Category Pedagogy

Any and all Teaching Tips that are related to pedagogy.

Invite students to publish

Moving from the What of OER to the How of Open Pedagogy to the Why of Open Educational Practices and then a healthy does of When NOT

Are you interested in encouraging your students to create work to share with others? Adding your voice to the domain knowledge–which shapes our education–is a strong motivator. As teachers, writers, designers, and artists we long to create and share. What…

Practice object-based teaching

Businessman turns wooden cubes and changes the word Teaching to Learning. Beautiful grey table and grey background.
Though I've long practiced the technique of Object-Based Teaching (OBT) in face-to-face and online classrooms alike, I'd never really looked into the scholarship behind it until recently. I'd also not really considered the pedagogical principles behind it, nor whether my pedagogy needed any scrutiny and modification. It turns out that there were some aspects of my practice I needed to modify.

Ideas for customizing the lab experience

We tend to think that lab courses must march students through a well-rehearsed set of steps. After the experiment is performed, and the data gathered and presented, students submit a lab report with an error analysis which provides an opportunity to explain why the results deviated from theoretical predictions. This gives you, the instructor plenty to assess. The real question is: Are you measuring what you want with your lab activity assessment?

Bring robust labs to online classes

As we discover, test and improve methods of online teaching, one category of courses, the science laboratory based class, has resisted many efforts to bring lab units to the online realm. But this need not be the case. There are several models, methods and ready made solutions available to instructors or departments who are contemplating this transition. In this Teaching Tip, we cover the range of options available. Illustration: University of Munich Remotely Controlled Lab on Millikan’s Experiment web interface.

Bring your expertise front and center

Let go of some of the how. How will the student generate the video? How will the student submit his or her paper? Focus on the what and the why. Grab your list of learning objectives and analyze course learning experiences and assessments to determine if they support students progressing toward course outcomes.

What, you think this is funny?

The best kind of joke is the one that forces students to rethink content in a new light and see it from a different perspective. But achieving this can be difficult. Wanzer illustrates the pitfalls in using humor to achieve this end.