I like the metaphor of "brain sweat." It captures what we're going for as teachers.
Are the students teaching each other?
Are the questions simple, level 1 questions or higher level questions that could even stump an adult? If a student can make a teacher's brain sweat, then you know they are really engaged and thinking.
David Heckman, a mathematician, was accustomed to lecturing to the class, but he had to take on the role of a roving mentor, responding to raised hands and coaching students when they got stumped
Like institutions at every level of American education, it is going through some wrenching changes. The university has lost 50 percent of its state funding over the past five years.
alarmingly high numbers of students showing up on campus unprepared to do college-level work.
more efficient way to shepherd students through basic general-education requirements—particularly those courses, such as college math, that disproportionately cause students to drop out
That fall, with little debate or warning, it placed 4,700 students into computerized math courses. Last year some 50 instructors coached 7,600 Arizona State students through three entry-level math courses running on Knewton software. By the fall of 2014 ASU aims to adapt six more courses, adding another 19,000 students a year to the adaptive-learning ranks.
Homework is one of those issues we see come up in educational debates on a fairly regular basis. There seems to be two camps where you either love it or hate it...