“Storms come and go fast. When the downpour reaches the ground, the water runs away quickly—little gets into the ground. Drizzle offers a different image—fine, slow, silent, and yet penetrating. Drizzle soaks into the ground. The Chinese have a saying: ‘Real education is like the
Concerns over group dysfunction continue to worry faculty who use groups and prevent others from using them. We have some research-based evidence as to the problems students experience in groups. A 2008 study by Regina Pauli and colleagues used student responses to an empirically developed
The academic year begins again—new courses and new collections of students in them. One of the best parts of our profession is this regular opportunity to start over, to begin with a clean slate. And what might make the courses we are about to begin
For a variety of reasons, we’re starting this year with a series on the syllabus. Most of us consider it an important course resource. We devote time and energy into its development; it’s frequently the tool we use to plan and revise our courses. But
I had grabbed a few items in an unfamiliar grocery store and headed for the express checkout line—10 items or less. I queued up and noticed that the person in front of me had a full cart. I counted the items: 35. Well, that took
Active learning approaches frequently promote student conversations about the content. As students try to explain things to each other, argue about answers, and ask questions, learning happens. We can hear it and see it. It’s why we teach.
Graham Broad’s piece reminded me of a short critique John Kenneth Galbraith did of his teaching: “How I Could Have Done Much Better.” The honesty of both is courageous and refreshing. Most of us were trained as content experts. We learned to teach by doing
Thirty-six percent. That’s how much of their grade students believe should be based on effort (Altman et al., 2019). They said 38 percent in one previous survey (Adams, 2005) and 40 percent in another (Zinn et al., 2011). That was more than double the faculty
A new study in Active Learning in Higher Education (see reference below) motivated me to take another look at the research on student self-assessment. It’s decidedly mixed, which isn’t unexpected given the range of self-assessment tasks used in the research, not to mention cohort and
I’ve been doing some work on resources related to group work and have been impressed yet again by the amount of scholarship being done on groups both in classrooms and online. Faculty use and study groups in virtually every field. And as a sidebar, I
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