Improving Students’ Learning With Effective Learning Techniques Many students are being left behind by an educational system that some people believe is in crisis. Improving educational outcomes will require efforts on many fronts, but a central premise of this monograph is that one part of a solution involves helping students to better regulate their learning through the use of effective learning techniques. Fortunately, cognitive and educational psychologists have been developing and evaluating easy-to-use learning techniques that could help students achieve their learning goals. In this monograph, we discuss 10 learning techniques in detail and offer recommendations about their relative utility. To offer recommendations about the relative utility of these techniques, we evaluated whether their benefits generalize across four categories of variables: learning conditions, student characteristics, materials, and criterion tasks. We attempted to provide thorough reviews for each technique, so this monograph is rather lengthy.
Questioning – Top Ten Strategies “Learn from yesterday, live for today, hope for tomorrow. The important thing is to not stop questioning.” – Albert Einstein Questioning is the very cornerstone of philosophy and education, ever since Socrates ( in our Western tradition) decided to annoy pretty much everyone by critiquing and harrying people with questions – it has been central to our development of thinking and our capacity to learn. Indeed, it is so integral to all that we do that it is often overlooked when developing pedagogy – but it as crucial to teaching as air is to breathing. We must ask: do we need to give questioning the thought and planning time something so essential to learning obviously deserves? Do we need to consciously teach students to ask good questions and not just answer them? Most research indicates that as much as 80% of classroom questioning is based on low order, factual recall questions. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. Q1. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. Added Extras: Like this: Like Loading...
Progressive Education Spring 2008 Progressive Education Why It’s Hard to Beat, But Also Hard to Find By Alfie Kohn RELATED PUBLICATIONS: * "What to Look for in a Classroom" (table) * "A Dozen Basic Guidelines for Educators" (list) If progressive education doesn’t lend itself to a single fixed definition, that seems fitting in light of its reputation for resisting conformity and standardization. Talk to enough progressive educators, in fact, and you’ll begin to notice certain paradoxes: Some people focus on the unique needs of individual students, while others invoke the importance of a community of learners; some describe learning as a process, more journey than destination, while others believe that tasks should result in authentic products that can be shared.[1] What It Is Despite such variations, there are enough elements on which most of us can agree so that a common core of progressive education emerges, however hazily. It’s not all or nothing, to be sure. What It Isn’t Why It Makes Sense Why It’s Rare 1. 2. 3.
The Myth About Homework Sachem was the last straw. Or was it Kiva? My 12-year-old daughter and I had been drilling social-studies key words for more than an hour. It was 11 p.m. Our entire evening had, as usual, consisted of homework and conversations (a.k.a. nagging) about homework. As the summer winds down, I'm dreading scenes like that one from seventh grade. Subscribe Now Get TIME the way you want it One Week Digital Pass — $4.99 Monthly Pay-As-You-Go DIGITAL ACCESS — $2.99 One Year ALL ACCESS — Just $30! learn.quinnipiac.edu/teaching/gettinghelp/documents/Harkness_Discussion.pdf The Collaborative offers a host of useful teaching resources for faculty members. Please note that details on some resources listed below are viewable only to members of the Quinnipiac community. Welcome New Faculty (login required)This page offers an overview of the resources provided by the Department of Academic Affairs. Guide to Successful PracticesThis guide is a portfolio of teaching strategies that work. Technology and Teaching Technology Center (login required)The Technology Center provides diagnoses and repair for your computer, network access, software, document scanning, equipment lending, pdf creation, and much more.Knowledge Base (login required) Have a question? Back to top
What if You Only Had 5 Minutes to Inspire a Student? - Finding Common Ground First impressions are important. We know this. We've heard about it in commercials and read about it in books. In an excellently written Education Week Teacher commentary, Pernille Ripp wrote that "most of us make our biggest mistake on our very first day." "Sure, I laughed with the students and made noises about our "class community." As a former teacher, I can relate to Pernille's commentary. But what about the days after that? The very first impression we make with students is the most important but every day we have the opportunity to make a first impression...on their learning. At least that is what Mark Barnes thinks. "Highly motivated students may be better equipped to listen to lengthy lectures and 30-minute lessons, but they'll learn the material equally well, and perhaps better, if they investigate the content after instruction that lasts five minutes or less. Let's face it, we can all relate. What is a Five-Minute Teacher? In Visible Learning, Hattie writes,
The 20% Project (like Google) In My Class *Update: If you’d like to learn more about running your own 20% Project – check out our latest post: Designing 20% Time in Education I recently assigned a new project to my 11th grade English students: The 20% Project. Although it’s called a “project”, that term is merely for student understanding and lack of a better word. This project is based on the “20 percent time” Google employees have to work on something other than their job description. It has been well documented, and Google has exponentially grown as a company while giving this 20 percent time. An Influential Idea Katherine von Jan explains how Google’s idea came to be in her article, “Pursue Passion: Demand Google 20% Time at School”: “Google’s “20% Time”, inspired by Sergey Brin’s and Larry Page’s Montessori School experience, is a philosophy and policy that every Google employee spend 20% of their time (the equivalent of a full work day each week) working on ideas and projects that interest that employee. The 20% Project* 1.