Center for Innovative Pedagogy

If you're feeling the weight of the semester coming down on you, you're not alone.

Interesting ideas about using formal constraints (even hidden ones) to inject some playfulness into a writing task. I wonder if our faculty writing groups might benefit from this approach occasionally!

The cited article argues that forgetting "enhances flexibility, by reducing the influence of outdated information" and "promot(es) generalization" by preventing us from focusing on too many specific details. So how would your teaching change if you thought of forgetting as a "feature", not just a flaw? (The cited article is at http://www.cell.com/neuron/fulltext/S0896-6273(17)30365-3 if the link in the story doesn't work.)

Can "information literacy" exist as a skill outside of "domain knowledge"? And if it does, what does it look like?

The student who isn't pulling their weight (and even the fear of that student) can be a major obstacle for group work. This article has some concrete tips for reducing the ability of a group member to coast. I particularly like the options which encourage you to prioritize and teach group process.

Sometimes our talk about student creativity verges on treating it like a magic "special sauce". Here are some concrete exercises which we can teach students to seed or spark creative approaches.

Good models from James Lang for ways to talk about productive and distracting uses of computers and cell phones in the classroom.

Powerful NPR piece about students in a southern Ohio high school taking a course about the opioid crisis.

Universal design for learning ultimately saves labor, and benefits all learners in the class. "So if I take a little more time and effort to make my writing large, legible, and organized on the white board, I am going to help the student with visual impairments - but I'm also going to help everyone in the room take better notes on our discussion. If I take the time to create slides with a minimal amount of text or images - and then encourage students to take their own notes by filling in the examples and ideas from the lecture or discussion - I'm helping everyone push beyond simply copying down lecture notes and regurgitating the course content."

Good tips on when to write letters of recommendation, when to say no, and the kind of work to put into them.

There's a survey instrument attached which you can use to have students reflect and report on how they study for exams. They can then ask themselves if their approach is working - or you could tally the data and tell them which approaches are being used by the students getting the best grades.

Bryn Mawr hosts an annual "Community Day of Learning", with programming determined in a highly democratic manner across all areas of the college, to discuss issues of equity and inclusion.

"Class visitation ... is intended to foster conversations among faculty that will lead to a deeper understanding of classroom dynamics and improved student learning." A good essay by Rick Holmgren at Allegheny College about why observing other people's classes is a good habit to develop, and some suggested techniques from getting the most out of the visit.

4 great questions to ask when you consider team-teaching a course, with 4 great lessons drawn from the authors' experience.

Lots of good collections of resources for teachers considering how to address Charlottesville with their classes.

This article does not address the reasons why faculty restrict access to technology in the classroom, such as distraction or the confusion of dictation for note taking, but it does present an interesting model for how technology could be used better to create a backchannel for a course through student collaboration.

I like the idea of having students set goals for themselves, which could create a stronger sense of agency and lead to clearer feedback from instructors about what the student should be trying to accomplish in the course. But the authors note that this approach assumes a level of executive function on the part of the student that may be detrimental to some.

Sony created a gamified augmented reality experience using a free AR platform called Metaverse. Some of the more innovative features of the experience included integration with other mobile apps, exclusive content, and guided interaction with live participants (including a wandering man in a Sasquatch costume). The platform could be used to develop place-based extension learning, student projects, or academic program promotions.

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.

From a refreshing series on "teaching fails", a composition instructor describes the difficulty in scaffolding a research assignment that both provides clarity about expectations and allows for fruitful exploration. Here, the use of pedagogical and technological innovations (rubrics and screencasting) did not succeed in getting students to engage with the process--but I do think that they gave the instructor some evidence to better understand what went wrong.