As you ramp up for the next semester and ponder ways to get students to read your syllabus, consider some of these techniques. radar, yay, level, heh If you don’t…
Three Types of Knowledge
In Multimedia Learning by Richard Mayer discusses five kinds of knowledge: facts, concepts, procedures, strategies, and beliefs (page 31). We as educators instinctively consider the first four types of knowledge when we…
Thinking Classrooms
Peter Liljedahl, a professor of mathematics education at Simon Fraser University, has spent twenty years observing classrooms in pursuit of effective teaching (mostly in K12 classrooms). He has concluded that…
Cool Tools, Part II
Back by popular demand – a roundup of free and easy-to-use software. Consider adding the following to your arsenal of creation and productivity tools: A few notes: Movie Editing You…
Cool Tools, Part I
There are plenty of tools to help you create – and beautify! – content. Maybe you need to edit an image you got from Unsplash. Perhaps you are looking for…
Better than Copyright
It is so tempting (and easy) to find an image online and use it in some work you are doing. I used to do it all the time. That is,…
More “Multitasking”
Ask people if they are good at multitasking and chances are they’ll say “yes”. Two things to note about this: Any time multiple demands compete for attention (interference) we have…
Reading in the Brain as a Machine Learning Model
In the book Reading in the Brain: The New Science of How We Read, Stanislas Dehaene takes us on a tour of the brain that drills down to the neuron-level of…
The Pen Was mightier than the Keyboard
In 2013, researchers designed an experiment to determine if taking notes by hand made things “stick” more than taking notes on a computer. Mueller and Oppenheimer had participants watch an…
Parity Across Grading Scale
One of the following sporting events is fake – can you guess which one? Lock in your vote. It turns out that Anstrengung – that bizarre sporting event where teams…
Crossing the Threshold
From my very first days teaching a C++ programming class, it was evident that I was in over my head. I had a solid understanding of the fundamentals, but the…
The Peak-End Rule
In 1993 an interesting study run by Daniel Kahneman and other researchers investigated discomfort. Participants submerged one hand in water at 14°C (57.2°F) for sixty seconds and rated the discomfort….
You are cursed
When I was at SUNY Geneseo as a Math major, I took a course designed for high school math teachers. In addition to having to complete a New York State…
The New Education
Cathy Davidson, Senior Advisor on Transformation to the Chancellor of the City University of New York (CUNY), recently released an updated version of her book The New Education: How to Revolutionize…
Polls as a way to increase learning?
I often drive to my father’s house in Penn Yan. As I approach the town of Gorham – right before the Old Gorham Cemetery on Country Road 18, there is…
Toilets, Helicopters, and Punnett Squares
Do you know how a ballpoint pen works? If you’re immediate answer was “yes”, you are in a majority that includes people who think they know how a ballpoint works (though in…
W. Edwards Deming and the Heath Brothers
Management consultant William Edwards Deming is famous for his contributions to quality design and for his management theories. After writing several books (impressively one at age 86 and one at…
Low-Stakes/High-Stakes
Low-stakes testing and high-stakes testing are two different types of assessments that serve different purposes and have different implications. Low-stakes testing, also known as formative assessment, is typically used to…
10 Ways to Potentiate Your Syllabus
As you ramp up for the next semester and pondering ways to get students to read your syllabus, consider some of these techniques. If you don’t have an appetite for…
Language Matters
It’s almost that time of the year again – time to turn your attention to the next semester. The ritual of updating your course syllabus can be exciting or it…
There’s Always a Python
This morning my wife and I were walking our three dogs in the park and I was lamenting about how I was a little behind in grading. “Every semester I…
Cognitive Endurance
Schooling may build human capital not only by teaching academic skills, but by expanding the capacity for cognition itself” claims the study published June, 2022. The researchers recognized the need to combat cognitive…
Poison, Razor Blades, Moral Panic, and Halloween
Growing up I was fortunate to have a father that would selflessly inspect and test my spoils from a long night of trick-or-treating. The common wisdom at the time was…
The Myth of Learning Styles
When I was in college (in the nineteen hundreds), one of my education classes explored Howard Gardner’s Theory of Multiple Intelligences. I was enamored with the idea. As a doe-eyed…
Where in the World(le)
In the wake of the Wordle maelstrom during lockdown many similar games surfaced. Though my favorite is Quordle (where the player solves four Wordles at once), I’d like to tell you about…
Constructivism vs. Constructionism
In the book What the Best College Teachers Do, Ken Bain shares the results of a study he conducted of sixty five teachers across twenty-four institutions. He’s organized his findings across…
Inga and Otto and the EMT
Imagine Inga and Otto live in the city and are independently walking to the museum. Inga has a fabulous memory and knows the precise location of the museum on 53rd street….
Two Approaches to Transforming Your Leadership Style
By Aaron Proietti I am wired as a change agent, and I enjoy playing the game of negotiation and influence that is required to change the way organizational systems behave….
Minimizing Distractions, Minimizing “Multitasking”
We know multitasking isn’t possible. We know distractions compete for attention, and failure to attend to learning completely derails any hope of future retrieval. In fact, as Michelle Miller states in…
Myths of Multitasking
More news in the department of “People are Notoriously Wrong about Themselves”, this time under the subheading of distraction and multitasking. Distractions are not the same as multitasking, but they do…
What Questions do you Have?
I had the luxurious experience of being at a conference in person last week. You know, with people. You know, with people not on a screen. It was exhilarating. One of the presenters had everybody…
Cognitive Intrigue
In The Importance of Average: Playing the Game of School to Increase Success and Achievement by Stephen Farenga et al., one of the authors tells a story about a birthday party his five year old son…
Open Pedagogy – Increased student motivation and learning (and less work for you!)
