Research on active learning is moving beyond the “does it work better than lecture?” question to explore how particular kinds of active learning experiences influence learning. How appropriate and welcome! Do some of its many techniques promote learning better than others? Which ones? And what
A national survey found that Generation Z students (defined as those born between 1995 and 2012) ranked YouTube as their favorite learning tool (Overland, 2018). Yet many instructors think to themselves, “There is no way I could create videos like the professionals.” The good news
Students take a 10-question quiz at the beginning of class, and it’s graded immediately. The instructor provides some of the answers; the rest are discussed with consideration of the pros and cons of various answers. Students take notes on the quiz during this discussion. The
Being able to track your learning, make adjustments, and recognize when you have learned—those are skills that make a difference, both professionally and personally. Barry Zimmerman (1986), known for his work on self-regulated learning, defines learners with those skills as being “metacognitively, motivationally, and behaviorally
It is mid-semester, and you are excited as you have spent a lot of time creating content for your course and designing online activities to engage students. You are wondering whether and how students are using these materials. Below, I highlight six types of readily
I’m a big fan of syllabi used well. On the crassest level—and it’s important—syllabi are contracts between faculty and students, contracts that administration holds us to. When a student makes a complaint, administrators want to be able to pull out the course syllabus and use
Virtual reality (VR) has evolved from a technology of the future into a practical educational tool for students to interact with the world in ways previously not possible. Many K–12 and college courses use free, off-the-shelf VR apps, such as Google Expeditions and Google Earth
I’m thinking of those annoying things that students do, such as getting to class late, leaving early, sleeping in class, misusing electronic devices, and talking or eating during class. Your list might be different, but what really matters is how we respond to annoyances and
When a course is offered in multiple sections, sometimes at different locations, and taught by different instructors and worthy of transfer credit, it’s important that the students taking it have the same course experiences. Depending on the course, there may be some or no flexibility
In most disciplines, students learn how to communicate using a mix of text, tables, and figures—how their instructors were taught to communicate. But today, complex infographics are among the most powerful means of communicating the significance of information. They take brute data, distill it down
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