Posts Tagged ‘assignment strategies’
May 1 - It’s Time to Face What Isn’t Working in Our Courses and Find Out Why
By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD in Teaching Professor Blog
Not everything we do in our courses works as well as we’d like. Sometimes it’s a new assignment that falls flat, other times it’s something that consistently disappoints. For example, let’s take a written assignment that routinely delivers work that is well below our expectations. It might be a paper that reports facts but never ties them together, an essay that repeats arguments but never takes a stand, or journal entries that barely scratch the surface of deep ideas.
January 22 - How Can I Incorporate a Group Poster Session into My Class?
By: Mary Bart in 20 Minute Mentor, Student Engagement
Posters can be an extremely effective group assignment in the classroom environment. In this 20 Minute Mentor program you will learn how to prepare, assign, and grade a group poster session in your class.
January 22 - Online Homework Systems Can Boost Student Achievement
By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD in Instructional Design
Online homework has great appeal for instructors, especially those teaching large courses. By using online assignments, instructors don’t have to collect, grade, and promptly return large quantities of homework assignments. Online programs provide instructors with feedback on student performance that can be used to modify the presentation of material in class. Online homework is also beneficial to students. They get feedback promptly, even more promptly than that provided by very conscientious instructors. Online homework can also be designed so that it allows students to work on areas that frequently cause trouble and/or on areas where the individual student is having difficulty.
October 31 - Generate Deeper Learning through Digital Storytelling
By: Mary Bart in Online Seminars
Digital storytelling is a powerful learning experience for students. This seminar uses examples to demonstrate the essential elements of teaching digital storytelling and how it can be applied to different fields. Your presenter will show you the steps for developing and implementing a digital storytelling lesson plan, as well as how to assess the outcomes of student storytelling.
October 17 - A Couple of Great Strategies to Improve Student Reading
By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD in Teaching Professor Blog
The pedagogical periodical Teaching Theology and Religion has a unique section. In fact, many of the discipline-based periodicals on teaching and learning have interesting and relevant features, which is one of the reasons why I continue to bemoan the positioning of so much of our scholarship on teaching and learning in the disciplines. These journals regularly include research findings and great strategies that address aspects of teaching and learning that transcend disciplines.
October 15 - Scaffolding Student Learning: Tips for Getting Started
By: Vicki Caruana, PhD in Instructional Design
Many of us who teach in higher education do not have a teaching background, nor do we have experience in curriculum development. We know our content areas and are experts in our fields, but structuring learning experiences for students may or may not be our strong suit. We’ve written a syllabus (or were handed one to use) and have developed some pretty impressive assessments, projects, and papers in order to evaluate our students’ progress through the content. Sometimes we discover that students either don’t perform well on the learning experiences we’ve designed or they experience a great deal of frustration with what they consider high stakes assignments. Vygotsky’s zone of proximal development (Vygotsky, 1978) proposes that it’s important to determine the area (zone) between what a student can accomplish unaided and what that same student can accomplish with assistance.
September 17 - Using “Frameworks” to Enhance Teaching and Learning
By: Patrice W. Hallock, PhD in Teaching and Learning
I want to explain the use of what I call “frameworks” in my college teaching. I have used them during nine years of teaching graduate and undergraduate classes, and my students tell me that they are particularly helpful. Although I teach in Utica College’s Education program, this tool has application across a broad number of disciplines and courses at a variety of levels.
August 16 - An Assignment that Prevents Plagiarism
By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD in Instructional Design
A qualitative study of plagiarism reported that although students know that plagiarism is wrong, most are quite confused about what actually constitutes plagiarism. The availability of so many online resources has exacerbated the problem. Cut-and-paste features expedite using the material of others. Studies are also showing that students do not think the principles of ownership apply to online resources the same way they do to published material. Finally, many faculty are still struggling to master the rules of referencing that apply to Web-based resources, which does not excuse but certainly explains why students find referencing these materials so confusing.
May 23 - Shining a Light on Your Assignments
By: Maryellen Weimer, PhD in Teaching Professor Blog
Not so long ago I challenged us to consider how our collections of active learning activities fit together and that has gotten me thinking about the collection of assignments we have students complete in a course. How do they fit together? Why have we chosen that particular group?
May 16 - Grading Strategies to Promote Student & Faculty Success
By: Mary Bart in Online Seminars
When you give your grading as much care and attention as you give the rest of your course design components, you will start to see improvements in student performance and experience greater personal satisfaction in teaching. Learn how to make positive changes to your grading strategies and tactics.
