Category Archives: Classroom Techniques

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Difficulty in Academia: Limits and Benefits

How hard is too hard? Is there an optimal failure rate for learning? Robert Wilson, Amitai Shenhav, Mark Straccia, and Jonathan Cohen would say yes.  In their 2018 study, The Eighty Five Percent Rule for Optimal Learning, the researchers set out to discover the “sweet spot” for difficulty in academia. They found that the spot where the most learning occurs –one that is not too hard so as to create frustration, but not so easy so as to not warrant doing– is a 15% failure rate.  What does this mean for students?  At its most simplistic level, it means that if you get 15% of the answers on an assessment wrong the test is at the optimal difficulty. 15% wrong? Wait that is only an 85% (or a B+), won’t that mess with my GPA (and perhaps my self-esteem)!? 

While I don’t think we can go so far as to say that an 85% is the ideal grade, I do think that we can do more to design classes that both encourage and reward failure.

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3 Quick Ways to Increase Student Engagement in Your Lectures

Studies have shown that student participation in lectures leads to students having greater motivation in the classroom, becoming better critical thinkers, and ultimately, learning more effectively. For students to reap the benefits of class participation, however, they actually have to participate. This can occasionally be challenging. 

Below are three activities I keep in my back pocket to stimulate meaningful student participation. 

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Changing Fate with a Screen: High School Live Cast in China

From MIT’s open courseware to the proliferation of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC), I have seen a lot efforts being taken towards blending advancements in technology with the goodwill of making knowledge accessible to all. As an online learning professional, I have been following reports and research on the impact of open education, but never before have I been so stunned by the results of a report. The report, originally published in the weekly edition of Chinese Youth newspaper in Dec 12, 2018, was about a program that provides a full-day live broadcast of a prestigious high school to 248 high schools in the rural areas of China.  

Instead of listening to their own instructors, students in the rural or “far-end” high schools watch a live broadcast of instruction from a high school in Chengdu, the capital city of Sichuan province. According to the report, the launch of project faced strong resistance from teachers in these rural schools. They protested by tearing books apart. Some teachers even took a whole week off and left students “staring” at the screen by themselves.

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DePaul’s Mission in the Classroom

In common to most, if not all, teachers, I always commit myself to designing and carrying out successful teaching. In particular, I subscribe to the notion that teaching success correlates with students learning. Accordingly, part of my job as a teacher is to identify and facilitate ways of learning that best match the kinds of learning that needs to occur in my courses. Because there is no such thing as an all-purpose approach to teaching (or one-size fits all approach), I understand the need to maintain a life-long commitment to continuous improvement upon my teaching and learning. Thus, I intentionally make every effort to keep abreast with evidence-based developments on approaches to teaching and learning. For example, I regularly read journal articles and books related to teaching and learning. I attend the Annual University Teaching and Learning conference, the University Fall Forum, and other teaching and learning workshops. Among the many lessons I have learned is the critical role that the classroom climate has on students learning. Indeed, course climate has been suggested as a very important component in the design of effective instruction. For example, Ambrose et al. (2010) suggested seven principles for effective teaching based on literature research and their own teaching experiences. Two of these principles seem to explicitly connect learning with the climate of the course.

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Change Agent Training: Part 2

In my previous post, I wrote about how a recent moving experience prompted me to rethink the parts of my job where I encourage colleagues to consider new or different teaching methods. Since I’m a “yes, let’s always turn over a new leaf!” person by nature, moving helped me gain some empathy for those who might not be as enthusiastic about change as I am.

Two key findings emerged for me: The first was that I needed to practice asking for help myself, something I’m loathe to do. Framing this behavioral adjustment as “practice” was especially helpful because practicing is low-stakes and friendly. On a recent Home Depot trip, I practiced asking for help finding something right away, and once again, that request paid big dividends in time not spent wandering aisles.

