I’ve been writing for years that we need to teach in ways that encourage students to take more responsibility for their learning. Recently, it became clear that my thinking on this needed more detail and depth. I’ve been saying that it means students should be
How well a class functions is the result of both what the teacher does and what the students do. The way we solicit course evaluation feedback reinforces students’ tendency to see the teacher as the one who’s responsible for whether it was a good class.
If you asked students to tell you what makes a course hard, what would they say? Would their answers be the same as yours? Would it be a problem if they weren’t?
When it comes to class notes, we all know that students would much rather get the teacher’s notes or PowerPoints than write their own for lots of reasons. They’re getting the content straight from the expert. It makes note-taking less work, and they don’t have
Why do students come to class unprepared? Because teachers tend to lecture on the material, and students find it most efficient to let them lecture first and then read later. But if your students came to class prepared, would they acquire a deeper understanding of
New college students come to postsecondary education with some accurate expectations. They expect that college will be harder than high school. Most anticipate having to study more. But they also expect that those study approaches that served them well in high school will work equally
My college recently acquired access to tens of thousands of new journals and books via the online databases. The idealists among us would expect droves of students to have raced from their Xboxes and their vehicles to begin sifting through the over a million new
Procrastination is a widespread problem among students—and, in reality, a fairly widespread problem across North America. But with students, it’s a behavior that compromises learning in a number of different ways. Students end up not having enough time to deeply interact with the material, so
As the name implies, self-regulated learning is “self-determined and active efforts to initiate activities targeted towards learning goals, to perform them effectively, to monitor progress and to adapt them if necessary.” (p. 455) Said a bit more simply, it’s learners taking charge of their learning—recognizing
In almost a decade of teaching, I find myself lamenting that I still have to remind students to arrive on time, bring the proper materials, and pay attention to lectures. Despite admonitions and penalizing grades, students still use cellphones, do the bare minimum to pass
Magna Publications © 2023 All rights reserved
