Drexel University is among several schools that offer students a free “test-drive” course before taking a full online class (Goodman 2017). This is a shortened version of a regular online course meant to allow students to determine whether online learning is right for them. Drexel
“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
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
Most institutions provide instructional design teams to support faculty in creating online courses. At my institution, each department has an assigned instructional designer, and most faculty members consider designers to be an indispensable part of the course development process. The same cannot be said for
In a recent New York Times article, researchers point out that popular self-paced “brain training” programs have not been demonstrated to improve performance in school or work (DeSteno, Breazeal, and Harris 2017). They chalk up the problem to the lack of social cues in online
Here’s a comment that’s got me thinking.
Kristie McAllum writes in Communication Education, “We have created a system that simply replaces helicopter parents with helicopter professors. . . . Through our constant availability to clarify criteria, explain instructions, provide micro-level feedback, and offer words of
When an exam approaches, virtually all students agree they need to study and most will, albeit with varying intensity. Most will study the same way they always have—using the strategies they think work. The question students won’t ask is: How should I study for this
Many faculty dread that end-of-semester email informing them that student evaluation feedback is available for viewing. Even instructors who routinely excel on numerical ratings find themselves struggling with students’ responses to open-ended questions, where inevitably one remark stands out in its harsh tone or offensive
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
Oh, how the tables do turn! Each semester, after quizzing, testing, and otherwise grading our students, they get to return the favor and rate their professors, and some of them can be harsher than we are on our most critical days. Because administrators incorporate these
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