Tag: learning commons

Practicing What You Teach

Zoom training with PAL facilitators

The power of peer educators to help your students practice We worked hard to become experts in our fields. We faculty work hard to plan and teach our classes. And now a pandemic has us working hard to continue and refine the shift to remote teaching. As professionals in teaching within higher education during trying…Continue Reading Practicing What You Teach

Teaching and learning resources for these trying times

We’ve all been in a crunch over the past week and a half as the spread and unknown reach of the Coronavirus sent us all on many directions. During this time, our colleagues have been learning new systems like Microsoft Teams and TechSmith Relay, and our students have been trying to adjust to our online…Continue Reading Teaching and learning resources for these trying times

The Tutoring Cycle as a Tool for Active Learning

Considering a tutoring approach for working with students during office hours The Learning Commons at the University of Portland has made strides in professionalizing our tutors through training. Our syllabus includes 11 hours of live face-to-face training modules. In our training, trainees learn how the tutoring cycle provides structure for our tutoring sessions. As a faculty…Continue Reading The Tutoring Cycle as a Tool for Active Learning

Lesson Planning: At the Intersection of Bloom’s Taxonomy and Knowledge Dimensions

students sitting around a table in the tutoring center

Revisiting Bloom’s Taxonomy In the 1950’s Benjamin Bloom and other researchers collaborated to create what is known as Bloom’s Taxonomy of cognitive processes. This has been revised over the years and includes today six cognitive dimensions: Remember: recall facts and basic concepts (e.g., define, list, state) Understand: explain ideas or concepts (e.g., describe, explain, summarize)…Continue Reading Lesson Planning: At the Intersection of Bloom’s Taxonomy and Knowledge Dimensions

Making thinking visible through questions

Two young women sit at a table and look intently at a document. It is clear they are working together.

Before we initiated tutor training in our programs in the Learning Commons, it was common for peer assistants to do more explaining and less asking. Nowadays, questions increasingly play a major role in our peer assistance sessions. While our trained peer assistants may know by heart that the role of the tutor is to facilitate…Continue Reading Making thinking visible through questions