Planning a Great Online Class Through Roundabout Design
Teaching a great online class requires more than an understanding of pedagogical strategies powered by technology. It requires a cohesive course design that enables all of our students to learn and...
View ArticleTechniques for Helping Students Take Control of Their Learning
It’s a balancing act educators often face …how to structure interactions with students to provide appropriate levels of assistance, while encouraging them to take ownership of their learning. In...
View ArticleFinding the ‘Sweet Spot’ of Teaching and Learning
Avid golfers and baseball players often talk about the elusive “sweet spot.” Find it, and you can make the ball go exactly where you want it to go, almost effortlessly. There’s a sweet spot to...
View ArticleLearning Goals: Faculty and Students Don’t Agree
The findings of a recent study documenting differences between the priorities that faculty and students give to various learning goals will not come as a surprise to many. Those differences are an...
View ArticleDeciding What Your Students Must Learn
You were hired because of your deep subject matter expertise; knowledge you want to share with your students. The problem is, the number of hours in a typical semester hasn’t changed, but the amount of...
View ArticleGimme an A! Confronting Presuppositions about Grading
Sometimes, in informal conversations with colleagues, I hear a statement like this, “Yeah, not a great semester, I doled out a lot of C’s.” I wonder, did this professor create learning goals that were...
View ArticleAvoiding Information Overload: Remembering Course Goals
In more than 20 years of teaching, I have learned that too much information frustrates rather than inspires students. Today, however, with a few clicks of the computer mouse, any teacher can retrieve...
View ArticleAdding Choice to Assignment Options: A Few Course Design Considerations
No, the objective isn’t to make assignments optional, but two benefits accrue when students are given some choice about assignments. The first is motivational—when students select the method they will...
View ArticleUsing Low-Stakes Writing Assignments to Achieve Learning Goals
During my time as a teaching fellow at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, I was fortunate enough to be introduced to the importance of student learning goals and student learning...
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Teaching Goal-Writing to All Students
This article first appeared in the Teaching Professor on November 1, 2013. © Magna Publications. All rights reserved. On the first day of classes two years ago, I had students in my professional and...
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