Read more about the article The Key Ingredients to Students’ Success in a College Course

The Key Ingredients to Students’ Success in a College Course

It is very rewarding personally and professionally to teach psychology in higher education. As I reflect on teaching and working with students, I am mindful of the five key ingredients I have found to be valuable to their success in a course. The first ingredient is creating a trusting, safe, and respectful learning environment for students to thrive. When students feel comfortable in their learning environment, they feel confident to express their ideas, ask questions, and connect with the course in a meaningful way.

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Read more about the article Getting Students to Take Responsibility for Learning

Getting Students to Take Responsibility for Learning

I’ve been writing for years that we need to teach in ways that encourage students to take more responsibility for their learning. Recently, it became clear that my thinking on this needed more detail and depth. I’ve been saying that it means students should be doing the learning tasks that make them stronger learners. They should be figuring out what’s important in the reading, rather than having the teacher to tell them. They should be taking notes rather than expecting to get the teacher’s slides and notes.

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Read more about the article A Challenge to Current Grading Practices

A Challenge to Current Grading Practices

There’s a lot to be gained from considering ideas and arguments at odds with current practice. In higher education, many instructional practices are accepted and replicated with little thought. Fortunately, there are a few scholars who keep asking tough questions and challenging conventional thinking. Australian D. Royce Sadler is one of them. His views on feedback and assessment are at odds with the mainstream, but his scholarship is impeccable, well-researched, and logically coherent. His ideas merit our attention, make for rich discussion, and should motivate us to delve into the assumptions that ground current policies and practices.

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Read more about the article Questioning the Two-Hour Rule for Studying

Questioning the Two-Hour Rule for Studying

Faculty often tell students to study two hours for every credit hour. Where and when did this rule of thumb originate? I’ve been unable to track down its genesis. I suspect it started around 1909, when the Carnegie Unit (CU) was accepted as the standard measure of class time. [See Heffernan (1973) and Shedd (2003) for thorough histories of the credit hour.] The U.S. Department of Education defines the credit hour as “One hour of classroom or direct faculty instruction and a minimum of two hours of out of class student work each week for approximately fifteen weeks for one semester…” The expectation was the norm when I was in college in the 1980s and more seasoned professors indicate it was expected in the 1970s too.

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Read more about the article Classroom Management of an Online First-Year Experience Course

Classroom Management of an Online First-Year Experience Course

A student’s initial introduction into higher education can be exciting and frustrating, especially when the student is enrolled in their first online class. This year I taught a newly created first-year experience course at a vocational based higher education institution.

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Read more about the article A Memo to My Students as the New Semester Begins

A Memo to My Students as the New Semester Begins

To: My Students From: Your Teacher Re: A Better Learning Experience This is just a brief note to let you know how committed I am to making this a good course. But I can’t do my best teaching without your help. So, I thought I’d share a list of things you can do that will make this a better experience for all of us.

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Read more about the article Students Recoup Exam Points by Creating a Video on Items Missed

Students Recoup Exam Points by Creating a Video on Items Missed

I teach a Comprehensive Review course, the final course for Family Nurse Practitioner students in an online program.  My focus is to prepare students for the certification boards and ultimately, clinical practice. Recently, when I was reviewing an exam with a student, I thought about how she was exposed to the content twice during the course: in lecture format and then again, (hopefully), by her preceptor during clinical rotation. This exposure doesn’t count the additional interactions with the content as she studied for exams. As we were going over the information once more, I heard myself telling her that “It’s not about the grade, it’s about really learning this information for the boards and, even more importantly, for patient care.”

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Read more about the article Teacher Characteristics and Behaviors that Make a Difference

Teacher Characteristics and Behaviors that Make a Difference

Teaching and learning. For decades, we focused almost exclusively on the teaching side of things. More recently, we’ve been paying attention to learning, and that’s a good thing. However, we shouldn’t be thinking about one without the other—they’re both important and inseparably linked.

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