TEACHING TIPS. Want Students to Come to Class Prepared? Try Rolling the Dice. Want more teaching tips? Browse the Pedagogy Unbound archives. For many instructors, myself included, chance is the enemy. I know that I can’t control everything that will happen during class time. But I aim to prepare well enough that, for the most part, things go according to plan. Yes, there can be happy surprises when a class discussion unexpectedly takes on a life of its own and goes to new and exciting places. But most of the time I worry that if I don’t keep a firm hand on the steering wheel, the class will slip off track, become unfocused, or get bogged down in irrelevant minutiae.
Whenever I have a bad class, the lesson I usually take home is that I didn’t prepare enough. But a couple of tips I recently stumbled upon actually embrace chance as a tool to help instructors encourage active learning and participation among students. The first idea comes from Peter Fernald, a professor of psychology at the University of New Hampshire until his retirement in 2012. Best Practices for Teaching and Learning - Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning. Faculty Focus on Course Redesign The Guidelines on Learning that Inform Teaching Based on Ken Bain “What the Best College Teachers Do” Developed by the faculty of the University of New South Wales (UNSW Australia) 1. Effective learning is supported when students are actively engaged in the learning process. Bonwell, C. & Eison, J. 1991, Active Learning: Creating Excitement in the Classroom, ERIC Clearinghouse on Higher Education, Washington DC, viewed 20 June 2007, Chickering, A.
& Gamson Z. 1987, “Seven principles for good practice in undergraduate education”, Reprinted by University of Illinois, Springfield, viewed 20 June 2007, 2. Jenkins, A., Blackman, T., Lindsay, R. & Paton-Salzberg, R. 1998, “Teaching and research: students’ perspectives and policy implications”, Studies in Higher Education, vol. 23, no.2, p. 132.McInnis, C. 2003, “Exploring the nexus between research and teaching”, in R. 3. Ramsden, P. 1992, Learning to Teach in Higher Education, Routledge, London, p. 102. 4. 5. 6.
Theories of Learning. A Faculty Observation Model for Online Instructors: Observing Faculty Members in the Online Classroom. An Approach that Decreases Failure Rates in Introductory Courses. September 28, 2012 By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD in Instructional Design This study begins with some pretty bleak facts.
It lists other research documenting the failure rates for introductory courses in biology, chemistry, computer science, engineering, mathematics, and physics. Some are as high as 85 percent; only two are less than 30 percent. That’s a question that has already been addressed in previous research, and this study builds on previously published work by this research team. Here’s a brief rundown of the active learning and formative assessment activities they included in the course.
Socratic lecturing, which meant frequent use of questions. As for their hypothesis: Did failure rates in the course decline, and was course rigor maintained? Reference: Freeman, S., Hauk, D., and Wenderoth, M.P. (2011). Reprinted from “An Approach that Decreases Failure Rates in Introductory Courses” The Teaching Professor, 25.8 (2011): 4-5. Scaffolding Student Learning: Tips for Getting Started.
October 15, 2012 By: Vicki Caruana, PhD in Instructional Design Many of us who teach in higher education do not have a teaching background, nor do we have experience in curriculum development. We know our content areas and are experts in our fields, but structuring learning experiences for students may or may not be our strong suit. We’ve written a syllabus (or were handed one to use) and have developed some pretty impressive assessments, projects, and papers in order to evaluate our students’ progress through the content.
Sometimes we discover that students either don’t perform well on the learning experiences we’ve designed or they experience a great deal of frustration with what they consider high stakes assignments. Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978) proposes that it’s important to determine the area (zone) between what a student can accomplish unaided and what that same student can accomplish with assistance. For examples of scaffolding assignments, go here » Love the One You’re With: Creating a Classroom Community. January 28, 2013 By: Cynde Gregory in Effective Classroom Management It’s the first day of class. They shuffle in, spot similar life-forms, and slip in with that group. Hipsters sporting wild hair and tats, buttoned-up and serious young scholars, middle-aged moms and dads, maybe a couple of aging hippies.
One or two sad souls choose spots isolated from the others; they don’t want to identify with them for reasons of insecurity, arrogance, or something else. Every good teacher knows that learning doesn’t happen in isolation. Here’s the question: How do you get them to connect? From the moment the class passed the threshold, I feared this was one pot of stew that was never going to mingle flavors.