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Why I aim to Stamp Out the Use (or Overuse) of Acronyms at DePaul

That’s right, folks, I am on a mission (cue the Mission Impossible music)! That mission is to stamp out the use (and particularly, the overuse) of acronyms at DePaul. All of higher education is plagued with this issue, but DePaul, in particular, seems very fond of its acronyms. Why say the college of liberal arts and social sciences when you could say LAS? Public Relations and Advertising is so many syllables and PRAD is just one! It’s easy to see the genesis of this practice and even why it is so widespread. So what’s the problem? Does being pro-number make me anti-letter? No, my issue with acronyms is akin to my problem with the overuse of jargon. The problem is that these acronyms might not mean very much to those outside of your inner circles. Referring to CSH’s MENP program in NRSG will be perfectly clear to some and gibberish to most. The problem is that as we strive for more and stronger collaborations across our colleges, departments, programs, and courses at DePaul, acronyms will become more problematic. These acronyms, which were very clear in our department’s faculty meeting, might as well be a foreign language to the faculty we’re working with in a different college. They can also be overwhelming to new faculty, staff, and students who are adjusting to so many new things when they start at DePaul. It’s like everyone knows the secret handshake…and if you don’t, do you belong here?

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Review of the Best Free Quiz Games: Kahoot vs. Poll Everywhere Competitions

I’ve been using Kahoot for several years to create competitive quiz games like 21 blitz for my students. It’s a great tool for reviewing previously covered concepts and breaking up lectures with quick knowledge checks. So, when a colleague encouraged me to check out Poll Everywhere’s new Competitions feature, I was skeptical. I have students who literally cheer when I announce that it’s time for a Kahoot quiz. Even hard-to-impress faculty get caught up in the competition during workshops. They overthink their team names, agonize over answer choices, and trash talk their neighbors as points are tallied. I couldn’t possibly abandon Kahoot and run away with another quiz tool after everything we’ve been through, could I?

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Aligning Goals: Simple Structures for Student Transfer and Reviewer Clarity

Since we apply the Quality Matters (QM) rubric to the review of our courses, we typically view the interactions between the elements of the course as “alignment”—the idea that these pieces all flow through or stem from one another, allowing a reviewer and instructor to see the connection of these elements throughout the course. While we have various ways of demonstrating this alignment (numbering and sub-numbering, parenthetical reference, etc.), these tend to be used internally, mostly shared between the instructor, the instructional designer, and the review teams. Rarely do we share this full concept of alignment with students—but why? If we build for structure and scaffolding of the lessons throughout the course, wouldn’t it also be beneficial to students to see ways of connecting the various course objectives with the module objectives, readings, assessments, and other activities?

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Student-Centered Vs. Teacher-Centered Classrooms: Which and Why?

We have all seen the stereotypical version of what a lecture-based classroom looks like in television and movies. Whenever popular media wants to portray school as being dull, we are shown an unfashionable teacher standing at the front of a class speaking in a monotone voice about a dry topic. This (hopefully minus the dull, monotone, and dry parts) is what’s referred to as a teacher-centered classroom. In contrast, there are student-centered classrooms that encourage learning to be directed by the students. Assignments in this format typically involve small group collaboration and/or autonomy for the learner to choose how and what to learn. The student-centered arrangement has quickly been gaining popularity and is considered by many to be a more dynamic method of learning. However, both structures have their advantages, and I will discuss how each can be implemented in order to create an effective learning environment for all.

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3 Simple Ways to Learn Your Students’ Names

Learning the names of your students is often cited as a simple way to create an inclusive environment in your classroom. It shows your students you care and helps to foster a sense of community. Furthermore, researchers have found that students have a more positive attitude about a course if they perceive that the instructor knows their name.

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I’m the first to admit that I have a terrible memory and have a difficult time remembering the names of people I meet. This means I have to make a concerted effort to quickly learn students’ names when I teach. This can sometimes prove to frustrating and time consuming but it doesn’t have to be. Below are a few quick strategies I use to make learning names a little easier.  

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