Tag Archives: teaching for learning

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Today I Learned reflection activity

The research on how people learn continues to show the value in helping students make meaning and learn through reflection. The process of reflection helps students take a step back to carefully consider that they learned, absorb the information, and process what it means to them. Fortunately, fostering reflection in the classroom can be relatively quick and easy. In today’s post, I share a simple, but powerful reflection activity, Today I Learned, from my book Teaching for Learning.

Photo credit: Erik Drost
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Houston, we have a problem teaching activity

In the popular movie, Apollo 13, the astronauts are trapped with their oxygen running out.  In a classic scene, all of the NASA engineers gather in a room with all of the stuff in the spacecraft and have to figure out how to make a square air filter fit a hole made for a round filter.  Literally, the engineers have to make a square peg fit in a round hole. In today’s post, I want to share an IDEA from my book Teaching for Learning on how you can use this as the basis for a class activity.

In the Houston We Have a Problem IDEA, students are given a collection of items or information that they must use to solve a problem presented by the instructor.

The game is designed to encourage class participation, creativity, and problem solving.

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Designing environments to encourage student learning

We do a notoriously poor job teaching graduate students how to teach. Graduate programs devote tremendous energy into delivering content knowledge while pedagogy is all but ignored. Yet, we know that many graduate students will be teaching whether in undergraduate classes or in other professional settings. Content knowledge is vital, yet it is not the only component needed when teaching. In addition, one needs to understand how to design environments to encourage student learning and how to work with students. In today’s post, I will focus on designing positive learning environments.

Photo credit: planzeichnen

Teaching is hard work. It often doesn’t come easy and requires effort to improve.

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Intentionally Designed Activities to Engage Students

Everyone who teaches wants engaged students. But how do we do this? There are so many buzz words out there about flipped classrooms, active learning, and grit. The research literature examining effective teaching practices has grown, yet it is largely inaccessible.  Over 700 different journals address college teaching in various forms. How can instructors wade through this to find the most effective strategies. In today’s post, I will share a few helpful formulas and strategies to create intentionally designed activities to engage students.

Les Roches International

Across different disciplines, there are a multitude of instructional approaches from lecturing to discussion to peer teaching. No matter which approach is used, students learn best when they are engaged with the course content.

Engagement doesn’t happen by accident. It requires intentionally designing class to foster learning.