Top Hat further expands, or subdivides the OER movement; and the move doubles down on the company’s bet on faculty engagement
Active learning
Top Hat Marketplace: What is it and should we care?
Despite initial questions about Top Hat Marketplace, the deeper I look the more convinced I am that this is something to watch
Student Course Evaluations and Impact on Active Learning
The Chronicle has an article out today, “Can the Student Course Evaluation Be Redeemed?”, that rightly points out how student course evaluations are often counter-productive to improving teaching and learning. The article refers to a Stanford professor’s call for an instructor completed “inventory of the research-based teaching practices they use”, but most of the article centers […]
Response to Robert Talbert: Pedagogical change is difficult, many need support
On Monday Robert Talbert, associate professor at Grand Valley State University and author of the Casting Out Nines blog, wrote a provocative and important post titled “Active learning as an ethical issue”. Robert noted: The recent Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences study stands out among these recent studies. It is a meta-study of 225 prior studies […]
Challenge Of Student Transition Between Active And Passive Learning Models
Last week the Hechinger Report profiled an innovative charter school in San Diego called High Tech High (insert surfer jokes here) that follows an active, project based learning (PBL) model. The school doesn’t use textbooks, and they don’t base the curriculum on testing. The question they ask is whether this approach prepares students for college. […]
Using TAs As Key Component Of Active Learning Transformation at UC Davis
Last week I described how UC Davis is making efforts to personalize one of the most impersonal of learning experiences – large lecture introductory science courses. It is telling that the first changes that they made were not to the lecture itself but to the associated discussion sections led by teaching assistants (TAs). It is […]