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Class duration and time for research

If you had total control, how would you block your teaching time? Would you want classes to meet frequently for short periods of time, or infrequently but for a long stretch each time? What is good for...

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Efficient teaching: Getting metacognitive

I’ve built up a little speech that I make on the first day of class, after we’re done going over the syllabus and before we start the first lesson. It sounds something like this: This semester, my goal...

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What do our grades measure? Academic savvy or actual learning?

Grades are a necessary evil. I record grades because it’s a required part of my job, even though the existence of grades makes my job harder. Grades are primarily a measure of how good students are at...

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It’s nice to have administrators you can trust

Last week, our campus had its back-to-school events. Our administrators talked about their big plans. There was one Thing that the President talked about for a few minutes. The Provost talked about the...

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Efficient teaching: Doing active learning an easy way

Here are a few difficult facts about education in college classrooms: Lectures don’t work well. People just don’t really learn much from hour-long lectures. People learn when they discover ideas on...

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Active learning is flexible and designed to reach the reticent

I’ve gotten positive feedback about a post in which I explain how it’s not that much work for me to do active learning in the classroom. However, a couple entirely reasonable misgiving seem to crop up,...

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Why I avoid lecturing

Academic freedom is glorious. Despite pronouncements to the contrary, university faculty — including most contingent faculty — enjoy tremendous freedom in what we teach and how we teach it. Most...

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Education research denialism in university STEM faculty

Scientists regularly contend with irrational denialism of simple facts. In our classrooms, communities and the media, we hear patently absurd things like: This is the logo of the Flat Earth Society....

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In teaching, less is more

Question: When you’re teaching, how much should you cover? I propose a couple answers: Answer A: You shouldn’t cover much, because the more you cover, the less they learn. Answer B: Trick question!...

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Effective teaching is not standardized teaching

There was a comment on a recent post that I’ve been chewing over for the past week, that gets at the heart of what’s (I think is) ailing effective STEM teaching. This person was explaining why they...

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