We are in a perfect storm. The confluence of Open Education Week, a pivot to a new LMS, and FLCC’s commitment to free and low-cost materials (backed by financial incentives for…
Heutagogy, Generative Learning, and Drive
In 2009, Daniel Pink wrote Drive – a book that interrogated what we know about motivation and challenged the world with a reframing of what makes us tick. In 1949,…
Tell Me a Story
This week’s post comes from John Ghidiu, a retired storyteller, change manager, and organizational development professional. Many years ago, as a young manager at Bristol-Myers, I had to give presentations…
Spaced Out
In 1885, Hermann Ebbinghaus introduced the world to the forgetting curve. In an impressive-but-limited study, he attempted to memorize nonsensical words and then recall them at different intervals (immediately, a few…
Show Your Work
In the domain of computer nerds, there is a prophetic maxim that states: “Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow.” Eric S. Raymond, The Cathedral and the Bazaar Dubbed “Linus’s Law”,…
Heard in the Halls
As I was wandering the halls – in the week leading to the semester as well as the first few days of the semester – I heard some really inspiring conversations that…
Please Report to the Principal’s Office
The authors of Learning That Matters: A Field Guide to Course Design for Transformative Education were on a recent episode of the Teaching in Higher Ed podcast (#391) and spoke with host Bonni Stachowiak…
Online Discussions for Face to Face Classes
Online discussion forums are a great tool to use in face-to-face classes. They give all students in a class the ability to be heard. They give students time to reflect on…
Messy and Wicked Students
Every computer science student has had to program HelloWorld, TowersOfHanoi, and Nim. They are canonical problems that most students are likely to encounter and study in the classroom. Similarly, most math students will…
Beyond the Due Date
In Blended Learning with Google: Your Guide to Dynamic Teaching and Learning by Kasey Bell, tackles different ways to leverage engaging technology. While the book is targeted for K-12 teachers, there are many…
Power of Prediction
We predict things all the time (usually based on prior knowledge, context, and experience). Have you ever attempted to complete someone’s sentence? But did you know predicting in a novel context can be a potent learning…
Van Life, Serendipity, and Community
This week I’d like to step away from bonafide learning science and share something that happened to me this week. Hot off the heels of the fumes of watching Nomadland,…
Teach by Example(s)?
Consider this story: A general wishes to capture a fortress located in the center of a country. There are many roads radiating outward from the fortress. All have been mined…
Worth the Wait
Feedback. If you’re like me, you probably believe two things. One, that feedback is essential to student learning. And two, the more immediate the feedback, the better. I’ve always suspected…
Assessing Assessments
If you’ve been reading the thoughts from CTL this semester, you’ve probably noticed a trend. The blog posts tend to focus on things we can control in our classroom. How…
Multimedia for your Students
Check out this passage from Multimedia Learning by Richard Mayer: Lightning can be defined as the discharge of electricity resulting from the difference in electrical charges between the cloud and the ground….
Neuromyths – Part II
In 2018, Dr. Tracey Tokuhama-Espinosa published Neuromyths: Debunking False Ideas About The Brain, a book that interrogates roughly sixty myths about learning and teaching. She frames each myth by explaining the…
Podcast Roundup
Haven’t you heard? Audio is in! It’s the hottest form of content delivery – perhaps you’ve heard about the Clubhouse app (a delicate balance of call-in radio shows, conference calls, and social media)? Or…
Neuromyths – Part I
In 2018, Dr. Tracey Tokuhama-Espinosa published Neuromyths: Debunking False Ideas About The Brain, a book that interrogates roughly sixty myths about learning and teaching. She frames each myth by explaining the myth, discussing the…
Three Types of Knowledge
We all know about Bloom’s taxonomy – the eponymous hierarchy for classifying learning objectives and a guide for designing scaffolded learning experiences. I use Bloom’s as a guideposts as I craft lessons; “Is…
Time
Can you picture that feeling of joy you get when a meeting gets canceled and you suddenly find yourself with a little bit of ‘extra’ time? I know I can….
Surprising Thoughts About Multimedia
Dr. Richard Mayer published a wonderful book in 2001 called Multimedia Learning. The third edition was released last year and masterfully builds on his initial premises through the lens of modern technology. The…
Why we Sleep
Dr. Matthew Walker published a book in 2017 called Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams. In the book he warns of the serious long term dangers…
Profound Jim
During Opening Days this semester, a number of people gathered in Webex to share ideas about teaching online (an infographic from the day is included at the end of this email). Near…
Taking an online course to be a better teacher
You can be a better teacher by taking an online course. During the pandemic, we have all had to experience some type of online teaching and/or learning. Why not find…
Rubrics
What if I told you there was a tool that, when used well, can clearly articulate to students what is important in an assignment, give timely feedback to students, reduce…
Happiness
I have been teaching in higher education for 25 years this year. During that time, I have worked with students who increasingly report anxieties about life that feel overwhelming and insurmountable. During…
Developing a Classroom Technology Policy
James Lang, author of Small Teaching and Small Teaching Online has published a new book, Distracted: Why Students Can’t Focus and What You Can Do About It. While reading this…
Chance Favors the Prepared Mind
Massed practice is how I learned math growing up; that is, focusing on specific problems. On Monday, my teacher gave me 20 addition problems. The next night she gave me 20 subtraction…
Social Reading with Hypothesis
If you are a reader of eBooks and use a Kindle or similar device, you’re probably familiar with the “Popular Highlights” setting that allows you to see how many other…
Quiz Early, Quiz Often
In the book Make it Stick, the authors discuss a number of research-based strategies to help instructors create meaningful learning experiences for their students. One of the strategies – retrieval practice…
Creative Commons for Educators
There have been times when (and I’m embarrassed to admit this because I’m married to a librarian) that I’ve stolen a picture from a website for something I wanted to use…