blog posts

• The Sound of Silence Can Be Deafening and the Questions You Ask Your Students Can Provoke It

  Mar 31, 2021 3:30 pm

  (from Stanford University’s Tomorrow’s Professor) The Sound of Silence Can Be Deafening and the Questions You Ask Your Students Can Provoke It. A colleague recently told me that the students in his undergraduate class “didn’t want to talk.” I probed, “What kinds of questions have you asked your students?” He replied, “Well, the first question I asked this morning was ‘What is the main point of the article I assigned for the day?’” Nobody said anything. I pointed out that even I might be afraid to answer such a question. Such questions pose a severe challenge to the confidence of undergraduate students, because the instructor knows the answer and they don’t. When it comes to answering questions about “facts,” there are many ways to be wrong, but only one way to be right. When faced with this dilemma, students are understandably silent. I suggested that he come up with nonthreatening questions: questions that didn’t put a student’s self-confidence and reputation at risk.

• The Big Bang of Motivation: Questions That Evoke Wonder in Our Students

  Mar 31, 2021 3:30 pm

  (from Faculty Focus). The Big Bang of Motivation: Questions That Evoke Wonder in Our Students. Many college and university professors name student motivation and engagement as their top challenge. It’s a common belief that motivation is a character trait that is either present or missing in each student. However, if we look back upon our personal histories as learners, we can all think of times when we participated half-heartedly. Many of us can also recall teachers who kindled in us a deep connection to the topics in their courses despite an absence of such interest when we first entered their classrooms. We became highly motivated to participate in the learning process, perhaps even developing a lifelong interest in the field. How did these teachers ignite this interest in us? While the topic of human motivation still contains many mysteries, researchers have discovered fascinating clues about what sparks a desire to learn. Amidst all of the factors that influence human motivation to learn, wonder might be seen as the “big bang” because it is such an essential starting point in any passionate path of inquiry.

• Extending the Shelf Life of Your Instructional Videos: Six Common Pitfalls to Avoid

  Mar 15, 2021 10:30 pm

  (from Faculty Focus) Extending the Shelf Life of Your Instructional Videos: Six Common Pitfalls to Avoid. When instructional video is produced thoughtfully and used to promote active engagement, it can improve student motivation, learning, and performance, make content more memorable, and bring highly visual material to life. Video has other benefits as well. It allows students to watch lectures at their own pace, rewinding and re-watching as needed. It lets instructors assign lectures as homework, opening up class time for interaction. And it can reduce the total time faculty need to spend preparing and delivering the same material for different semesters or audiences. Once you’ve recorded a video, you can–theoretically–use it again and again.

  I say “theoretically” because it’s not as easy as it sounds. In fact, there are a number of small mistakes that can shorten the shelf-life of video unnecessarily, limit its reusability, and compel you to re-record sooner than you’d like. Here are six strategies that can help you avoid these pitfalls and make videos that last. 

• Best Practices for Video Creation

  Mar 15, 2021 10:30 pm

  (From UIUC Center for Innovation in Teaching & Learning) Best Practices for Video Creation. Without a set shop, makeup department, or (even) camera operator, many key aesthetics that viewers have grown accustomed to may get overlooked when recording on your own. Following the best practices listed below will improve your students' lecture viewing experience. These tips also double as a checklist of non-technical elements that you can control to ensure minimum distraction away from your intended message/teaching. Additional information are Media Planning Guide (PDF), Illinois Media Space, and video editing tips. 

• Building Classroom Community Spirit Online.

  Mar 2, 2021 2:15 pm

  (from Inside Higher Ed). Building Classroom Community Spirit Online. As instructors, we can underestimate how much informal, class-adjacent social interactions encourage students to participate in class, write Zachary Nowak and Sarah Bramao-Ramos. In the pre-COVID-19 days, the five minutes that my students sat quietly chatting before I put the first slide up on the screen were facilitating the smooth functioning of my classes. But I never realized that until the coronavirus hit. It seemed clear to me that I would have to try to foster virtually something like what happens naturally for in-person classes. My response was to create a series of three assignments for students to do what I called “class-adjacent socializing.”  We developed instructions as a longish, FAQ-style prompt for the class-adjacent socializing. We had to reiterate, several times, that these were intended to be class-adjacent events, not class-related events. The goal was not for the students to discuss the class material: the goal was to get them comfortable enough with each other that it would be easier to have those discussions when they met online. Even when we return to in-person instruction, we will continue to actively foster these previously casual interactions.

