Some former students appeared in my Twitter followers last week. One reached out with a very complimentary direct message in which he described how he attributed my course to his success and the success of several friends. For context, they we my students in a range of “computer” course while they were in high school. Read More
Category: Teaching & Learning
Placing Deeper Learning
Schools have been caught in the middle of a debate over their purpose for a long time. In the United States one of the central players in that debate was John Dewey. He is well-known for founding and leading the University of Chicago Laboratory School in 1896. The school was designed to focus the teaching Read More
Lessons From a Tweet About “Learning Styles”
Every so often, I tweet something that catches the attention of a small corner of the “twitterverse” and folks reply and share and the thread becomes a wealth of insight, good questions, and snarky comments. Most recently, it was this one: As I read the thread, I am struck by the willingness of folks to Read More
On Discussions in Classrooms
Socrates, so let’s say 23 centuries), discussion seems to be one of the least well-understood by today’s teachers. One challenge in using discussions well seems to be the confusion between the measurable outcomes that focus so much teaching and the less obvious (but more important) outcomes of discussion. First, let’s be clear. If your goal Read More
On Lectures
Picture a classroom in which class is underway in your mind and you probably imagine a lecture is underway. Students sit quietly, all facing the teacher who stands in the front or center and talks to the students. The central assumption of lecturing is that the teacher has information that must be transmitted to the Read More
Elevator Pitch on Task-Centered Teaching
When adopting task-centered methods faculty select a task or problem that is derived from the real world and that represents an appropriate challenge for the students. The task as a whole becomes the rationale for the learning. Most tasks will fall outside of the expertise of the learners, so instructors do help identify sub-tasks or Read More
The Many Types of Motivation
The question, “Why do I need to know this?” By posing this question, students are informing the teacher, “I do not find this valuable or interesting,” thus we would fully expect interest to wane. Informing students “you will need this next year” introduces external motivations that are unlikely to increase interest. Unfamiliar, incongruous, or personally Read More
Four Approaches to Teaching
Four elevator pitches in one post: Behaviorist approaches to teaching is appropriate when an instructor knows with certainty what student must transfer. We help students know what steps to follow through worked examples and other “show-and-tell” methods, give them opportunities for practice, and we can evaluate them against clear criteria. Cognitive approaches to teaching help Read More
A Brief Response to Bloom’s Taxonomy
One of the common responses when it is suggested that faculty design their courses for deeper learning is, “I will, but they need the basic information first.” While this may seem to be a reasonable response given the fact that many students arrive with little prior knowledge in the field it is an untenable position. Read More
Heutagogy
Everyone who works in or studies education is familiar with the word pedagogy. It comprises the strategies and methods teachers use to teach. Included in pedagogical practices are a wide range of activities that are grounded in behaviorist, cognitive, and connectionists psychologies. The methods are connected by several assumptions, however. Specifically, pedagogy assumes the teacher Read More