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Faculty Focus - Faculty Focus publishes articles on effective teaching strategies for the college classroom, both face-to-face and online. Sign-up for our free newsletter.

Faculty Focus - Faculty Focus publishes articles on effective teaching strategies for the college classroom, both face-to-face and online. Sign-up for our free newsletter.
Related:  Active Learning, CollegeEffective TeachingFaculty Focus Articles

Active Learning - Center for Instructional Technology Active learning includes any activity in which every student must think, create, or solve a problem. Below, Dr. Richard M. Active learning can range from brief activities punctuating a lecture (as demonstrated by Dr. allow you to assess what the students have learned and where they need helpgive students practice with the course materials and ways of thinking, andallow students to assess their own learning. Active Learning Techniques In active learning, students must engage with the content during class. Think – Pair – Share The instructor states an open-ended question.Individual students spent a minute or two to think about and write a response.Students are directed to pair up with a partner to discuss their responses.The instructor reconvenes the class after a few minutes and calls on individual students to share the pair’s responses. One minute papers/Muddiest point PowerPoint Jeopardy Peer Instruction During class, the instructor pauses and asks students a conceptual question. Group Work

20 video project ideas to engage students 1. Create a personal narrative Everyone has a story, and when we share our own experiences, they can be a motivating factor for others -- and help us reflect on our lives and choices. Narratives can be about students themselves, a fictional character or historical person. a simple smartphone recording uploaded to the Google Drive mobile appadd a video to a slide in a shared Google Slides presentation using the Alice Keeler Webcam Record extension for Google Chromeuse the webcam option in the Screencastify Chrome extensionrecord a video using the ClipChamp webcam utility (and upload to Drive, YouTube or others) Check out 24 ways to create great classroom video with Screencastify for more ideas! 2. The people around us and around the world are living history. Check out Catch the Flipgrid Fever! 3. Set up something with a camera so it won't move (on a tripod or otherwise). 4. People communicate big, important ideas like this all the time using webinars. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10.

Moodle Jacob Lund/Shutterstock.com Summary: Would you be interested in the ultimate list of free tools for teachers? At the following post you will find 324 Free Tools for Teachers separated in 18 educational technology categories. Enjoy! Free Educational Technology for Teachers Do you support Free Technology for Teachers? I am a great supporter of Free Educational Technology. 19 Free Tools To Create Infographics For Teachers amCharts Visual Editor This editor allows you to use amCharts as a web service. 19 Free Text To Speech Tools For Teachers AnnouncifyListen to your web. Listen Text-to-Speech Voices with the Right Authoring Tool Vendor Find, choose and compare the top eLearning Authoring Tool Companies featuring Text-to Speech Voices! 21 Free Digital Storytelling Tools For Teachers AnimotoUnlimited Videos For Educators. 15 Free Podcast Tools For Teachers 28 Free Survey, Polls, and Quizzes Tools For Teachers addpollThe easiest way to create polls, surveys and html forms... on the web.

Six Myths About a Teaching Persona What myths about constructing a teaching persona merit review? Teachers regularly exchange general advice about how to establish an identity in the classroom. Like most myths, these contain kernels of truth, but we believe their conclusions require a critical look. What are your beliefs about teaching persona, how it develops, and the role it plays in student learning? Myth 1: Try to be like your own best teacher: “The best way to develop your persona is by doing what your best teachers did.”What if your best teacher isn’t at all like you as a person? Myth 2: Teach the course you’d like to take: “Teach the course using the approaches that motivated you and helped you learn successfully.”Are your classes full of students who are just like you when you were a student? Myth 3: Consider your teaching persona as a mask: “Teaching is really a performance and the classroom is a stage.”Masks may bear some resemblance to you, but a mask is something you put on to hide who you are.

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26 Questions to Ask Students in The First Week of School August 12, 2014 Today as I was browsing through my Twitter feeds I stumbled upon this list of questions every student should be able to answer. The list is created by Terry Heick and spans a wide variety of topics relevant to students learning. I view this list as a great material to use with your student in the first week of this school year. Get students to work together and answer the questions featured in this selection. The importance of integrating questioning in your teaching pedagogy is two fold: first it provides students with an outlet to vociferate their voice and actively participate in the formulation of their learning needs. Here is a round-up of the 26 questions students should be able to answer. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26.

untitled 10 Teacher Picks for Best Tech Tools in Pre-K to 12th Grade If there was ever a year for teachers to beg, borrow, and steal good ideas, this is it. All good teachers know this is how we get better, and this is a curated list of tech tools that I have begged and borrowed from others—and I didn’t have to steal any of these as there has never been a year when teachers were more generous. Based on my own teaching of college students as well as the responses of 1,461 virtual learning academy participants—pre-K to 12 teachers and administrators—to survey questions on impactful tools that I conducted from May to December 2020, and over 70 webinars and virtual learning sessions I’ve conducted in that time, these are the top teacher-tested tech tools I have identified. My learning has happened with my own students and through my own mistakes, and I received great ideas from educators across the U.S. and around the world. I will continue to use these tools and recommend their use regardless of student level or how we deliver education moving forward. 10.

Facilitating Discussion: Five Factors that Boost Student Engagement It’s another of those phrases frequently used and almost universally endorsed but not much talked about in terms of implementation. What does facilitating discussion mean? How should a teacher do it? Two faculty researchers, Finn and Schrodt (2016), frame the problem this way: “The literature is replete with descriptive accounts and anecdotal evidence but lacks the kinds of empirical investigations that could create theoretical coherency in this body of work” (p. 446). They decided our understanding of discussion facilitation could be deepened with an operational definition, one that resides in an instrument to measure it quantitatively. Beyond developing and validating the instrument, they wondered what learning-related outcomes does discussion facilitation accomplish. Developing the instrument was the first task. Affirms students’ discussion: This aspect of discussion facilitation accounted for 45 percent of the variance, which was significantly higher than the other four factors.

Writing Good Multiple Choice Test Questions | Center for Teaching | Vanderbilt University By Cynthia J. Brame, CFT Assistant Director Multiple choice test questions, also known as items, can be an effective and efficient way to assess learning outcomes. Multiple choice test items have several potential advantages: Versatility: Multiple choice test items can be written to assess various levels of learning outcomes, from basic recall to application, analysis, and evaluation. Reliability: Reliability is defined as the degree to which a test consistently measures a learning outcome. Validity: Validity is the degree to which a test measures the learning outcomes it purports to measure. The key to taking advantage of these strengths, however, is construction of good multiple choice items. A multiple choice item consists of a problem, known as the stem, and a list of suggested solutions, known as alternatives. Constructing an Effective Stem 1. 2.

Lecture Me. Really. Photo BEFORE the semester began earlier this fall, I went to check out the classroom where I would be teaching an introductory American history course. Like most classrooms at my university, this one featured lots of helpful gadgets: a computer console linked to an audiovisual system, a projector screen that deploys at the touch of a button and USB ports galore. Perhaps my request was unusual. In many quarters, the active learning craze is only the latest development in a long tradition of complaining about boring professors, flavored with a dash of that other great American pastime, populist resentment of experts. In the humanities, there are sound reasons for sticking with the traditional model of the large lecture course combined with small weekly discussion sections. Today’s vogue for active learning is nothing new. Eliot was a chemist, so perhaps we should take his criticisms with a grain of salt. Those who want to abolish the lecture course do not understand what a lecture is.

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