Free riders—those who don’t do their fair share of work in a group—frustrate students, especially when they get the same grade as everyone else in the group. A lot of students don’t realize there are ways groups can deal with free riders—ways that make it
To help direct students in their learning during the pandemic, we as faculty have been tasked with harnessing a range of digital technologies. Acquiring these additional skills has been easier for some, more challenging for others. Faculty at Northern Arizona University, where I teach, moved
I read a quote this week that has been following me around. It expresses a view fairly common among faculty, I suspect. The article (D’Abate et al., 2018) in which it appears focuses on the need for teachers to support students’ work in groups. The
Plagiarism detection reports from companies such as Turnitin are the primary way that faculty identify cheating on written work. But my experience in working with hundreds of faculty has shown me that most misread these reports because they have not received proper instruction on how
In recent years, student dropout rates in STEM programs have received a lot of attention. The problem is often referred as the leaky pipeline, and that is a harmful metaphor. It implies that we can “plug the holes” (Cannady et al., 2014), or worse, that
Research has demonstrated that visuals improve learning for many students. Medina (2008) notes that “we learn and remember best through pictures, not through written or spoken words” (p. 1), while Dunlap and Lowenthal (2016) state that “people learn and remember more efficiently and effectively through
My interest in making exams more about learning and less about grades continues. I’m also a realist: exams will always be about grades. But could they please be at least a bit more about learning? The best way to increase learning focus is with strategies
I am proposing an assignment that grows out of an interesting piece of research (Neu, 2015) in which students collected images of those they’d approach and avoid as potential group members. When interviewed, students identified the social cues, conveyed by features such as hair style,
Few metaphors have generated more objections than equating students to customers and education to a product. It faces challenges on multiple fronts. Tuition dollars do not buy grades or a degree. Education does not come with a money-back guarantee, and the customer is not always
Universal Design for Learning guidelines suggest that institutions provide a text alternative to videos, podcasts, and other media that use sound. This has traditionally been a laborious process of transcribing content manually after a recording is made. Although some faculty instead script their audio ahead
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