I found a new YOU HAVE TO READ THIS BOOK!!!-book: “The New Science of Learning: How to Learn in Harmony with Your Brain” by Zakrajsek (2022). It is aimed at students and it might be the most important thing students ever read in school…
Who are you travelling with? A guest post by Kirsty Dunnett.
A summary and some thoughts on:
Supporting students in higher education: proposal for a theoretical framework
By J.-M. De Ketele (Université de Louvain, Belgium)
My awesome LTH colleague Léa Lévy invited me to a workshop she was doing with some of her colleagues yesterday, where we played a serious game on biodiversity in order to test if it might work as a teaching tool in their context. The game, “The Biodiversity Collage“, is about collaboratively organizing a growing deck of cards on different aspects of biodiversity: what biodiversity depends on, how we as humans make use of it in different ways, how our actions put pressures on the system, and what consequences those pressures ultimately lead to.
In a workshop here at LTH led by Peter Felten in December, I wrote down something he said after having asked participants to think about stories of personal experiences to exemplify a point, and that was to talk about positive experiences using “I”, and negative ones using the third person, because that’s “psychologically better” (even though it might seem weird). I was thinking about this today planning a workshop I am giving soon, and wanted to back up the “psychologically better” part of my own instruction of talking in the third person with some research. Long story short (mainly because I only read a lot of abstracts and hence don’t want to actually cite any article I didn’t read…) — a quick google scholar search totally supports the “psychologically better” on many different measures in many different studies: higher life satisfaction, lower hostility, increased feeling of agency, less emotional pain. So there really seems to be something to it, and even though I can’t point to the One Study or fully understand the mechanisms (more than that self-distancing seems to be good to provide more perspective and overview), I’ll definitely follow his example, and pass on his advice!
This is the third part (part 1 here, part 2 here) of my notes on reading “small teaching online — applying learning science in online classes” by Darby & Lang (2019). Take it with a pinch of salt and go read the original book! These are just my two cents on the points that I find especially relevant for myself.
Part 1, chapter 3 is on “using media and technology tools”, basically saying that not all is gold that glitters, and that we need to be very deliberate in how we use technology. And then there are their tips (clearly written pre-pandemic):
I haven’t done a #WaveWatchingWednesday in 7 weeks — time flies when you are having fun! So here are the last 7 weeks of water Instagram pics from @fascinocean_kiel. Enjoy!
This is the second part (part 1 here) of my notes on reading “small teaching online — applying learning science in online classes” by Darby & Lang (2019). Take it with a pinch of salt and go read the original book! These are just my two cents on the points that I find especially relevant for myself!
Part 1, chapter 2, is on “guiding learning through engagement”, basically how to scaffold learning by designing lots of small signposts and feedback opportunities throughout the duration of a course or project. And this is how they suggest we do it:
I absolutely loved reading the “small teaching” book by Lang (2021), so I was super excited to dig into the related “small teaching online — applying learning science in online classes” by Darby & Lang (2019), and it did not disappoint! I loved it (my only complaint: why didn’t they call it “Tiny Teaching”??? What a missed opportunity!) and — as always — I am summarizing the main points (of the part 1, chapter 1, stay tuned for future posts!) from my perspective below, but it is totally worth reading the actual book! Continue reading
A great teaching method that engages students with literature, and that Cathy Bovill recently introduced me to, are “doughnut rounds”: Students (or workshop participants) are asked to read an article and formulate a certain number of questions, that are then discussed in groups. This leads to people being able to fill in gaps in their understanding (for example due to superficial reading…) and to general engagement with the topic.
In 2021, Kjersti and I gave a presentation at iSSOTL on our across-course collaboration project using rotating lab experiments. We’ve continued working with that, and Kjersti is presenting two posters and a presentation at the MNT conference in Stavanger tomorrow! For those of us who can’t be there, here is what she will talk about.