Research on learning styles now spans four decades and occurs across a wide spectrum of disciplines, including many quite removed from psychology, the disciplinary home of many of the central concepts and theories that ground notions of learning style.
In the corporate world, there’s long been talk of breaking down the workplace silos that often prevent true company-wide communication, collaboration, and growth. Now colleges are looking to get faculty out of their silos, as well. The catalyst? That old nemesis: learning outcomes assessment.
Although distance learning is no longer in its infancy, there are still a lot of unknowns. It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the questions and the possibilities of what you want your online program to look like today … not to mention five years from now. Here’s your chance to take advantage some of the best practices learned by those who blazed the trail before you.
After years of stating my expectations for tutorial participation orally, I have developed a rubric that I think both improves my accountability as an assessor and provides my students with a clear sense of my expectations for class discussions. It also makes clear my focus in the small group setting: creating a “learners-centered,” as opposed to a “learner-centered,” environment.
In Tuesday’s post, we talked about a survey conducted by Brenda Coppard, chair of occupational therapy at Creighton University, on the transition from faculty to chair, and what experiences they…
Despite all that has been written about leadership, the question still remains: What does it take to be an effective academic leader? At the risk of being redundant, and with apologies to David Letterman, here are the 10 characteristics that I have found to positively contribute to effective leadership.
Inadequate preparation, unrealistic expectations, and increased workload can be overwhelming for faculty members making the transition to department chair. Brenda Coppard, chair of occupational therapy at Creighton University, found this…
Although group work can provide a welcome change to the regular classroom routine, the results are rarely all positive. Invariably, one or two students in each group, because they are…
If you ask students what they want to get out of a course, most give the same answer: an A (never mind if learning accompanies the grade). If you rephrase…
Jonathan P. Mathews, assistant professor of energy and geo-environmental engineering at Penn State University, teaches a high-enrollment (more than 400 students) general education online course, Energy and the Environment. Although he has two teaching assistants, the logistics of managing such a large class would be overwhelming without implementing the following course design and management ideas.