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
Expand your teaching toolkit for both online and face-to-face courses In my last entry, I explained how principles of facilitating peer-assisted learning (PAL) groups in the Learning Commons can support our own thinking as we design courses and learning plans. This blog entry is a continuation of this discussion. In the Learning Commons, designing PAL…Continue Reading Blending Collaborative Learning and Learning Strategies to Enhance Online Engagement
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
Recently, UP’s College of Arts & Sciences held its annual book-club reading of a work on pedagogy. This year’s title was Make it Stick: the Science of Successful Learning (P. Brown/H. Roediger/M. McDaniel, 2014), and Jeffrey White led faculty in a discussion. If you were among the participants, did the book’s methods “to learn better…Continue Reading Sticky Skills
Over this past summer, a couple books that focus on the role of recall in learning came to my attention. Make it stick (Brown, Roediger, and McDaniel (2014)) and Small Teaching by James Lang (2016) both claim that retrieval practice is essential for durable learning. The authors argue that practicing recall builds strong connections in…Continue Reading Providing the opportunity to forget…and remember