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Building Connections  |  Concept Maps  |  Critiques  |  Fact Sheets| First Day of Class  | Inclusive Teaching and Learning | Jigsaw | Online Science Laboratories  | Oral Communication as a Learning Tool |  Reacting to the Past |  Think, Pair, Share |  Simulation as a Teaching Strategy |  
 Smartphone Based Virtual Reality|   Wait Time

Engaging Students - Active Learning Techniques

Building Connections

• Building connections between class topics and real-life examples ia a helpful tool for students.  Providing students opportunity to make those connections can improve student engagement in your course.  This Teaching Tool will provide you with some background information and prompts you can use to help you help your students make connections.

Teaching Tools—Building Connections (PDF)

Concept Maps

• Concept maps are a visualization of knowledge that is organized by relationship between topics. They provide an opportunity for students to make meaningful connections between information; whether that is before, during or after class. This Teaching Tool will provide you with not only the background and basics for implementation but a few variations on implementation that might help this highly effective learning activity to fit best in your course.

Teaching Tools—Concept Maps (PDF)

Critiques

• Critiques - discussing and evaluating students' creative visual works-in-progress - can range from information feedback involving peers to a formal graded process led by the instructor.  This Teaching Tool will provide you with ways to set goals for critiques, implementation steps, different formats and methodologies to consider. and other resources to help you design and implement critiques in ways that support student learning.

Teaching Tools—Critiques (PDF)

Fact Sheets

• A fact sheet is a short, typed or hand-written document that contains the most relevant information about a particular subject in the least amount of space. The goal is to provide facts and key points about a topic in a clear, concise, and easy-to-understand way. In developing a fact sheet, students must decide what is most important, organize it, and communicate it in their own words. All three of these practices relate to how people learn and are linked to increased retention of information. The fact sheet can then be used for class work and studying. 

Teaching Tools—Fact Sheets (PDF)

First Day of Class

• This evidence-based resource will help you make the most of your first class and will provide helpful hints to ensure your expectations are transparent to your students and also set the tone for a welcoming learning environment. 

Teaching Tools—First Day of Class (PDF)

Inclusive Teaching and Learning

• Inclusive teaching and learning denotes pedagogical methods, techniques and approaches that take into account the diverse needs and backgrounds of all students ensuring that they feel valued and welcomed in the classroom.

Teaching Tools—Inclusive Teaching and Learning (PDF)

Jigsaw

• This 20-30 minute cooperative learning activity is where students first work in groups, becoming an expert on a prompt. The students then form inter-mixed groups with an expert from the previous prompt. Intermixed groups then rely on the diverse experts to complete a new prompt.

Teaching Tools—Jigsaw (PDF) 

Online Science Laboratories

• An online science laboratory is just what it sounds, a laboratory that takes place remotely at home, online via computerized robotics, or virtually through simulations or software. They have the same learning outcomes as the traditional laboratory, but the focus and the structure of the online laboratory may make more use of and implement greater reliance of online content, at-home or local materials and learning centers, or online peer-to-peer collaboration.

Teaching Tools—Online Science Laboratories (PDF)

ORAL COMMUNICATION AS A LEARNING TOOL

• Oral communication in the form of student talk can be described as focused group conversations or collaborative conversations that are usually facilitated and/or monitored by an instructor. Eliciting student talk encourages the use oral language to express their understanding of a concept or idea.

Teaching Tools—Oral Communication as a Learning Tool (PDF)

Reacting to the past

• Reacting to the Past is an interdisciplinary pedagogical tool that buoys student engagement through the power of subversive, immersive play.  Structured intellectual debate grounded in historical primary sources revolves around core questions that still resonate today.  

Teaching Tools—Reacting to the Past (PDF)

Think, Pair, Share

• A short activity where the instructor poses a question, students think about their responses then pair with someone near them to discuss their thinking before sharing out to the class.

Teaching Tools—Think, Pair, Share (PDF)

Simulation as a Teaching Strategy

• Experiential learning such as simulation has been promoted as a means to challenge student's misconceptions (McClintock, 2000). Experiential learning encourages higher-order learning, which promotes critical thinking abilities and self-directed learning (Kreber, 2001). Hakeem (2001) found that students involved in experiential learning have a greater understanding of their subject matter than students in a traditional lecture-only class.

Teaching Tools—Simulation as a Teaching Strategy (PDF)

Smartphone Based Virtual Reality 

• Smartphone Based Virtual Reality (VR) enables an immersive simulation activity that would use both: (1) free VR apps downloaded on a smartphone from Google Play App store and other apps store, and (2) a VR Headset (e.g. Google Cardboard), to simulate an environment and teach students a set of concepts that otherwise would be difficult to experience and illustrate in a classroom (i.e. space and time restriction) or inaccessible location (i.e. hazardous space).

Teaching Tools—Smartphone Based Virtual Reality  (PDF)

Wait Time

• Wait time refers to two specific practices where instructors deliberately pause.  First, wait time 1 constitutes a 3-5 second pause between asking a question and soliciting an answer.  Second, wait time 2 is a 3-5 second pause after a student response.  This time provides students with time to think about the question and develop a response, either to the instructor’s question or a peer’s response.

