I’ve more recently come to terms with the idea that I am a millennial in my mid-30s, because often I find myself saying, “Well, when I was in college…” and quickly realizing I have become the person I rolled my eyes at when they talked about how students learned. The one who starts a sentence with, “Back when I was in school…”.
Somehow, I have become that person.
I was with a group of faculty members as they watched a live demonstration of a new built-in AI tool in the learning management system. With a single line of command, the vendor representative generated an entire course module in seconds: topic descriptions, learning goals, readings, PowerPoint slides, practice activities, quizzes, and exams. The quizzes and exams could even be graded automatically.
Everything many of us had spent years learning to design appeared instantly.
When faculty are tasked with designing their courses, they are often starting from scratch. In addition to creating the learning outcomes, they have to source the materials, design course activities and assessments, and develop course policies. While they are doing all of this, a question that is top of mind is: “Is this rigorous enough?” or “Are my standards high enough?” Continue reading
Most of us are very familiar with the traditional ways colleges gather student feedback and measure student engagement. End-of-course evaluations are nearly universal in higher education, and they can offer helpful information about the student experience. However, these surveys are backward-looking and rarely provide the kind of nuanced, candid insight we need to make meaningful changes in our teaching and course design choices. Recent research backs this up. Becker, Brandt, and Psihopaidas (2021) found that student evaluations often miss the deeper contextual and emotional dimensions of learning that instructors need to make meaningful improvements. Their study demonstrated that when students are asked to talk through their experiences in real-time conversations, such as student panels, instead of rating them on a form, they reveal far more about what supports or hinders their engagement. Continue reading
After a particularly rough term in high school, my mom tried to comfort me by saying, “When you fail, you learn more.” I replied, “Then I must be a genius!” Cheeky, yes—but she wasn’t wrong. In fact, research shows that productive failure plays a vital role in how we learn. In the classroom, however, the fear of failure often prevents students from taking risks, asking questions, or engaging deeply, especially in higher education, where grades and perfection are prized. So, how can we shift this narrative and build a classroom culture where failure is seen not as defeat, but as a powerful learning tool? Continue reading
When my son Grant started college over a year ago, I asked him how he chose his classes. The eighteen-year-old computer science freshman explained that he looked at course syllabi and checked student reviews on RateMyProfessor. When there were multiple sections of a beginner-level computer science class available, he opted for the one with a stricter attendance policy.
Really? I was taken aback. Wasn’t it established by research that mandatory attendance policies make students “lose their sense of control,” leading them to feel negative about their decision to attend college? (St. Claire, 1999). Wasn’t this the same boy who once told me, “Mom, the more you ask me to do something, the less I want to do it”? Continue reading
While I’ve always valued Beth McMurtrie’s recommendations for teaching and learning in the Chronicle of Higher Education, this past year, McMurtrie’s newsletters have seemed to perfectly correspond with the challenges in my first-year writing classes. McMurtrie’s recent tips focus on strategies engaging Gen Z, and include suggestions for fostering classroom community, increasing participation, rethinking reading assignments, and supporting student success.
These are some of the things I’m taking from McMurtrie’s year of reporting and analysis as I reset and plan for 2025. Continue reading
As instructors, we know the importance of feedback and checking for students’ understanding of course material. However, we often rely on traditional methods of assessment, like essays and exams. These methods are effective but don’t always allow for timely and constructive feedback. Giving feedback to students in real time helps them identify areas for improvement, deepen their understanding of course material, and develop essential critical thinking skills. Below I’ve shared some strategies to solidify your students’ knowledge prior to a high-stakes assessment. Continue reading
Within education, we are likely familiar with the many cognitive models and heuristics used to depict learning stages or provide frameworks for approaching the art and science of teaching. Bloom’s Taxonomy, Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, Piaget’s Theory of Cognitive Development, Vygotsky’s Zones of Proximal Development, and many other models and theories provide conceptualizations of individual steps, thoughts, stages, or actions to be taken in the internalization and mastery of concepts in education, both for students and instructors. It seems a natural progression then that a similar framework would begin to develop in the age of artificial intelligence that helps instructors and students alike understand the stages of development or work to be done in understanding, testing, and applying AI workflows to our current states of learning and teaching. Even photo editing tools are now powered by AI to achieve various effects. The Deepnude tool, for instance, can create copies of portrait photos and create their more sensual versions. Continue reading
In a recent Chronicle of Higher Education piece, James M. Lang and Kristi Rudenga discuss combining intrinsic motivation strategies with extrinsic motivators that have come under scrutiny, like deadlines, grades, and punitive course policies.
These recommendations speak to the moment many educators find themselves in: We’re no longer in the acute phase of the pandemic, where instructors and students are doing the best they can amidst historically challenging circumstances that necessitated changes to many educational norms. Now, we’re grappling with a gray area that’s just as challenging, as we try to decide which educational norms need to be reinstated and which “pandemic lessons” should be integrated into our practice moving forward.