disciplines of higher education. Indeed, most faculty members are familiar with definitions that go something like this: Active learning involves tasks that require students not only to do something, but also to

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why do students resist active learning?

Understanding Student Resistance to Active Learning

Fear of student resistance prevents many college teachers from adopting active learning strategies. That’s unfortunate, because these strategies have been shown to significantly increase student learning, improve retention in academic programs, and provide especially strong benefits to traditionally underrepresented student groups. Addressing two key questions

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Students Form Their Own Groups

Should Students Form Their Own Groups?

It’s one of the questions always asked by faculty using group work. Sometimes students tell the teacher they want to form their own groups. Teachers worry about those students who aren’t well connected with others in the class. Will they be invited

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Student Group Research Projects

Student Group Research Projects

It’s a favorite assignment in upper-division major courses—have students collaborate on a research project. The rationale is straightforward. Students learn how to do research by doing it. Of course it depends, but in most fields, students new to research find it a daunting process that

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Student Resistance

Student Resistance: Fact or Fiction

When faculty consider adopting a new instructional approach, there’s always a question about how it will be received by students. Will they engage with it and learn from it, or will they resist, as in complain, participate reluctantly, and give the course and instructor

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brief moments of inquiry in college classroom

Using Brief Moments of Inquiry to Enrich Student Learning

Who discovered Pluto?

 A colleague described this brief exchange he had with his young daughter as they crossed Tombaugh Street in Flagstaff, Arizona. My colleague, ever the professor, pointed out that the street was named for local astronomer Clyde Tombaugh who had discovered Pluto in 1930.

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active learning

Afterthoughts

In face-to-face courses, learning is compartmentalized into blocks that meet a prescribed number of times per week across the term or semester. It’s a format that’s simultaneously efficient and inhibiting. It effectively facilitates sequenced and accretive design but regularly loses opportunities to maximize deep learning

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Flipped

Flipped Learning Mistakes

“Flipped learning” has become a hot catchphrase in education circles as of late, with many faculty members feeling the pressure to flip their courses to escape the drawbacks of the traditional “stand and deliver” model of teaching. The flipped learning model takes the traditional in-class

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The Purpose of Educational Technology Is Interactivity

I recently delivered the keynote speech at a teaching conference for medical school faculty. The theme of the conference was Technology in Teaching, and the organizers asked that my keynote serve as a motivational pitch to get faculty members interested in using technology in their

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Is It Relevant to Students?

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

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