As teachers, we would like to believe that when students do the assigned reading, they will understand the content it covers and so can be tested on it or given new information that builds on that understanding. When students do not demonstrate understanding of a
I sometimes come to column topics in roundabout ways. The way to this one started with a recent study of power in student-formed, leaderless, peer groups. The researchers were interested in exploring the power that group members perceived in one another. They discovered a mediating
Memory is a bread-and-butter topic in my academic field of cognitive psychology—something that we’ve been systematically researching for over a half century now and where important discoveries continue to happen. As many of my disciplinary colleagues have pointed out, memory theory is also an incredibly
While higher education has traditionally focused on the teaching side of learning, it is increasingly looking at the student side and what barriers interfere with learning. In particular, there is a lot of focus on how poverty, shelter and food insecurity, racism, social marginalization, and
Technology offers teachers new options. What about assigning podcasts to replace some course readings? So far, at least in the literature, teachers have created their own podcasts and used them instead of or as supplements to lectures. In a recent study (Oslawski-Lopez & Kordsmeier, 2021),
While many of us know by now that lecture alone is incongruent with student learning, it remains the predominant form of teaching—and understandably so. Pedagogical change is not a natural function in college classrooms, and it is challenging to learn and implement new teaching strategies.
It is best practice to open online courses with a welcome to students. The online format will be new for many students—in particular, adult students who are returning to school after a long absence—and they may be uncertain of their ability to perform in the
Students often avoid discussing how they’re working together in a group, especially if the subject is the group’s effectiveness. I think we sometimes forget how uncomfortable group work makes students feel. They do all sorts of things with each other socially, but those activities don’t
One of online learning’s biggest advantages over face-to-face learning is the ability to add interactions to learning content. Learning science has shown us that interactions are necessary to retain content, and thus today the best courses integrate activities directly into their learning content. But a
“Welcome to class, and by the way, when you review the course syllabus, you will see that one-third of your mark will come from group work.”
For many of us teaching in a postsecondary setting, the course syllabus review that includes a component of group work
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