As the term unfolds, many professors will be asking students to work productively in groups. While there’s lots of evidence to support collaborative learning, both in terms of knowledge gained and essential work skills honed, many professors are also faced with groups that don’t gel or fall under the dominion of one hyper-achiever, and the occasional…Continue Reading Making Group Work Work
Moving assessments online has many potential benefits. For one, you can free up class time for more group or active learning activities. Out of class, LMS-based quizzing eliminates the chore of manually grading objective multiple choice, true or false, or match questions. (This last one alone is enough to pique the interest of many instructors.) Some faculty, however, are concerned that,…Continue Reading Should You Worry About Cheating in Online Quizzes?
These two-dozen thoughts from various scholars, writers, and thinkers have us ponder the situation and purpose of teaching. As the quotations jostle, complement, and contradict each other, their philosophies may provoke us to think through and articulate our own classroom ideals….Continue Reading Thinking Through Teaching Quotations
Dear fellow teacher, Here’s a quartet of poems to enjoy with your coffee, during this five-minute break in your day. Best wishes, Lars Erik Larson, UP English” Can poetry teach us to become better teachers? In a word, no. But in its ability to remind us what it is to be human, poetry places us…Continue Reading The Poetry of Teaching
According to recent research, students learn best through distraction, ignorance, interruption, and frequent quitting. This may sound like nonsense on stilts. But according to New York Times science writer Benedict Carey (pictured), successful pedagogy will benefit from such counter-intuitive wisdom. Have a peek at this two-page summation of Carey’s book How We Learn: The Surprising…Continue Reading How We Learn: a Quick Summary