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"Many of the decisions affecting the success of a course take place well before the first day of class. Careful planning at the course design stage not only makes teaching easier and more enjoyable, it also facilitates student learning. Once your course is planned, teaching involves implementing your course design on a day-to-day level."

n some educational settings, the cost of textbooks approaches or even exceeds the cost of tuition. Given limited resources, it is important to better understand the impacts of free open educational resources (OER) on student outcomes. Utilizing digital resources such as OER can substantially reduce costs for students. The purpose of this study was to analyze whether the adoption of no-cost open digital textbooks significantly predicted students' completion of courses, class achievement, and enrollment intensity during and after semesters in which OER were used. This study utilized a quantitative quasi-experimental design with propensity-score matched groups to examine differences in outcomes between students that used OER and those who did not. The demographics of the initial sample of 16,727 included 4909 students in the treatment condition with a pool of 11,818 in the control condition. There were statistically significant differences between groups, with most favoring students utilizing OER.

"Fun, interactive, research-based simulations of physical phenomena from the PhET™ project at the University of Colorado." These are great simulations to use in class or to have students use at home.

"Once students started Twittering I think they developed a sense of each other as people beyond the classroom space, rather than just students they saw twice a week for an hour and a half" "Dr. Parry declared that "it was the single thing that changed the classroom dynamics more than anything I've ever done teaching."

"Professors who wish to engage students during large lectures face an uphill battle. Not only is it a logistical impossibility for 200+ students to actively participate in a 90 minute lecture, but the downward sloping cone-shape of a lecture hall induces a one-to-many conversation. This problem is compounded by the recent budget cuts that have squeezed ever more students into each room. Fortunately, educators (including myself) have found that Twitter is an effective way to broaden participation in lecture. Additionally, the ubiquity of laptops and smartphones have made the integration of Twitter a virtually bureaucracy-free endeavor. This post describes the two main benefits professors find when using Twitter in lecture."

I do think that the author's conclusion about it being a great way to deal with growing class sizes due to budget cuts is simplistic and misses the point about it being a great way to engage students, period. Be sure to watch the video.

Good interview with a Sask teacher explaining how he used a class wiki in his high school courses - easily applicable to higher ed.

An excellent resource by Joan Middendorf and Elizabeth Osborn on a variety of fun ways to learn student names.

Ever wanted to try active learning, but felt that it might take too much time away from your lecture? A bookended lecture is one in which short segments of active learning are interspersed or bookended at the beginning and/or ends of the lecture. This resource provides summaries of 36 different ways to include some interactivity in your lectures.

Ever thought about using Google Earth as a learning tool in your teaching? SERC has a variety of Google-Earth inspired examples on their website to get you inspired this term!

Back-of-envelope calculations are a great way to help your students practice completing problems and to break up the lecture. Check out the SERC's examples of back-of-envelope calculations in their Activity Collection.

The National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science (NCCSTS) has an excellent repository of cases that could be used in teaching in higher education, specific to the sciences. Use their site search to browse the case collection. Educational use is encouraged, according to fair use guidelines, as long as the author of the case is cited along with the source, National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science, University at Buffalo, State University of New York.