Mutsumi Ogaki, School of Social Ecology In social science classes, it's not uncommon for instructors to integrate podcasts into course materials. In this post, I will go a step further and discuss benefits of implementing student-produced podcast as a class project....
Active learning
Using Flipped Classrooms in Health Sciences Education: The Latest Evidence, and Recommendations
Babak Saatchi, PhD Student, Sue & Bill Gross School of Nursing, University of California, Irvine Using the flipped classroom model has become a popular approach in higher education within the past years. In contrast to traditional classrooms in which the knowledge...
Sharing Teaching-as-Research at a Discipline-Specific Conference
Daniel Bergman, Department of Mathematics In January 2020, I attended my first Joint Mathematics Meetings, the single biggest math conference in the world. The conference lasted five full days and took place in the spacious Colorado Convention Center in downtown...
Learning with Commercial Games
Reginald T. Gardner, Department of Informatics How Videogames Teach Videogames often use reward and punishment systems, grading systems, soft resets, and other techniques to push players towards learning specific skills in order to proceed in their games. The most...
Preparing the Environmental Professionals of the Future: Backwards Design in Environmental Studies
Paroma Wagle, Department of Urban Planning and Public Policy Learning about sustainability, climate change, and environmental justice, the ‘wicked problems’ of the environment, is absolutely crucial for students, as they will not only go on maybe select careers in...
Taking Modern Pedogogy into the Large Classroom
Marc Sprague-Piercy, Department of Molecular Biology & Biochemistry The current thinking in pedagogy is moving away from the traditional classroom model. In the traditional classroom for large classes of undergraduates there is a clear plan. The students are given...
Adding the EPIC to Education
Emily M. Slonecker, M.A, Department of Psychological Science What is your first thought when you hear the word “icebreaker”? If your first thought is the sound of 200 students groaning in unison, you just might be an educator. There is growing body of evidence to...
How to Evaluate Individual Work Within a Group Project; Group-Individual Projects May Help!
Negin Sattari, Department of Cognitive Sciences Group Versus Individual Project Often students’ faces announce dissatisfaction when a group project is proposed during the first session of the class as a part of the final examination. The complaints are mainly coming...
Making Group Work Work: Designing Positive Group Work Experiences for Students
Deanna Myers, Department of Chemistry Group work. Just hearing the phrase brings up feelings of dread in many students. I remember feeling this way when I entered an upper-division chemistry course at my undergraduate institution. When the professors told us we would...
Rethinking the Physics Classroom: 4 Tools to Consider
Francisco J. Mercado, Department of Physics & Astronomy When we think about a physics classroom, more often than not, the picture that comes to mind is an ‘all-knowing’ professor standing at the front of a classroom writing on a blackboard while some of the...