I opened my mouth to say, “Class dismissed.” “Huh?” “Shove them out of the way and make two circles facing each other.” “Huh?” “You with the gorgeously tattooed skull, you’re in charge. He glared. The circles formed, the inner circle facing the outer one. “You are speed dating,” I said. Silence. SEVEN PRINCIPLES FOR GOOD PRACTICE IN. Joseph R. Codde, Ph.D., Professor and Director - Educational Technology Certificate Program Counseling, Educational Psychology, and Special Education Department Michigan State University Adapted from Arthur W.
Chickering's and Zelda F. The following is a brief summary of the Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education as compiled in a study supported by the American Association of Higher education, the Education Commission of States, and The Johnson Foundation. I utilized the Faculty Inventory presented at the back of this book to share with you the practices I apply in my teaching. Frequent student-faculty contact in and out of classes is the most important factor in student motivation and involvement. I make a point to talk with my students on a personal level and learn about their educational and career goals. Learning is enhanced when it is more like a team effort than a solo race. Learning is not a spectator sport. Time plus energy equals learning. Professor Dancealot. A Syllabus Tip: Embed Big Questions.
April 16, 2012 By: Barbi Honeycutt, PhD in Instructional Design Much has been written about the course syllabus. It’s an important tool for classroom management, for setting the tone, for outlining expectations, and for meeting department and university requirements. It’s an essential document in a higher education course, but do your students read it? Here’s one strategy that will not only encourage your students to read the syllabus, but it will also allow you to stimulate discussion, create curiosity, and assess students’ knowledge on the first day of class.
Step 1: After you create your syllabus, go back to and take a closer look at your learning outcomes for the course. Step 2: After you have written at least one discussion question for each of your learning outcomes, think about which sections of your syllabus relate to each of the outcomes. Step 3: After you have embedded all of your discussion questions, you’re ready to share your course syllabus with your students.
Dr. [INFOGRAPHIC] Instructional Design Model: Gagné’s 9 Events of Instruction. This weekend I decided it was about time I created a new instructional design themed infographic. I’ve created a few in the past, which I’ve shared on my blog (here, here and here), and they’ve proven to be some of my most popular postings. How did I go about creating this infographic? For starters, I browsed online through some instructional design sites to get ideas for what I wanted my subject to be. In the past I’ve designed an infographic illustrating the ADDIE model and Kirkpatrick’s Levels of Evaluations so when I stumbled across an article mentioning Gagne’s 9 Events of Instruction I was intrigued.
Got any suggestions for an e-learning, instructional design or training themed infographic you’d like to see? Like this: Like Loading... STEP 1 Identify Problem - Enhancing Education. Identify Problem-Teaching Excellence & Educational Innovation - Carnegie Mellon University Carnegie Mellon University Skip navigation and jump directly to page content |Teaching Excellence & Educational Innovation| > Solve a Teaching Problem > Identify Problem Select the problem that best matches your situation: Attitudes & Motivation Prerequisite Knowledge & Preparedness Critical Thinking & Applying Knowledge Group Skills & Dynamics Group projects aren’t working.
Classroom Behavior & Etiquette Grading & Assessment This site supplements our 1-on-1 teaching consultations. Inclusive Learning Environment - Enhancing Education. The teaching-learning process is an inherently social act, and as instructors we need to be mindful of the quality of the social and emotional dynamics in our course, because they impact learning and performance. In fact, a well-established body of research has documented the effects of a “chilly classroom climate” on some students or groups of students, in particular women and other minorities (Hall, 1982).
Impact of climate on learning and performance Listed below are some of the ways in which classroom climate can impact learning, positively or negatively: Climate regulates the circulation and construction of knowledge. Climate impacts meta-curricular and citizenship skills. Climate engenders emotions that impact learning. Climate can channel energies away from learning or toward it. Climate communicates expectations placed upon students. Climate communicates power dynamics.
Climate impacts student persistence. Strategies to create a productive and inclusive climate Strive to be fair. Online Learning Resources on the Web. This is a collection of favorite websites to connect you to further links, provide you with some ideas and help you narrow down a search. I hope that you will find them useful. Let us know if you want to add any categories / websites. --Adapted from "Training and Instructional Design", Penn State University.Education Place--this is a good site for online games Instructional Technology--Though many design models exist, twelve authors impart their perspectives and address these design aspects as they impact their educational experiences.
MastersInEducationOnline--provides helpful information on the challenges students and recent graduates face; challenges such as selecting a teaching specialty, understanding career options and outlooks, and finding a quality online master's program Online Degree Programs by Directory of Schools earn online degrees from accredited universities, colleges, academies and institutions.Back to top Online Textbook. Back to top Lloyd's Gallery of Neat Stuff. TravelinEdMan.