A FREE PUBLICATION FROM THE CREATORS OF THE TEACHING PROFESSOR

active learning

Designing Effective Clicker Questions by Going Beyond Factual Recall

At one point, a General Chemistry course at Penn State Berks had a success rate of about 50 percent, giving the multi-section course the dubious distinction of having one of the lowest GPAs on campus. After a thorough redesign, the course now consistently achieves a success rate of well over 70 percent, while the student ratings of the course and the instructors have never been higher. The key element in this chemistry course’s redesign? Clickers.

Mary Bart June 27, 2011

Tips for Creating a Participatory Classroom Environment

All too often students shuffle into class, take notes while the professor lectures for 50 minutes or so, and then pack up and leave. Rinse and repeat throughout the semester. Some might never raise their hand, offer their opinion, or even learn the name of the person sitting in front of them.

Mary Bart May 23, 2011

Learning through Teaching

“Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth learning can be taught.” — Oscar Wilde

Russell L. Ackoff tells a wonderful story in the podcast for the book he wrote with Daniel Greenberg “Turning Learning Right Side Up:”

After lecturing to undergraduates at a major university, I was accosted by a student who had attended the lecture. After some complimentary remarks, he asked, “How long ago did you teach your first class?”

John Orlando, PhD February 24, 2011

Assessing the Degree of Learner-Centeredness

Since Barr and Tagg introduced the concept of the instructional versus the learner-centered paradigms in 1995, higher education institutions across the country have adopted the concept in one form or another in an attempt to create learning environments that respond both to the changing profile of our students and recent research on learning with the ultimate goal of improving student success.

Michael Harris PhD and Roxanne Cullen PhD August 6, 2010

Student Learning: Six Causes of Resistance

A lot of students just don’t seem all that interested in learning. Most faculty work hard to help students find that missing motivation. They try a wide range of active learning strategies, and those approaches are successful with a lot of students but not all students.

Maryellen Weimer, PhD July 20, 2010

Transforming Your Teaching Style: A Student-Centered Approach

When I started teaching 27 years ago, like the scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz I believed that just having a brain would make me successful. And so each class session I would literally “take the stage” on a raised platform to deliver what was in my head and on my papers. Even though there were 60 students in the class, there could just as well have been none because I basically ignored the students. They were objects, sponges whose task was to absorb course content.

Patty H. Phelps, EdD April 27, 2010

What Students Expect from Instructors, Other Students

Some years back The Teaching Professor featured an article highlighting Mano Singham’s wonderful piece describing how he moved away from a very authoritarian, rule-centered syllabus (reference below). It’s one of my very favorite articles—I reference it regularly in presentations, and it appears on almost every bibliography I distribute.

Maryellen Weimer, PhD March 23, 2010

Putting Students in Charge of Finding Real-World Examples Makes for a More Engaging Classroom

As a marketing professor, I often found myself scouring publications, stores, and my cabinets prior to a lecture, to find real-world examples of concepts I was teaching. Although students seemed to appreciate and learn from these examples, it didn’t get them as actively involved in their learning as I’d like.

Karen Welte Gore March 19, 2010

Critical Pedagogy Brings New Teaching and Learning Challenges

It’s not always easy to differentiate between critical pedagogy, active learning, and the learner- or learning-centered approaches. Each is predicated on the notion of student

Maryellen Weimer, PhD December 8, 2009

Building Student Engagement: 15 Strategies for the College Classroom

One of the most challenging tasks instructors face is keeping students engaged. Building Student Engagement: 15 Strategies for the College Classroom will help you meet that challenge while ensuring your classroom is a positive and productive learning environment.

Faculty Focus December 4, 2009

A FREE PUBLICATION FROM THE CREATORS OF THE TEACHING PROFESSOR

active learning

Stay Updated with Faculty Focus!

TOPICS

Stay Updated with
Faculty Focus!