Group items tagged

"A threshold concept is discipline-specific, focuses on understanding of the subject and … has the ability to transform learners' views of the content." What are the threshold concepts in your discipline, and how do you help students grapple with their power?

I'm intrigued by Bowen's idea of courses which offer "a playlist of 25 different types of explanations in different languages using different approaches to a single concept" to support different learning preferences. Despite the title, this idea could apply to MOOCs, tuition-based online courses, and face-to-face "blended" courses. (The assertion that the pedagogical innovation will come from MOOC-land and not established campuses is also intriguing, and troubling...)

One way students used storyboards to improve presentation posters.

A discussion with Kenneth Crews of Columbia University about copyright. It opens with a nice primer on the concepts of copyright and fair use, and takes an interesting turn at the end as the discussants consider the ownership of faculty and staff copyrights, and Creative Commons licensing.

People learn best when they are forced to retrieve the information and concepts repeatedly over time but most people haven't learned to study in ways that do this. Consequently, it may be more effective to move from the common practice of giving a few, high-stakes tests to giving numerous low stakes quizzes to assess and improve learning.

As the semester rolls through week 11, I start to think about how I might better motivate my students and make teaching my subject more fun for myself. My thoughts usually turn toward flipping lessons, which I still maintain is an old idea, but what is new is the "urgency" to implement the concept more efficiently (for a variety of reasons). These FAQ answers should help ease the implementation. Oh, if you don't like the term "flipped classroom" that is the topic of one of the later FAQs. I'm not a big fan of his preferred alternative term, but it really is the pedagogical concept that you want to buy into -- not the name.

"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."

At the GLCA/GLAA Consortium for Teaching and Learning Katy Crossley-Frolick at Denison University discusses her use of a dialogue mapping tool to help students unpack complex concepts.

Good review of the literature around the concept of "grit." Most of this literature focuses on students and I'm intrigued to see the call that we have to look closer at grit in the faculty life cycle too, with its ongoing opportunities for negative feedback.

"The value in feedback from students lies in considering the centrality of experience." The author applies John Locke's concept of "primary" (i.e. objective) and "secondary" (i.e. subjective) qualities to course evaluations.

Some interesting examples here of questions you can ask students to help cement the major concepts of your courses. (Some of these would fit in nicely as part of your personal questions in the course evaluation system!)

This essay specifically discusses the MOOC concept in the context of a small liberal arts college. I have personally heard many of the points raised in this essay in conversations here on the Kenyon campus.

A good discussion of how on professor uses multiple choice quizzing to measure comprehension of the major concepts in the course, instead of just testing for the ability to recall facts.

Perhaps the biggest outcome of a liberal arts education should be the understanding that every discipline is more based on learned and practiced skills than innate aptitude. The four tips in this article might be boiled down to one umbrella concept - talk to your students about growth mindset.

Active Learning is a "buzz word-y" kind of thing, but the concept actually makes perfectly good sense. As with anything in your life: moderation is key. Heck, you may already be employing some of these strategies.

The "special pedagogical challenge" of a course - or, Jay Howard argues here, a discipline - is the key concept or skill which must be unlocked to truly enable thinking like a member of the discipline. (Sometimes it's actually disabusing students of their incorrect beliefs about the subject.) This article focuses on finding that skill in sociology. What's your discipline's special challenge?

Recent research suggests that an irregular and inadequate sleep schedule makes learning new concepts the next day significantly harder.

A short open access textbook which presents main concepts of various kinds of information literacy to students. It includes case studies and hands-on exercises.

From Endicott College, an interesting set of suggestions for using the last day of the class to help culminate the class experience and show the transitions to the next steps. Some of these require a fair amount of planning (portfolios and pre- and post-tests) while others (concept mapping and syllabus review) probably could be used on a moment's notice. I particularly like the last suggestion... maybe the CIP needs a fortune cookie machine?

NPR's new podcast Code Switch examines whiteness and the way the concept is taught by colleagues at Clemson and Beloit. Well worth a listen.