In case you missed it… we’re revisiting a post from earlier this year about the importance of feedback, mid-term check-ins with your students, and creating an engaging classroom. Providing Meaningful & Effective Feedback One of the most important factors leading to students’ academic growth is the quality of feedback they receive from their instructors. Woolf
This summer, the CETL will be presenting one tip per week, focusing on a teaching practice or strategy in more depth. If there are any topics you’d like to see us explore, please let us know! We also welcome guest posts from faculty who have a tip they would like to share with their colleagues.
Using Multimedia to Improve Learning and Career Readiness “Preparing our students for a professional world that relies increasingly on digital media and communication to fuel values-driven innovation, collaboration, and productivity” (Bass & Lawrence-Riddell, 2020, para. 2) necessitates an instructional approach that effectively integrates technology and facilitates the development of digital literacy skills. Considering both multimedia theory and Universal Design
Easy Active Teaching Strategies for Engaged Learning As the Spring sunshine beckons students away from their studies and they drift into a mid-semester slump, it can be challenging to engage them in learning. “To learn, students need to DO something” (Gonzalez, 2018), which is why active learning is an important strategy in any classroom. As
Distracted Students: Are Digital Devices the Real Challenge? Educators today are quick to blame digital devices for distracting their students and subsequently impose policies banning devices in the classroom. But before we had digital devices, students’ attention drifted out the window, waxed and waned throughout a course or period. James Lang argues, “whenever we are
Creating Interactive Lectures and Active Discussions Research tells us that students are more likely to be engaged and to retain information in an active learning environment than in a purely lecture-based class. Creating interactive lectures that include active discussions encourages student engagement and helps develop students’ critical thinking and communication skills. Active class discussions also
Priming Students for Success Students come to us with a wealth of preexisting knowledge, skills, beliefs, and attitudes, which influence how they attend to, interpret, and organize new information. How they process information will, in turn, influence how they recall, think, apply, and create new knowledge. Having a sense of what students know and can
Providing Meaningful & Effective Feedback One of the most important factors leading to students’ academic growth is the quality of feedback they receive from their instructors. Woolf (2020) and other researchers suggest that meaningful and effective feedback is 1) regular and ongoing, 2) specific and actionable, referencing aspects of a specific learning outcome or objective