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: Teaching
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…