My recent column on teaching in troubling times mentions the need for flexibility, and one of my dear colleagues noted that the idea of flexibility needed to be fleshed out. I agree, with one of my first thoughts being I don’t think I’ve ever read
New findings about test anxiety are providing a more nuanced understanding of how it affects performance on exams. So far, the response to students overly anxious about exams has been encouragement: “calm down” and “get yourself under control.” That’s been the advice offered by teachers
In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, as we deal with closed campuses and everything going online, we find ourselves teaching in the face of an array of circumstances that make learning difficult. The undercurrents of the unknown run deep. There are our own health
“Students don’t like group work, especially the bright students.” You hear that a lot from faculty; it’s a widely held opinion. But how much do we actually know about student attitudes toward working with others? I thought it might be useful to explore what the
Many faculty don’t expect to learn a lot from those end-of-course student comments. Students don’t write much, don’t always think carefully about what they write, and have been known to make ugly comments. Low expectations would seem to be justified, and that’s unfortunate. Because they’ve
Research on active learning is moving beyond the “does it work better than lecture?” question to explore how particular kinds of active learning experiences influence learning. How appropriate and welcome! Do some of its many techniques promote learning better than others? Which ones? And what
Being able to track your learning, make adjustments, and recognize when you have learned—those are skills that make a difference, both professionally and personally. Barry Zimmerman (1986), known for his work on self-regulated learning, defines learners with those skills as being “metacognitively, motivationally, and behaviorally
I’m thinking of those annoying things that students do, such as getting to class late, leaving early, sleeping in class, misusing electronic devices, and talking or eating during class. Your list might be different, but what really matters is how we respond to annoyances and
Concern over large courses (especially required ones) persists even as their economic viability has made them an increasingly accepted part of higher education. We’re not expecting them to go away any time soon, but that doesn’t minimize the challenges associated with teaching and learning in
Are your students using the internet to support their study efforts? In a recent survey of 139 first-year medical students enrolled in a physiology course, 98 percent reported that they were looking at physiology content online (O’Malley et al., 2019). Almost 90 percent of them
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