Center for Innovative Pedagogy

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.

An interesting analysis of the textbook market from the Planet Money podcast. It's worth listening all the way to the end for a brief discussion of why new editions come out so frequently - and whether they will continue to.

The additional details which go into good storytelling create more opportunities for the listener to create memories. What are the best stories you tell in teaching your discipline?

Interesting list of prompts which ask students to reflect on their learning process and preferences. Some of these might make good course evaluation questions. How do you help students reflect on their time at Kenyon?

An episode of the Planet Money podcast relating to textbook costs and the second-hand market. Every summer, there's a surplus of textbooks, and every fall, there's a spike in demand. That's an opportunity for someone with a storage locker to make money. Getting your textbook orders in early helps fix that flaw in the market...

Louis Schmier's latest asks about the true mission of higher education. "Students are asked in word and action, especially at revealing career days and job fairs and Career Services Office,  "what do you want to do," and seldom, if ever, "who do you want to become."" It's intriguing to think about resume-building credentialism not only as a pressure from outside, but also the easy way out compared to the real goals of liberal education.

"We are very good at helping people to find the articles they are looking for and can describe. But the next big thing we would like to do is to get you the articles that you need, but that you don't know to search for. Can we make serendipity easier? "

"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 know there's a Kenyon professor who hands out a list of "movies you should see if you want to get my jokes." What do you do to bridge the gap between your cultural references and the multiple cultures of our students?

Seems like there might be some pedagogical applications of this article on faculty writing. How many times do students worry a paper to death instead of learning to enjoy the process of completing the writing?

Federal agencies are looking at updates to the "Common Rule," which impacts local IRB processes.

Vassar has invigorated its common reading program for first-year students by integrating video mini-lectures and Moodle discussion forums. A more active program seems to be helping the first-year cohort form and introduce the campus culture before students move in.

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?

The Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education provides a resource center full of materials related to ecological sustainability on campus, including resources for classes which address sustainability.

This will be an interesting topic to watch. How can we help students learn the habits of complex thinking, and unlearn the habits of shallow thinking? If the best practices of effective study become automatic, the student will be more able to focus on new ideas.

The idea of "project-based learning" is appealing to many people, but open-ended group inquiry also carries a number of risks. This article makes a number of suggestions for ways PBL can be improved.

What exercises do you use to help students develop their abilities to engage points of view with which they may not agree?

For better or for worse, email is a vital communication channel in Kenyon's culture, but not in pre-college teenage culture. How do you address this gap?

This paper makes explicit a number of the implicit beliefs Kenyon faculty seem to have about essay exams. The tips on question selection and grading might be particularly helpful.