blog posts

• Mindsets Toward Learning

  Jan 28, 2015 8:00 am

  Mindsets Toward Learning. A mindset, first described by Carol Dweck, is a view you have of yourself as a learner, and it affects all the decisions you make about your learning-the effort you put forth, the risks you take, how you deal with failures and criticism, and how much of a challenge you are willing to accept. Mindsets can be fixed or growth. There are strategies your students can adopt to promote a growth mindset and to be a successful learner.

• You Got Students Talking about Their Experiences, Now What?

  Jan 28, 2015 8:00 am

  You Got Students Talking about Their Experiences, Now What? "Get students talking about their experiences!" - a recommendation shared at a Teaching Professor Technology Conference. Students learn new material by connecting it to what they already know. If a teacher gets a sense of that knowledge base (which often grows out of and rests on experience) it's a lot easier to make good connections between what students know and what they need to learn. You may be surprised by what they believe and think they know.

• Establishing Rapport and Why It Matters

  Jan 14, 2015 8:00 am

  Establishing Rapport and Why It Matters.  It cannot be underestimated how important establishing rapport is in effective teaching and learning. Connections with students play a role in student participation, effort, and engagement with the content. Ways to build rapport and respect for your students are providing praise, nodding and smiling, using their names, and identifying prior knowledge. Additional strategies such as helping students answer their own questions are quite effective in creating rapport, while enhancing learning.

• Building Rapport from the Beginning

  Jan 14, 2015 8:00 am

  Building Rapport from the Beginning.  Good rapport between instructor and students is arguably the most important factor in good classroom dynamics. You should begin the process of building rapport and collegiality on the first day of class, and continue cultivating this environment throughout the semester. Don’t miss this opportunity on your first day.

• Final Exams as Learning Moments

  Dec 3, 2014 8:00 am

  Final Exams as Teaching Moments. A common complaint from students is that final exams do not always test the kinds of knowledge that is asked for in homework or quizzes or presented in lectures. Whether this perception is accurate or not, it’s an excellent starting point for talking about the final exam. The worst final exams can seem unfocused, determined to test everything, or random things. The best final exams are learning moments. Click here for suggestions from Berkeley’s teaching center.

• Design Considerations for Exam Wrappers

  Oct 23, 2014 8:00 am

  Design Considerations for Exam Wrappers. "Exam wrappers are short activities that direct students to review their performance (and the instructor's feedback) on an exam with an eye toward adapting their future learning.  Exam wrappers ask students three kinds of questions: How did they prepare for the exam?  What kinds of errors did they make on the exam?  What could they do differently next time?"  Click here to see examples and strategies to help our students become more reflective about their learning.

• Providing Timely and Frequent Feedback

  Oct 9, 2014 8:00 am

  Providing Timely and Frequent Feedback. If students are to benefit from feedback, it must not only be timely and frequent, but also useful for improving performance by addressing three areas: what students did well, what students need to improve on, and how to make this improvement. Although giving detailed feedback is important, it may be even more important to give it in a timely manner. Click here to read about helpful types of feedback.

• Getting Students to Act on Our Feedback

  Oct 9, 2014 8:00 am

  Getting Students to Act on Our Feedback. “I’m still pondering why students don’t make better use of the feedback we provide on papers, projects, presentations, even the whole class feedback we offer after we’ve graded a set of exams. Yes, we do see improvement as we look back across a course, but we also see a lot of the same errors repeated throughout the course.”  Learn how to improve your comments to help your students develop an action plan based on your feedback for the next assignment.

• Have you done your Informal Early Feedback (IEF)?

  Sep 25, 2014 8:00 am

  Have you done your Informal Early Feedback (IEF)? Using informal early feedback (IEF) can help you learn about what is working and what is not working in your class at a time when you can make mid-course corrections. Late-September to mid-October is a great time to collect this feedback from your students.  Additional information and samples are on our website.

• I Was Inspired by a Teaching Workshop, But Now What Do I Do?

  Sep 25, 2014 8:00 am

  I Was Inspired by a Teaching Workshop, But Now What Do I Do?  This month, there are many workshops offered to help you learn new strategies and teaching approaches. Before implementing these new teaching techniques, keep in mind these helpful words of wisdom: be strategic about which techniques to implement, explain the techniques to your students, start with small, incremental steps. Here is more advice.  And, of course, you can always contact CITL (citl-info@illinois.edu).