I have taught undergraduate students for nearly 35 years. In the past decade, I have seen an increasing number of students who don’t buy the textbook or, if they do, rarely read it. Many of my non-native English students struggle to understand discipline-specific terminology and
Establishing a healthy learning environment is key to teaching. But opportunities for making personal connections and relationships with students are greatly reduced in online classes. Thus, online instructors need to make a special effort to foster relationships in their online courses.
Most faculty think of studying as a solitary activity, especially in an online environment where students cannot simply set a time to meet in the library. But there are a variety of collective annotation systems that allow student collaboration in understanding course material. These systems
In general, academia tends toward the emotionless, focusing on the content of ideas over feelings. But we are emotional beings, and emotions impact everything we do. Why wouldn’t emotions play into our experiences teaching and learning online?
In fact, we can be intentional in the
Rebecca Yvonne Bayeck and Jinhee Choi of Pennsylvania State University recently did an interesting study examining how MOOC videos convey messages about culture and power through elements such as dress, setting, and character position. For instance, they found that educational videos from France and South
When a discussion didn’t go anywhere.
When a group couldn’t seem to work together.
When the answer was wrong.
When the grade was unexpected.
When not all that many students are paying attention.
What’s the best way to put students into groups? It’s the first task that confronts teachers who want students to work together. And the best reply is one of those “it depends” answers. Here are the questions on which it depends.
I lost a dear friend last month, the colleague and mentor who taught me more about teaching and learning than anyone else. Over the years, Larry Spence wrote a number of pithy pieces for The Teaching Professor. Here’s my favorite.
Recently I had reason to revisit Paul Pintrich’s meta-analysis on motivation. It’s still the piece I most often see referenced when it comes to what’s known about student motivation. Subsequent research continues to confirm the generalizations reported in it. Like most articles that synthesize the
There is comfort in things that are black or white, isn’t there? It feels good to have clarity and to be able to predict an outcome with certainty. I’m a scientist and therefore well-schooled and admittedly comfortable with predictability. Because, at least in my world,
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