Our knowledge of what diversity in the classroom means has expanded since the 7 principles for good practice in undergraduate education were first proposed. Current discussions around classroom diversity are found within the inclusive teaching literature, with a focus on embracing student diversity. This literature indicates all students need to feel welcome, treated fairly, treated… Read more »
Teaching Strategies
Realistic Student Expectations
Research suggests college students rarely complete learning tasks such as applying, evaluating, or synthesizing knowledge and instead complete tasks that require remembering and understanding information. Our expectations for students tend to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. When we communicate high, but attainable expectations for our students, they will make significant learning gains. When designing a course,… Read more »
Engaging Students in Learning Using Immersive Technologies
Think back to the time when you were learning to ride a bike. Did you learn from reading a book? Did watching someone ride a bike provide you with enough knowledge allow you to hop on and ride seamlessly into the sunset? Probably not. Chances are you sat on the seat, put your feet on… Read more »
Resources to Help Minimize Plagiarism in Your Course
This blog series discusses ways to prevent plagiarism and what to do when faced with a possible case of plagiarism. We complete this series by reviewing resources available to help prevent plagiarism in your course. One simple prevention tool is Turnitin.com, a text matching service that can be used in the Canvas Assignments tool. When… Read more »
Teams Without Tears: Setting Up Students for Successful Teamwork
Assigning students to work in teams on a project can have a lot of benefits for your students’ learning, but those benefits depend on creating successful student teams. Such teams have positive interdependence among members, individual accountability, face-to-face interaction, interpersonal skills, and periodic reflection on the team’s performance. How can you design an assignment so… Read more »
Feedback, not just Grading
Good feedback creates dialogue between the instructor and student. In order to foster this dialogue, it’s important to give students feedback both early and frequently throughout the semester. Timely feedback allows students to act on the information to improve their learning while still in your course. This requires providing students with frequent opportunities to demonstrate… Read more »