For many years, I have tried to explain what experiential education (EE) is to my colleagues. In the process, I often found myself bogged down in the technical jargon of my discipline (outdoor and adventure education) as well as the writings of thinkers such as
Research indicates that students learn more and rate their class experience higher when they have a personal connection with the instructor. Here are ten practical ways to help that happen:
“We are very good at teaching students how to solve problems for which we already know the answers. The challenge is to teach them strategies for tackling problems we’ve yet to solve.”
Required courses are among the most challenging to teach, and the lack of student motivation is one of the big reasons. Students don’t want to take these courses. Most do not understand the justification for requiring them, especially those in fields that appear to be
And there seems to be lots of them: required general education courses in content areas the student deems completely uninteresting, those with a reputation for being hard, and others that require skills students know they don’t have and feel they cannot acquire. With all that
(1) List your top three or four concerns about teaching large classes (2) Identify the parts of those concerns over which you have some level of control or capacity to change (3) Consider how you might answer
Internships are widely valued by students, faculty, and employers. A well-designed internship experience can be a powerful learning opportunity, full of chances to apply knowledge and skills, work collaboratively with others, and develop career interests. As a faculty member and codirector of my department’s internship
There’s always a course students don’t want to take. Most likely it’s a required course, maybe a general education option, probably dealing with content students are convinced they don’t like (even though their exposure to it may be minimal) and requiring skills they’re certain they
It’s a 400-level Development of Sociological Theory course for majors and instructor Julie Pelton aspires not only to teach the content but to introduce students to either different styles of learning or self-regulatory and metacognitive strategies. She writes that most of the students have some
“Enabling interaction in a large class seems an insurmountable task.” That’s the observation of a group of faculty members in the math and physics department at the University of Queensland. It’s a feeling shared by many faculty committed to active learning who face classes enrolling
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