Education

The rapid transition to online teaching necessitated by the coronavirus pandemic has been a good opportunity to rethink my approach to teaching. Moving online laid bare the restrictions imposed by both traditional classrooms and online teaching, and demonstrated that many activities that have traditionally been synchronous and instructor-paced, can be improved by making them asynchronous and self-paced in any teaching modality. What may have...

Read more about Breaking down classroom walls and setting learning free

In my journey as educator, I have been connecting dots for several decades in response to various disruptions. Reflecting back on this journey, I realize the learning environment I have created in the last few years, is a world apart from the way I started my teaching career. Some of the keypoints that have emerged are the importance of pedagogy and assessment (not technology), the importance of optimizing the valuable face-to-face time we have with students, and the need to reimagine our learning spaces.

Teaching online during the pandemic provided a good opportunity to rethink our approach to teaching in any modality and discover that many activities that have traditionally been synchronous and instructor-paced, can be improved by making them asynchronous and self-paced. Some key points that emerged from the move to online teaching are that giving students more autonomy, emphasizing active learning, and promoting social interactions between students are key to better learning. Finally, recognizing that education is not a conveyor belt where ever student is identical, provides an...

Read more about Setting Learning Free: Lessons from Pandemic Teaching

Teaching online during the pandemic provided a good opportunity to rethink our approach to teaching in any modality and discover that many activities that have traditionally been synchronous and instructor-paced, can be improved by making them asynchronous and self-paced. Some key points that emerged from the move to online teaching are that giving students more autonomy, emphasizing active learning, and promoting social interactions between students are key to better learning. Finally, recognizing that education is not a conveyor belt where ever student is identical, provides an...

Read more about AP50: Lessons from Pandemic Teaching

Teaching online during the pandemic provided a good opportunity to rethink our approach to teaching in any modality and discover that many activities that have traditionally been synchronous and instructor-paced, can be improved by making them asynchronous and self-paced. Some key points that emerged from the move to online teaching are that giving students more autonomy, emphasizing active learning, and promoting social interactions between students are key to better learning. Finally, recognizing that education is not a conveyor belt where ever student is identical, provides an opportunity... Read more about Setting Learning Free

The rapid transition to online teaching necessitated by the coronavirus pandemic has been a good opportunity to rethink our approach to teaching in any modality. Moving to an online format suggests that many activities that have traditionally been synchronous and instructor-paced, can be improved by making them asynchronous and self-paced. What may have seemed like a challenge at first, turned out to be a great opportunity to improve the quality of education.

Learning is a social experience — it requires interactions and interactivity. The coronavirus pandemic has been a good opportunity to rethink our approach to teaching. Moving some tasks to an online format suggests that many activities that have traditionally been synchronous and instructor-paced, can be made asynchronous and self-paced. I will demonstrate how to move information transfer and sense-making online and make it interactive, promoting social interactions between students. In addition, he will discuss how the use of an online platform can promote intrinsic and...

Read more about Interactive Learning, online and in-person

The rapid transition to online teaching necessitated by the coronavirus pandemic has been a good opportunity to rethink our approach to teaching in any modality. Moving to an online format suggests that many activities that have traditionally been synchronous and instructor-paced, can be improved by making them asynchronous and self-paced. What may have seemed like a challenge at first, turned out to be a great opportunity to improve the quality of education.

In an article in the Atlantic, Atul Gawande discuss why some innovations in medicine spread fast, whereas others spread much more slowly. Using the framework of this article, I will argue that innovations in education are bound to spread slowly.

Questions are the heart of evaluating and engaging students. In this workshop, we will work individually and in pairs on a case study to learn best practices for developing effective questions.

Classroom demonstrations have two important purposes: to increase student understanding of the concepts demonstrated, and to increase student enjoyment of class. Previous studies have cast doubt on whether traditional demonstrations accomplish the first, finding that passive observation of demonstrations does not significantly improve student understanding of the associated concepts. Indeed, many students alter their memory of demonstrations to match their ideas about the underlying physics. Data show that having students predict the outcome of a demonstration and discuss their...

Read more about Classroom demonstrations

Why is it that stellar students sometimes fail in the workplace while dropouts succeed? One reason is that most, if not all, of our current assessment practices are inauthentic. Just as the lecture focuses on the delivery of information to students, so does assessment often focus on having students regurgitate that same information back to the instructor. Consequently, assessment fails to focus on the skills that are relevant in life in the 21st century. Assessment has been called the "hidden curriculum" as it is an important driver of students' study habits. Unless we rethink our...

Read more about Assessment and grading

The rapid transition to online teaching necessitated by the coronavirus pandemic has been a good opportunity to rethink our approach to teaching in any modality. Moving to an online format suggests that many activities that have traditionally been synchronous and instructor-paced, can be improved by making them asynchronous and self-paced. What may have seemed like a challenge at first, turned out to be a great opportunity to improve the quality of education.

Questions are the heart of evaluating and engaging students. In this workshop, we will work individually and in pairs on a case study to learn best practices for developing effective questions.

Why is it that stellar students sometimes fail in the workplace while dropouts succeed? One reason is that most, if not all, of our current assessment practices are inauthentic. Just as the lecture focuses on the delivery of information to students, so does assessment often focus on having students regurgitate that same information back to the instructor. Consequently, assessment fails to focus on the skills that are relevant in life in the 21st century. Assessment has been called the "hidden curriculum" as it is an important driver of students' study habits. Unless we rethink our...

Read more about Thinking about assessment