The relatively new Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in Psychology journal has a great feature called a “Teacher-Ready Research Review.” The examples I’ve read so far are well organized, clearly written, full of practical implications, and well referenced. This one on multiple-choice (m/c) tests (mostly
Have you considered adding five-minute student interviews to your teaching tool kit? Before you calculate how long it would take to interview all of your students and dismiss this idea out of hand, consider how student interviews provide a unique setting and opportunity for you
Research has documented the value of reflective journaling in both face-to-face and online courses. It is especially beneficial for beginning students in first-year seminar courses. But I hear you asking, “What professor has the time read a whole stack of journals?” And I would have
Linda Suskie’s Assessing Student Learning documents a wide variety of common assessment errors. They result from the subjective nature of grades in all but the most factual subjects. Many failures point to the need for more objectivity and a better system of accountability, including leniency,
Wide consensus confirms the usefulness of rubrics. For instructors, rubrics expedite grading with standards; at the same time, they reinforce learning objectives and standardize course curricula. For students, rubrics provide formative guidelines for assignments while—ideally—spurring reflection and self-assessment.
Decades of research on learning styles have resulted in widespread familiarity with the concept. Ask most students what kind of learners they are and they will often answer with a learning style descriptor—visual, verbal, kinesthetic, auditory, converger. Many will tell you they know because they’ve
Most teachers don’t list grading as one of their favorite parts of teaching. If you’re conscientious about it, it’s a hard, time-consuming task. Dishearteningly, efforts to provide students with quality feedback aren’t always appreciated, or at least they don’t appear to be.
“At a superficial level, everyone ‘knows’ what mentoring is. But closer examination indicates [such wide variation . . .] that the concept is devalued, because everyone is using it loosely, without precision, and it may become a short-term fad” (p. 3). That observation was made
Like a lot of terms in higher education, low-stakes grading doesn’t always refer to the same thing. In some cases it means small assignments that don’t count for much but occur regularly, as quizzes are often used. Low-stakes grading can also mean there’s a de-emphasis
The following conceptions of feedback were offered by a group of students studying to become physical therapists. They were asked to recall a situation during their time in higher education when they felt they’d experienced feedback. Then they were asked a series of questions about
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