I’m the midst of trying to learn a knitting technique and discovering how easily I forget what I know about learning. Perhaps you’ve had similar experiences, but what I really want us to remember is how new learning experiences challenge students more intensely than they
When I first started working on teaching and learning, I focused on teaching. The instructional development program I headed at Penn State had as its mission “to support faculty efforts to maintain and improve instructional quality.” I read, thought, and wrote about characteristics known to
I hadn’t given any thought to what student success means because like other widely used descriptors, its meaning appears obvious. And then I read Weatherton and Schussle’s (2021) essay. They point out that we think we know we’re talking about but in fact success has
How many of your students still cram for exams? Students should be studying just before tests, but it should not be their first time seriously looking at course materials. Multiple research findings make clear that one frenzied period of study right before the exam generally
Teachers do have power, but it’s not absolute—as witnessed by students’ ongoing, widespread use of cell phones during class and online instruction. While policies abound, enforcement has proven difficult. True, faculty can prevent most students from using their phones, but as Karlin (2021) points out,
I sometimes come to column topics in roundabout ways. The way to this one started with a recent study of power in student-formed, leaderless, peer groups. The researchers were interested in exploring the power that group members perceived in one another. They discovered a mediating
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Students often avoid discussing how they’re working together in a group, especially if the subject is the group’s effectiveness. I think we sometimes forget how uncomfortable group work makes students feel. They do all sorts of things with each other socially, but those activities don’t
Most teaching careers last for years; for many of us, a lifetime. With noses to the grindstone, we don’t usually take stock of where we are in light of where we’ve been. We know that we aren’t teaching as we did in the beginning. The
Names matter. We have linguist S. I. Hayakawa to thank for making clear why: language influences how we think and act. And although it is possible to become overly sensitive to language, more often we err on the side of not recognizing its profound influence.
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