Faculty have access to more information about college teaching than ever before. Researchers have studied a host of instructional approaches and published results in myriad journals. Educators have shared summaries of and links to such studies informally on websites and through Twitter feeds. This is
The word “motivation” comes from a root that means “to move,” and really, motivation is about what moves us to begin something or to persist in a situation—in this case, a learning situation. Motivation is a driving force. It can be considered an external driving
We already do give students some choices. We let them choose paper topics, decide what to do for group projects, select subjects for artwork—and we’ve seen them struggle to make those choices. Most students don’t see selecting content as an opportunity to explore an area
They’re questions that grew out of theology professor Barbara Blodgett’s move to a new grading system. They’re questions that poke at the premises beneath grading and they’re relevant regardless of the grading system used. They’re not questions with easy answers but rather vexing queries with
It’s a choice Susan Taft gives her MBA students. The class can choose to take a written quiz at the beginning of every class session (they meet once a week) or they can participate in an oral activity she’s dubbed the hat trick. Here’s how
By the time the end of the course rolls around, it’s hard to think creatively about what to do on the last day. Depending on the course, the last day may be accompanied with feelings of joy, sadness, relief, or all three.
Many students don’t do the reading before class. Most surveys report that less than 50 percent of students have read the assigned material before it’s dealt with in class or online. Most faculty don’t need to be persuaded of this fact. They regularly deal with
What is it? The amount of work it takes to do well in a course? The amount of time it takes to complete the work assigned in a course? The amount of time students actually spend studying and completing assignments? It’s a term that’s often
To say that technology has increased multitasking qualifies as a classic understatement. People walk and text, they talk and check Facebook, they shop during lunch, and they study with headphones on. At this time in our culture, it’s permissible to be on your phone anywhere.
For many years, I have tried to explain what experiential education (EE) is to my colleagues. In the process, I often found myself bogged down in the technical jargon of my discipline (outdoor and adventure education) as well as the writings of thinkers such as
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