Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, relatively few instructors had used web-based conferencing for teaching and learning. With the shift in the spring of 2020, many instructors suddenly found themselves teaching online courses, and many others ...
Pete Burkholder recently published an interesting article in this newsletter questioning the widespread push in higher education for “engaging” student activities. He first adopts Jose Eos Trinidad et al.’s (2020) definition of engagement as “enjoyment” ...
Escape rooms have become a cultural phenomenon over the past few years. Groups of people pay to be put into “locked” rooms they can escape only by solving a series of clues. But now education ...
I dread the moments when I look out into a classroom and see a collection of blank stares or thumbs clicking on tiny keypads: a pool of disengaged students, despite what I thought was a ...
Have you ever struggled to get students to do required readings? Do your students treat them as optional? Perhaps they do the readings, but when you ask them to engage in critical discussion or think ...
To: My Students From: Your Teacher Re: A Better Learning Experience This is just a brief note to let you know how committed I am to making this a good course. But I can’t do my best teaching ...
Successfully leading and guiding student discussions requires a range of fairly sophisticated communication skills. At the same time teachers are monitoring what’s being said about the content, they must keep track of the discussion itself. ...
The first time my middle school-aged son attended a Major League ballgame, he was astounded by what the players were doing on the field before the game. He saw some of his favorite players contorting ...
Last week’s post encouraged us to reconsider what student engagement means and entails. Today I’d like to explore just some of the things teachers can do to better promote it. I’m offering six ideas here ...
More than 600 students answered 17 survey items about one of their courses in order to help researchers explore factors that influence students’ use of office hours. The research goal was to identify ways ...