Course management software programs make it especially easy for instructors to provide students with a set of complete lecture notes. It seems that more instructors are doing this, as witnessed in the regularity with which students ask that the instructor’s notes be posted. But is giving students a complete set of notes a good idea?
This particular list of characteristics appears in an excellent book that is all but unknown in the states, Learning to Teach in Higher Education, by noted scholar Paul Ramsden. In the case of what makes teaching effective, he writes, “…a great deal is known about the characteristics of effective university teaching. It is undoubtedly a complicated matter; there is no indication of one ‘best way,’ but our understanding of its essential nature is both broad and deep.” (p. 88–89). He organizes that essential knowledge into these six principles, unique for the way he relates them to students’ experiences.
This learning by doing is an excellent example and extension of Dewey’s Experiential Learning Theory, which suggests that everything occurs in a social environment. Learning is a process that includes knowledge, as facilitated and organized by the instructor, as well as, students’ previous experiences and readiness. As educators, we have a responsibility to provide students…
As this example illustrates, scholarship doesn’t always have to take the form of articles in refereed journals and sometimes when the scholarship is pedagogical, other
Learning communities, an approach to curriculum design that links two or more courses, can improve student success and retention and help students develop effective learning
A large study of students enrolled in geography courses at multiple universities in Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States looked at
The relatively new pedagogical periodical Academy of Management Learning & Education has a regular feature I very much enjoy and wish was part of more
I am just finishing up a book on pedagogical scholarship, more specifically a review of previously published work on teaching and learning authored by faculty
Start with a list of 12 familiar ways to learn course content: reading texts or other printed material; writing term papers, participating in group activities in class, doing major team projects, doing cases, taking multiple choice exams, giving presentations to the class, learning about different theories, doing practical exercises, solving problems, doing library research, or exercising a lot of creativity. Now hypothesize as to which learning style prefers which of these approaches to learning.
Research on learning styles now spans four decades. The amount of work ebbs and flows with more flowing recently. Interestingly, work on learning styles continues
