The Points Don't Matter

This Innovative Pedagogies series is based on the article Innovative Pedagogies of the Future: An Evidence-based Selection that offers “a set of innovative, evidence-based pedagogical approaches that have the potential to guide teaching practitioners and transform learning processes and outcomes.” The past few years have seen rapid adoption in educational technology, and this series offers ideas for changes in the practice of teaching and learning to accompany those technology advancements. Since you’re a teacher, you already know that teaching is one of the most powerful ways to learn. Remember being in college yourself and studying with others? We taught each other things–and those were the things we learned the best. That is the essence of teachback . Learning by teaching can help improve student comprehension, confidence, communication, and essential social-emotional learning skills. Teachback is just what you might imagine. Educational technologist, Gordon Pask, coined the name ...

This Innovative Pedagogies series is based on the article Innovative Pedagogies of the Future: An Evidence-based Selection that offers “a set of innovative, evidence-based pedagogical approaches that have the potential to guide teaching practitioners and transform learning processes and outcomes.” The past few years have seen rapid adoption in educational technology, and this series offers ideas for changes in the practice of teaching and learning to accompany those technology advancements. There is a new approach in learning analytics called formative analytics . Formative analytics supports learners “to reflect on what is learned, what can be improved, which goals can be achieved, and how to move forward” ( Sharples et al., 2016 , p.32). This approach is essentially formative assessment supported by analytics techniques. The idea of formative analytics is to provide data directly back to students about the effectiveness of their learning process. A common example of formative analy...

Schools like Stanford, University of Pennsylvania, and University of Arizona are recruiting homeschooled students. According to the article Exploring academic outcomes of homeschooled students in the Journal of College Admission (Cogan, 2010), “homeschool students possess higher ACT scores, grade point averages (GPAs) and graduation rates when compared to traditionally-educated students.” Bolle-Brummond & Wessel (2012) from Homeschooled students in college in the Journal of Research Education , found that homeschooled students were equally equipped to succeed academically and socially. And in a study examining The impact of homeschooling on the adjustment of college students published in the International Social Science Review , Drenovsky & Cohen (2012) revealed homeschooled students report that they achieve higher academic success in college and view their entire college experience more positively than traditionally educated students. This evidence continues to be reproduc...

Some things endure over time, and the good practices of teaching are one of those things. The nature of human beings is social, and so is the essence of these Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education compiled from a review of 50 years of research on students, teachers and learning and reported to the Higher Learning Commission in 2001 by Winona State University. Below is a brief outline of these principles with quotes from the original report.  # 1   Frequent student-faculty contact – Relationships between students and faculty enhance the transfer of information. Furthermore, students feel a sense of belonging to a learning community when they have strong intellectual ties to teachers. “Frequent student-faculty contact in and out of classes is the most important factor in student motivation and involvement.” # 2   Learning is enhanced through cooperation among students – Learning is collaborative and social, and sharing and responding to others deepen...

“I want to say one word to you. Just one word. Plastics!” – Mr. McGuire, The Graduate, 1967 When Mr. McGuire spoke those words to Benjamin Braddock in the classic film The Graduate , few knew how prophetic they would be for the world. Plastics are integral everywhere, and it’s almost impossible to live without them. In 2022, it’s possible that flexibility is now the “just one word” of education. The flexibility door opened with the forced pivot to online learning and being flexible is talked about in multiple contexts for supporting individual life situations, time constraints and humane treatment. Teachers are encouraged and even warned that flexibility is essential to student’s long-term goals and college retention. Flexibility in teaching and learning is here to stay, which is possibly a fortunate consequence of the past two years. Let’s define flexibility in teaching. Flexibility is thoughtful consideration of individual circumstances, modification of assignments and activities, c...

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 abse...