Group items tagged

A proposal that college curricula should more fully and more intentionally take advantage of the college's physical locations and the moment in time. What surprises me is how relatively easy to incorporate some of the ideas seem.

Show me the data! Frankly, I think any survey that includes 722 physics faculty members has to be worthwhile -- that is quite the sample size! Moreover, this is likely to be pretty representative. While it is impressive that a very large majority (88%) were aware of certain "research-based instructional strategies," what is even more impressive is that 82% of the respondents had tried some of these strategies. True, 1/3 of these have given up and gone back to traditional lectures, but I agree with Eric Mazur's comment that this means that 2/3 are still plugging away. The follow-up studies should be interesting, especially if they shed light on what drove the 1/3 who gave up to do so.

Does your classroom's physical setup enable the way you want to teach, or does it fight you? Put another way, if your classroom were set up differently, would you teach differently?

Terrific thoughts about a first day of class over videoconference. It's interesting to me how many of these are basically digital translations of techniques which work well in physical classrooms too.

An explanation of the "constructionist" pedagogical theory, in the growing context of the "Maker" movement. I have tended to consider the Makers as people concerned with physical objects, from 3D printing to knitting; this article makes explicit that writing (in any media) is also "Making."

The authors describe a simple two-stage exam method used in the physics department at the University of British Columbia. Two-stage exams provide an engaging collaborative learning opportunity which very effectively increases student mastery of the material.

An interesting description of the "peer instruction" model used to achieve active learning in large lecture classes by Eric Mazur.

Interesting podcast episode about incorporating physical art and artifacts in teaching, and the ways they can prompt a variety of disciplinary thinking and observational skills.

Many classes already use library materials (physical or online) as course readings. Have you looked, though, at the open textbooks and other instructional materials available in your field?

Great thoughts from Derek Bruff about approaches to discussion and groupwork when half the students are coming by videoconference.