Group items tagged

Fascinating set of articles addressing the ways background music impacts memory, attention, mood, and task performance. (Really short version: quiet is usually better, but not for all tasks, and I'm interested in the ways improved mood and sense of control over the environment might counterbalance other distractors.)

This article deserves attention for opening up a professor's iterative process in figuring out the best structure for her class's online presence. I'm intrigued by the idea of using Facebook instead of or in addition to a professor-run website or Moodle page.

With a 95% response rate in Spring 2012, this may not seem to be a big issue at Kenyon. Still, as we think about course evaluations going forward, we do need to pay attention to the common qualities of people who don't respond.

Good tips for structuring peer review exercises so that they provide the feedback (and builde skills at attentive reading) which students need.

A good research or critical thinking assignment teaches students to refine their questions as they gather and review evidence. Do we give enough attention to the process of generating those first introductory-level questions?

This paper serves as a guide to starting a portfolio project. It focuses on the "learning portfolio" as a tool which encourages the student to reflect on their own learning, with special attention to their own progress. I was particularly taken with the point that a portfolio can be an appropriate tool at any level of the curriculum - an individual course or set of courses, the program or department level, or the whole institution - though of course, that choice will change the purpose of the portfolio, and therefore its design.

"Both digital writing and information literacy call attention to today's interactive and multimodal information environments, which have both expanded and complicated the ways people use, create, and share information. As both composition instructors and librarians expand our conceptions of writing and of research, we may find that rhetoric becomes all the more essential for situating information literacy and writing."

Is your grading literally giving you a headache? Pay attention to these basic tips for eye health (and remember them for computer-intense classes as well).

"Students who didn't learn about the scientists' struggles were more likely to say that those scientists had innate talent and aptitude which separated them from everyone else." Do you draw attention to the processes of discovery and creativity in your course content, including setbacks?

"Rechtschaffen (2014) notes that "Students are told to pay attention a thousand times in school, but rarely are they taught how" (p.10), and we have observed that before our focusing activities students generally seemed distracted, stressed, and irritated. After the focusing activity, their posture became more relaxed and they seemed more receptive to learning."

"So the solution may be in having a well defined rubric but being able to apply it with discretion and sensitivity to individual learner differences." Rubrics seem to have garnered quite a bit of attention as a teaching and grading tool, and reflecting on their design and appropriate use seems important.

Seth Godin turns his attention to the purposes of education, and whether we are preparing the learners which our society and economy need. It's a dense "manifesto", but there are important considerations in it.

An intriguing description of using Google Forms as a writing rubric (or more general marking guide). I like the goal of "reduc(ing) the amount of time that I have to spend on administrative grading-related tasks, so that I can really focus my attention on reading and responding to students' work." I can see how electronic rubrics could be a time-saver, and Google Forms are dead easy to set up.

A fun podcast conversation with Todd Zakrajsek on the ways we can learn better by paying attention to what surprises or distracts us.

James Lang argues for a "pedagogy of presence" in which we are truly attentive to the individuals we meet during class time. Kenyon's size gives us major advantages in this area, but even in 5-person technology workshops I've found myself on autopilot.

First, the title of this article caught my eye. Then the "new" definition of Digital Humanites caught my attention. Finally the author's comments caught me off-guard. I think people should read this for the initial content (what's promised by the title and the leading question). Also people might want to think about whether some of Sathian's remarks cross a line into stereotyping and racism.

This book looks at the teaching of historical thinking, specifically in the context of the abundance of digitized primary sources and the various ways students can make sense of those sources and present their work with computers. The bibliography has received compliments for its attention to learning theory.

"In writing, as in learning, openings matter. Don't fritter them away." 4 ways you can use the opening of class to help students transition their attention into your course, from James Lang.

Virtual and augmented reality have obvious benefits in capturing student attention but face questions about their potential to help students to make substantive gains in understanding--especially considering the costs of the equipment and the time needed to build activities. But it is not too early to consider how we want to use these technologies in the classroom, and it may prove a useful exercise in reimagining how we use the technology we already have access to.

What if you asked students to answer an open-ended question as a way of taking attendance? "When we trace back the meaning of attend through Old French (atendre) to its Latin root (attendere), we can see that when we attend, we are "stretching our mind toward" something. The attendance question gets students to pay attention through inviting them to stretch their minds toward a question which has no right answer."