   

• Six Things Faculty Can Do to Promote Student Engagement

  Mar 2, 2021 2:15 pm

  (from Faculty Focus). Six Things Faculty Can Do to Promote Student Engagement.  Starting with redefining participation. Let it include more than verbal comments. Invite students to contribute electronically—with an email or post on the course website—with a question they didn’t ask in class, a comment they didn’t get to make, or a thought that came to them after class. Remind students that listening is also part of participation! Model and promote good listening skills. For example: “Did you hear wht Fredric just said? That’s an explanation also belongs in your notes.” Other strategies to promote student engagement include defining what learning is and designing authentic assignments and learning experiences. 

• Boosting Student Motivation Through Connected Reflection

  Feb 15, 2021 10:45 pm

  (from Faculty Focus). Boosting Student Motivation Through Connected Reflection. Universities are mandated to be the ultimate “learning culture,” powered by faculty who embody lifelong learning. We know that reflection is essential to learning; it’s the foundation of “continuous improvement,” that ceaseless cultivation of our skills and spirits as we work in the world. And this year, our reflection comes in time of global crisis—all the more reason to reflect on what matters most in our lives and our students’ lives, in our communities, and in our teaching and learning within our courses. Here are seven ways to facilitate motivation, metacognition, and a learning community.

• Transforming Midterm Evaluations into a Metacognitive Pause

  Feb 15, 2021 10:45 pm

  (from Faculty Focus). Transforming Midterm Evaluations into a Metacognitive Pause. Midterm evaluations often tip toward students’ (unexamined) likes and dislikes. By leveraging the weight of the midterm pause and inviting students to reflect on their development, midterm evaluations can become more learning-centered. Cued by our language, students can become aware of a distinction—that we’re not asking what they like, but what is helping them learn. This opportunity for students to learn about their learning yields valuable insights that not only inform instructors about the effects of our methods, but also ground students in their own learning processes, deepening their confidence in and commitment to their development in the second half of the course. Many students in this particular evening course were returning learners, and so it felt beneficial to use the natural pause at midterm as an opportunity to grow their confidence by reflecting on the learning process and taking stock of their own development. I therefore tailored my midterm questions with a metacognitive slant that would prompt students to identify and articulate dimensions of and supports for their learning. Learning experts often talk about the necessary “difficulty” and “disorientation” that is part of learning. “Can you share about what has been most challenging for you so far in this course?” (Disorienting even?) “What have you learned from this difficulty? What helped you in overcoming the challenge(s)?”

• Starter Activities to Begin Any Class

  Feb 3, 2021 8:45 am

  (from Faculty Focus). Starter Activities to Begin Any Class.  What can you implement in your classes that can review content, establish a foundation for the day’s topic, encourage student participation, and get students prepared for the day’s activities?  Whether you call them starter activities, bell work, or focusing activities, a predictable, formatted, content-based beginning of class activity can be used to achieve these goals.  Beginning of class activities have previously been used to gain student attention, provide accountability, review material, engage with new content, or establish routines. To gain students’ attention, class might begin by using multi-media, hands-on activities, surprising events, humor, or appealing to students’ emotions (Davis, 2009). Or class might start with a repeating set of slides, asking students to sequence steps or sketch a content-related drawing (Honeycutt, 2019). Here are some suggestions. 

• When Directions are the Problem

  Feb 3, 2021 8:00 am

  (from Faculty Focus) When Directions are the Problem. Instructors often experience problems between the directions given for an assignment and the work submitted by a student. Students miss important parts of questions; they may fail to understand the directions; and they produce work which the instructor finds unacceptable. Unfortunately, students may fail to see what the instructor sees for the end product, leading to loss of time and learning. John Hattie (2015) found that instructors who directly teach what is expected, have improved student outcomes with a large effect size (Cohen’s d = 0.77).

  Templating, where instructors explicitly develop, teach, and model expectations, improves learning and reduces time spent trying to implement directions and is rooted in Bandura’s social learning theory by helping students define, interpret, and mimic what was observed (Bandura & Walters, 1977). There are four components to consider: develop a minimum and a maximum for each criteria, give students a laundry list of expectations, use a checklist for the template, and model expectations.