Center for Innovative Pedagogy

An interesting study out of Stanford. While drawn from experience with MOOCs, I think many of these principles are relevant to flipped classrooms at a small college as well. I was surprised by recommendations #3 and #4 (regarding "personal" vs. "professional" production values); I had expected high production values to be more important for classes with no face-to-face contact.

An interesting study out of Stanford. While drawn from experience with MOOCs, I think many of these principles are relevant to flipped classrooms at a small college as well. I was surprised by recommendations #3 and #4 (regarding "personal" vs. "professional" production values); I had expected high production values to be more important for classes with no face-to-face contact.

Resource page on quantitative reasoning from Carleton College, including example assignments and tips for assignment design, and assessment tools.

A set of sample assignments and suggested readings for faculty interested in the intersection of writing and quantitative reasoning, from Lehman College.

A list of suggestions for fresh ways to start a course and "create the best possible environment for learning."

"This edited book represents a sliver, albeit a substantial one, of the scholarship on the science of learning and its application in educational settings. Most of the work described in this book is based on theory and research in cognitive psychology." This is a free e-book, published by the Society for the Teaching of Psychology, a division of the American Psychological Association.

"This edited book represents a sliver, albeit a substantial one, of the scholarship on the science of learning and its application in educational settings. Most of the work described in this book is based on theory and research in cognitive psychology." This is a free e-book, published by the Society for the Teaching of Psychology, a division of the American Psychological Association.

A review of a free e-book on current research into the psychology of learning, written specifically to bring that work and its instructional implications to higher-education faculty.

A well-done overview of screencasting that covers the pedagogical benefits of screencasts, strategies for using them effectively, a review of tools and techniques for producing them and useful links for further reading.

Wikipedia provides great opportunities for students to learn about the construction of knowledge while contributing to it by analyzing and writing for the online encyclopedia. Written by a very active contributor to Wikipedia and the scholarship surround its development ,this article provides a very useful and concise introduction for anybody interested in teaching with Wikipedia.

The author discusses a report on the value of having students evaluate their peer's presentations in the political science classroom. Being required to evaluate their peer's presentations using the same criteria as the instructor uses, students report a greater understanding of the expectations for the presentations and gain more knowledge from the content of those presentations than they would have otherwise.

With Kenyon's ArcGIS Online organizational account, story maps are one tool available to you for presenting spatial pedagogical lessons to your students. I suggest exploring the Gallery and Storytelling Apps links

This is a pretty awesome site. Open in a fresh browser window as each click on a hot link opens a new tab. I would like to confirm many of the dates of these sites, but just the map and its interactive-ness alone is worth checking out!

The author details a number of critiques of Turnitin's recently released study purporting to show that Turnitin use results in a major decrease in plagiarism at institutions where it is used. The core of the critique is that Turnitin tends to start in classrooms where plagiarism has been a problem so the baseline is high and that it is often used in conjunction with a campus discussion about academic honesty and how to teach in ways that inhibit the drive to plagiarize.

Turnitin released a report covering over 1,000 institutions for a five year period that shows a substantial decrease in what it calls "unoriginal writing" at schools using Turnitin. While some of that reduction is certainly a result of using Turnitin, there are a number of flaws to their claims which we'll see in a follow-up post to this one.

It's a common complaint that our students aren't comfortable taking risks, and don't deal well with setbacks. This article provides a set of classroom techniques, from showing your own struggles with disciplinary material to celebrating success when it finally comes, which will help students get used to "fail more, fail better."

Kenyon's own Harry Itagaki reports on his experience using mock NSF-type grant proposals and blind peer review as the major assignment in his 300-level courses. 

Kenyon's own Harry Itagaki reports on his experience using mock NSF-type grant proposals and blind peer review as the major assignment in his 300-level courses.

Flipping the classroom is about more than students watching videos outside of class. It is about taking advantage newly available classroom time to lead students in active and engaging activities for improved learning outcomes. Developing new and effective activities can be a challenge and differs by discipline. This useful article discusses a range of practices at various universities and the offers thoughtful quotes from faculty about the pros and cons of those activities.

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."

Any one of these principles could be a guiding statement for an interesting course. Do you actually have to do all 10 of them? I'd argue not, although many do go hand in hand.

A qualitative study on the ways students use print and ebooks differently for personal reading and academic work. While the researcher admits that the study is self-selected and not generalizable, it presents interesting evidence about student preferences and decision making in reading generally.