For some time now, students in my first-year biology course have been protesting that I’m assigning too much pre-class reading. I use the flipped classroom structure in most of my courses and that means students prepare for class by reading assigned pages in the textbook.
You’ve explained something. You can’t tell from their bland expressions if they understand or not. “Do you have any questions?” The silence is long; finally a hand goes up and one of your better students admits, “I’m totally confused.” “How about the rest of you?”
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
Group projects teach collaboration skills that will be necessary in any job as well as non-job activities in groups such as clubs, religious organizations, and the Boy and Girl Scouts. With an increasingly distributed workforce, learning how to coordinate behavior at a distance has become
In his book Teaching Naked, Jose Bowen challenges us to rethink the role of technology in our courses and be more intentional about when we use it, why we use it, and what our students do with it. Bowen (2012) explains, “Technology is most powerfully
Videos grab the viewer’s attention better than any other form of online education content, and with webcams built into nearly all laptops, and cheap external ones available from any electronics store, a straightforward webcam shot is probably the easiest type of video to make. Plus,
Padlet (https://padlet.com) has become one of the most popular tools for teaching with technology. Designed as a whiteboard that allows multiple people to post content to the same web page, Padlet has been steadily adding features that have broadened its functionality to allow for a
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
Would you prefer to go to a party with 50 exciting, brand-new people that you’ve never met before, or would you prefer to have dinner with an old, dear friend? You’ve probably guessed already that extroverts would prefer the party and introverts would prefer dinner
The single greatest strategy that I know to stimulate classroom learning is to write with students at the beginning of class.
Consider your own pre-class ritual to see if writing with your students might profit you and them. In my classes, students funnel in to
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