Teaching Tools—Wait Time (PDF)

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Preparing to Teach   |     Teaching
Assessing Student Learning   |     Student Success

An Efficient Rubric for Minimal Assessment |  Collaborative Learning Through Group Testing  |  Fact Sheets|  Reflections | Rubrics|Simulation as a Teaching Strategy|   Student Response Systems  |  Writing Effective Multiple Choice Questions           

An Efficient Rubric for Minimal Assessment

• The efficient rubric I propose below is designed to facilitate rapid and holistic assessment of assignments without the use of written feedback. It was inspired by the “minimalist grading” perspective that suggests extensive written responses to assignments is not a useful or necessary practice. 

Teaching Tools— An Efficient Rubric for Minimal Assessment  (PDF)

Collaborative Learning Through Group Testing

• Group testing is an instructional tool that incorporates a group component to traditional individual testing to assess student learning. After an individual test, students form groups to retake the exam or part of the exam. Grades from these exams are a combination of the individual and group scores.  

Teaching Tools—Collaborative Learning Through Group Testing (PDF)

Fact Sheets

• A fact sheet is a short, typed or hand-written document that contains the most relevant information about a particular subject in the least amount of space. The goal is to provide facts and key points about a topic in a clear, concise, and easy-to-understand way. In developing a fact sheet, students must decide what is most important, organize it, and communicate it in their own words. All three of these practices relate to how people learn and are linked to increased retention of information. The fact sheet can then be used for class work and studying. 

Teaching Tools—Fact Sheets (PDF)

Reflections

• Reflection is often viewed as an essential component necessary for students to critically interpret course content and service-learning experiences but is often difficult to define.  The National Service-Learning Clearinghouse (2008) describes reflection as “the process of deriving meaning and knowledge from experience and occurs before, during and after a service-learning project.

Teaching Tools— Reflections  (PDF)

Rubrics

• Rubrics are tools that layout expectations of an assignment for students. It can prompt students to self-evaluate and can help with those questions "why did I get this grade" and decrease subjectivity that is apparent in grading.

Teaching Tools—Rubrics (PDF) 

Simulation as a Teaching Strategy

• Experiential learning such as simulation has been promoted as a means to challenge student's misconceptions (McClintock, 2000). Experiential learning encourages higher-order learning, which promotes critical thinking abilities and self-directed learning (Kreber, 2001). Hakeem (2001) found that students involved in experiential learning have a greater understanding of their subject matter than students in a traditional lecture-only class.

Teaching Tools—Simulation as a Teaching Strategy (PDF)

Student Response Systems

• Student Response Systems (SRS) allow you to receive immediate feedback on your teaching and their learning. It could take 10 seconds or 10 minutes of your class time but works well in small or large classrooms.

Teaching Tools—Student Response Systems (PDF) 

Writing Effective Multiple Choice Questions

• Creating multiple choice questions that align with what we want to assess can be challenging. This evidence-based teaching tool provides you with some tips for developing questions and evaluating them to ensure they are assessing what you intend.

Teaching Tools—Writing Effective Multiple Choice Questions (PDF) 

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Preparing to Teach   |     Teaching
Assessing Student Learning   |     Student Success

 Building Connections | Community Agreements | Culturally Inclusive Teaching | Distributed Practice |     Navigating Difficult Conversations in the Classroom | Open Educational Resources

Learning Theory

BUILDING CONNECTIONS

• Building connections between class topics and real-life examples ia a helpful tool for students.  Providing students opportunity to make those connections can improve student engagement in your course.  This Teaching Tool will provide you with some background information and prompts you can use to help you help your students make connections.

Teaching Tools—Building Connections (PDF)

Community Agreements

• A community agreement is a shared understanding between learners about how everyone wants to work together during the course. Designing community agreements allows students to feel safer, a greater sense of agency, establish greater trust, and better situates themselves to be able to learn.

Teaching Tools—Community Agreements (PDF)

Culturally Inclusive Teaching

• Each class context is unique. Culturally inclusive teaching recognizes and capitalizes on the diversity of learning backgrounds in order to enrich the learning experience of all students. This teaching tool provides you with prompts to create an inclusive class environment for students with varied cultural backgrounds and varied prior learning experiences.

Teaching Tools—Culturally Inclusive Teaching (PDF)

Distributed Practice

• While we know that cramming for an exam is a bad idea, our students are likely studying right before the exam. Research has indicated that cramming does not allow for meaningful learning. This teaching tool will provide you simple ideas to prompt students to engage with the material over a period of time. Coming Soon. 

Navigating Difficult Conversations in the Classroom

• Have you ever explored a hot topic, current event, or discipline specific controversy in the classroom?  The diversity of ideas, perspectives, and experiences of students can present unique opportunities and challenges for dialogue within the classroom. Sometimes these conversations can become high-stakes - where the combination of divergent opinions and high-running emotions create challenges for maintaining a safe and positive learning environment. This Teaching Tool seeks to provide a process for facilitating challenging conversations within the classroom through the use of Non-Violent Communication (NVC).

Teaching Tools—Navigating Difficult Conversations in the Classroom (PDF)

Open Educational Resources

• OERs use a license that supports open use of the content, e.g., Creative Commons license, or can be accessed outside of copyright regulation in the public domain. OERs can appear in a number of different forms. For instance, they can be compiled and shared as open textbooks or e-texts. OERs can be combined with commercial content as well. OERs range in size. They can appear as an individual OER such as lesson plans, or they can include whole courses as for MIT open courseware and Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs).

Teaching Tools—Open Educational Resources (PDF)

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Preparing to Teach   |     Teaching
Assessing Student Learning   |     Student Success