What’s the best way to get faculty to engage with emerging technologies and incorporate new learning spaces into their teaching? Five institutions share their experiences in this Campus Technology article. The five institutions are North Carolina State, Western Michigan, Virginia Tech, Penn State, and Ohio University. Here’s a summary of the ways each institution has […]
Shared Resources
Running Class Discussions on Divisive Topics Is Tricky. Here’s One Promising Approach.
The Chronicle of Higher Education’s Teaching newsletter shares Reflective Structured Dialogue as a successful method for facilitating class discussions on divisive topics. The highly structured approach follows strict guidelines for starting the discussion to ensure that participants both speak and listen without trying to convince someone else that their own ideas are best and others’ ideas […]
Adopting Open Educational Resources (OER) Appears to Improve Students’ Grades
According to an Inside Higher Education article, a large-scale study at the University of Georgia has found that college students provided with free course materials at the beginning of a class get significantly better academic results than those that do not. The Georgia study compared the final grades of students enrolled in eight large undergraduate […]
SPCS Innovations in Teaching
Since 2016, SPCS has recognized innovative pedagogy among adjunct faculty with its Innovations in Teaching award. If you don’t know much about this award, check out the Innovations in Teaching section of the SPCS degree program faculty webpages. Nominations for the SPCS Innovations in Teaching award – PDF award are accepted each year by December […]
Do Learning Styles Really Matter?
A recent review of the scientific literature on learning styles found scant evidence to clearly support the idea that outcomes are best when instructional techniques align with individuals’ learning styles. In fact, there are several studies that contradict this belief. It is clear that people have a strong sense of their own learning preferences (e.g., […]
Solving Public Problems in ENGL 202U
At the encouragement of my English doctoral dissertation chair at Old Dominion University, I’ve experimented with the design and structure of the ENGL 202U Critical Writing and Research II class that I’ve taught the past several years. I’m sharing this experience with members of the CoP because results from students’ end-of-semester evaluations have been surprisingly […]
Multiplying Impact: Five Frameworks for Investment in EdTech for Adult Learners
This report, available from LINCS: Community, Courses & Resources for Adult Education, explores the potential for technology to enhance the teaching and learning of advanced math skills for adults. In this second of three reports, Power in Numbers examines opportunity areas for technology to drive impact for adult learners. We propose that edtech investors and […]
Teaching Newsletter – Chronicle of Higher Education
Teaching is a free newsletter from The Chronicle of Higher Education that’s emailed out (most) every Thursday. The newsletter is written by Chronicle journalists who cover teaching and learning, and contains a mix of short articles and links to other material, in The Chronicle and beyond, that readers may want to check out. Subscribe to the Teaching Newsletter Teaching Newsletter FAQ […]
Battle over College Course Material is a Textbook Example of Technological Change
A revolution in college course materials is raising questions about cost, access and fairness. Publishers say their high-tech courseware — electronic books glowing with videos and interactive study guides — can improve the quality of learning at a small fraction of the cost of traditional textbooks. But student advocates call for adoption of open-source textbooks […]
Don’t Forget, Instructional Design Is About Problem Solving
In this EduCause Review blog post, Camille Dickson-Deane (Educational/Instructional Design Consultant at the University of Melbourne) and Tutaleni I. Asino (Assistant Professor of Educational Technology at Oklahoma State University) offer a quick refresher on the origins of instructional design, which is especially valuable because the demand for what we do is increasing. As Kyle Peck reminds us, “a […]