There are dozens of teaching methods that a teacher might use, but instead of emphasizing their differences, I want to focus on what they have in common. These are practices that all teaching methods value. Used correctly, they are universal components of effective teaching. I
Are you sitting down? Good. Because I have a shocking confession.
For the past few years, I’ve reserved 40 minutes of class time each semester to discuss bias in student evaluations of teaching (SETs) with my students. You know, the ones who are actually
As a student, I would often find myself buried in textbooks, meticulously reviewing notes, highlighting my textbook, and relistening to lectures I had recorded only to score an average grade or lower on my exams. At times, it felt like the harder I studied,
Look around you. Unless you are sequestered alone, there is a good chance a human around you is looking at their phone. If you are in a crowd, many people are probably scrolling through TikTok videos or Instagram reels, both short and often accompanied
One of the strongest predictors of how easily and well a person will learn a topic is their prior knowledge about it. The more one already knows, the easier it is to learn more. Because of this fact, students often struggle more with introductory courses,
A true story: by the time I’d reached the ninth grade, I had a well-earned reputation as a jerk, albeit one with good grades. I was a jerk to my friends, a jerk to my teachers, a jerk in class, a jerk in the cafeteria.
On a recent family hike, we tried out a new trail. Winding four miles through forests of Douglas firs, oaks, and ponderosa pines, it switchbacked, climbed, descended, and wove through verdant vistas. Not all in the party were enthralled by the natural splendor, and I
I recently wrote about the need for faculty to up their game on evidence-based teaching practices. Students are coming to us with a wider range of experience and prior knowledge because of COVID disruptions to learning. Our increased use of evidence-based practices is essential to
Psychologists and educators have studied learning for well over 100 years, and we still don’t know the specific conditions that result in learning. If we did, then teaching would be easy. A teacher would simply recreate the specific conditions, and students would always learn. We
It happens almost every time: I’ll be running a workshop on assignment design, or on curricular reform, or on day-to-day instruction. Someone will raise their hand and say they teach chemistry or sociology or art history. They’ll look bashful, or angry, or curmudgeonly. “I can’t
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