The Points Don't Matter

Think back to classes in high school or college where you learned and retained that learning. The research on learning would bet that you felt positive emotion in that learning environment. You were stimulated by interesting things, thoughts, and ideas. You were challenged and attentive. You felt accomplishment and achievement. Is that accurate to the classes you thought about? It turns out that our memory is tied to emotion. Positive emotion in the learning environment helps us develop durable, persistent knowledge. According to Sarah Rose Cavanagh, scholar in affective science, in her book The Spark of Learning: Energizing the College Classroom with the Science of Emotion, there is a long-held belief that emotion and cognition (thinking) are separate and potentially at odds with each other; but actually the “neural mechanisms underlying emotion, motivation, and learning are so intertwined.” She suggests that to motivate and educate our students, “there is no better approach than to t

It’s widely known that showing up doesn’t ensure students will succeed in a course, but it’s a great place to start. However, post-pandemic, students are vocal about their desire for professors to adopt a more flexible approach to attendance. In fall 2021, the University of Arizona’s student paper ran an opinion essay with the headline “Why Is Attendance Still Mandatory in 2021?” Kerry-Ann Barrett, in her literature review, “ An Examination of Informed and Incentivized Attendance ,” in January 2021, reminds us that “mandatory attendance policies when enforced may have implications for retention rates” and that these policies “may also demotivate students to attend as it goes against their self-directedness.” Some argue that attendance policies don’t measure participation or engagement, but instead become one more obstacle to navigate. Attendance incentives are now gaining interest and popularity in higher education.  Attendance incentives reward attendance rather than punish absence.

No one likes to fail. It stings, and it requires strength to try again. This strength is a character trait that develops over time with the right attitude toward failing. Do you embrace failure in your life and your teaching, or does failure disappoint and discourage you? There is much discussion these days about the value of failure in learning, and most importantly the value of analyzing what went wrong, and finding ways to correct it next time. Let’s be honest, we fail at something almost every day. It might be something small, but we make those mental notes about what not to do next time. That’s learning! Learning comes from failing, not succeeding. When we succeed, we breathe a sigh of relief, but we don’t learn anything. Learning is making continuous improvements toward a goal, it’s almost never doing something right the first time. According to an article from Oxford Learning in December 2020, “Failure is a part of learning. While the idea of failing can seem scary, it helps stu