Consider this scenario: Two sections of an art history course taught by two different instructors. Both professors show slides of paintings—six paintings each by 12 different painters, a total of 72 paintings. Professor A shows all six paintings by the artist, one after the other.
Class discussions present teachers with a number of different challenges, including the often limited number who participate, those who make comments but do so without having done the reading, and the many students who, as Emily Gravett notes, treat class discussions as “down time.” (p.
Maybe we should be making a stronger pitch for student-led study groups. There’s all sorts of research documenting how students can learn from each other. But, as regularly noted here and elsewhere, that learning doesn’t happen automatically, and some of us worry that it’s not
Here’s a description that will resonate with many faculty: “Whole-class discussion often fell flat, so I shifted to heavier reliance on small-group discussion as a warm-up for talk in the larger group. This change got students talking, but not necessarily reading, and the talk frequently
The easier description of metacognition is “thinking about thinking.” To be metacognitive implies having knowledge of cognitive processes and having the ability to regulate them. In the case of students, that’s knowing about study strategies, their effects on learning, and the ability to act on
It’s a senior-level ecology course and one in which students must develop a research grant proposal. They do their first draft of the proposal after three days in the field and then that draft is reviewed in a process that simulates how grant proposals are
The definition of self-efficacy is straightforward: “a person’s perception that he or she has the skill and capability to undertake a particular task.” (p. 1918) It’s important to teachers because of its “consistent” and “demonstrable” links to student learning outcomes. If students believe they can
There’s no question that students learn an enormous amount when they assume the role of teacher. That’s why student presentations hold such great potential to enhance student ownership of the content. The problem is that while the student presenters learn much, in most cases the
What if there were a simple classroom exercise that could create positive and lasting effects on the academic performance and persistence of students—in particular, students who are under-represented in your field?
It turns out there is. More accurately, there are a number of such exercises—let’s call
To say that technology has increased multitasking qualifies as a classic understatement. People walk and text, they talk and check Facebook, they shop during lunch, and they study with headphones on. At this time in our culture, it’s permissible to be on your phone anywhere.
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