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…
Category: Pedagogy
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…
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…
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…
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”,…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…