Exploring the advantages of rubrics

Exploring the Advantages of Rubrics

“I don’t believe in giving students rubrics,” a faculty member told me recently. “They’re another example of something that waters down education.” I was telling him about a study I’d just read that documented some significant improvement in student papers when students used a detailed

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Four Key Questions About Large Classes

Four Key Questions About Large Classes

Here’s a set of questions about large classes that I’m thinking we ought to be discussing more than we are.

1. How many students make it a large class? Teachers who do and don’t teach large classes have their opinions, but it’s not clear who has

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Assessing Learning through Student Screencasts

Technology has transformed how education is delivered. Yet the digital revolution has not had a dramatic influence on how students are assessed. Most instructors are still using the standard exams, problem sets, or papers to assess student learning.The problem with these methods is that they

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Improving Student Motivation with Check-ins

Students will naturally start losing motivation in a college course over time. This is an even bigger problem in online courses, where students can easily feel distanced from the instructor and each other. As an instructor, I notice this as a steadily deteriorating quality

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Improving Your Teaching Efficiency

Some faculty go into online education under the impression that it will take less time than face-to-face teaching because lecturing is eliminated. But we know that online teaching takes as much, if not more, time than face-to-face teaching because of the added engagement with students

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Augmenting Education in the Online Classroom

Augmented reality (AR) is a growing field that offers new ways for teachers to engage students. Augmented reality allows people to view objects on their mobile device with content overlaid on the screen. For instance, when looking at a storefront, the user might see a

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Wikipedia Projects for Learning

Most teachers consider Wikipedia the devil’s realm, a place where rumor and misinformation are spread. But in reality, studies have found that Wikipedia has an accuracy of a regular encyclopedia. Inaccurate information is quickly corrected by volunteer editors, and there are strict standards for entering

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Using Grading Policies to Promote Learning

Using Grading Policies to Promote Learning

I just finished putting together some materials on grading policies for a series of Magna 20-Minute Mentor programs, and I am left with several important take-aways on the powerful role of grading policies. I’m not talking here about the grades themselves, but instead the policies

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How do you learn? How do you teach?

How Do You Learn?

We are definitely way more interested in learning than we used to be. In the early years of my teaching and faculty development work, it was all about teaching: improve it and students will automatically learn more. Now the focus is on how students learn

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