Category: Beyond the CTL

Considering the Role You Want Assessment to Play in Teaching and Learning

This article presents a general overview of student learning assessment in higher education while suggesting how assessment techniques and activities can help you, your students and faculty groups support continuous improvement of learning at the course, program and university levels. I especially liked the comments posted by “Dan” that focus on the need for assessment to be collaborative within a department.

How To Talk About Assessment

From: Inside Higher Ed
By: Melissa Dennihy

Are You a Helicopter Professor?

This article informs the struggle many faculty have with the ultimate goal of helping students take responsibility for their own learning.   I especially like the “remove crutches” section which emphasizes our role in the PROCESS of helping students become independent learners.

How to Avoid Being a Helicopter Professor

From Faculty Focus – Higher Ed Teaching Strategies from Magna Publications
By: Berlin Fang

More Evidence That Active Learning Trumps Lecturing

If you’ve read the latest of the Teaching Professor circulated to many faculty, you already know this:  Where learning is concerned, active learning beats lecturing.   A recent meta-analysis of 225 studies published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences (PNAS) provided overwhelming evidence that active learning (of many kinds) both increases exam scores and lowers failure rates.   For more details, read the article below, the piece it references in the Teaching Professor, or the study itself.  (Note:  If you are an instructor at Tech and don’t currently get a copy of the Teaching Professor, just let us know…we can fix that!) 

More Evidence That Active Learning Trumps Lecturing

From Faculty Focus – Higher Ed Teaching Strategies from Magna Publications
By Maryellen Weimer, PhD

Why Open-Book Tests Deserve a Place in your Courses

This  article from the Faculty Focus e-newsletter explores the intersection of computer-based testing and an open-book, open-note approach to focus on higher level Bloom’s taxonomy assessment.  It’s definitely worth a read!

 

Why Open Book Tests Deserve a Place in Your Courses

 

Faculty Focus – Higher Ed Teaching Strategies from Magna Publications
By: Matt Farrell and Shannon Maheu