The Best Ways to Inspire Your Students to Learn Science
Isaac Newton first conceptualized the idea of gravity when an apple fell on his head. This moment was simple, but inspirational—with a huge impact on scientific progress to come. Answers…
Going Multimodal: 5 Tips for Making the Switch to Multimodal Assignments
With written communication becoming increasingly multimodal—from newspaper websites to your social media feed to your learning management system’s announcements page—researchers and practitioners alike have made the case for the value…
Designing a Course with Accountability and Dale’s Cone of Experience
When I began designing my course activities, I needed a model that would include all modalities of the learning processes. As my blueprint, I chose to incorporate Dale’s Cone of…
Scaffolding: How the Chicken Who Crossed the Road Developed New Knowledge
Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side. Why did the chicken cross the playground? To get to the other slide. As experts in our…
Instructional Design: Who’s Playing First in My Course?
At a symposium about teaching projects on our campus, one group of faculty presented a set of projects they had done that involved giving students control over course design issues.…
Supporting Learning in Students with Autism: What Do Professors Need to Know?
“Jason is a bright, ambitious, and warm 22-year-old. He wants to be a Geologist. However, Jason has a hard time staying focused in a large classroom. Group activities, competing deadlines,…
A Practical Strategy for Infusing Multicultural Content into Any Lesson
The important role professors play in helping our students appreciate cultural diversity cannot be overvalued. There has been much written about what a Culturally Responsive educator can do to help…
Would They Play? Would They Learn?
What began as a routine summer workshop on incorporating games and game-like elements into instruction, turned into a surprise for summer; two weeks of fun and intense online game-play from…
12 Tips for Improving Your Faculty Development Plan
Countless workshops, seminars, retreats, and other faculty development courses are offered under the assumption that they can positively affect how faculty teach, which in turn will help students learn.
The Focus is You: Kathleen Koenig
Although Kathleen Koenig was terrified of public speaking as a student, she now teaches lecture classes with 135+ students. As an associate professor in the Physics Department at the University…