STEM LEARNING CYCLE
Most of you are familiar with the active learning paradigm that encourages students to listen, write, read, discuss, and apply new knowledge so that it becomes part of their long-term memories. Dr. Rodger Bybee and his colleagues have come up with a similar pedagogy based on teaching in the sciences. It is called the 5E Learning Cycle and is based on the constructivist view of learning. The five E's are engage, explore, explain, elaborate, and evaluate. Using this process allows the instructor to identify and challenge students' misconceptions and provide students time to explore, investigate, and reconstruct their knowledge. You can learn more about this process in the article Which Comes First-Language or Content? in the Science Teacher magazine (April/May 2016).

HELPING STUDENTS LEARN ONLINE
When teaching in a traditional classroom, we are often able to assess how our students learning best through observation, low-stakes feedback, or by using active learning methods. So how does that work in an online environment? Adrienne Erin has an interesting post about just that. "Different Learning Styles: How to balance your eLearning program" describes the way different learners might be motivated to learn. She notes, "Learners work alone, in groups or with instructors. Interactions with others are either synchronous or asynchronous. Because of its open-ended nature, eLearning has exceptional advantages. Learners can be located anywhere in the world, as long as an ISP is available." Read more here. To learn more about the dual coding theory, click here.

IT'S JUST A TEST
With the final exam period beginning on Monday, you may notice that your students are more tense and anxious. This is certainly understandable as they struggle to indicate to you what they have learned and how they can apply it. Dr. Maryellen Weimer has posted an informational piece about how you can help your students lower their anxiety and produce their best work. She writes, " Teachers can’t cure test anxiety. But they can offer remedies that students should be encouraged to try. Information about good study strategies should be included in every course. Sometimes that information is more persuasive if it comes from fellow classmates. Discussion of the study strategies used for the test ought to be part of the debrief session." Read more here.

WATER COOLER TALK
When teachers tell me about some new strategy or approach they’ve implemented, I usually ask how they found out about it and almost always get the same response: “Oh, a colleague told me about it.” I continue to be amazed by the amount of pedagogical knowledge that is shared verbally (and electronically) between colleagues. And I’m equally impressed by the spirit of sharing. Even if it’s an idea I thought up myself, one I’ve spent time and energy developing that I could ostensibly copyright or patent, if you want to use it—go right ahead. It’s yours. There are no intellectual property rights on good teaching ideas, and that’s a beautiful part of our culture. So writes Dr. Maryellen Weimer in a new post about pedagogy sharing. You can read the entire post here.

THE BLENDED WAY TO SUCCESS
Did you know that blended courses, that meet face-to-face and online throughout the week, have some of the highest completion rates and students report that they are very effective at helping them learn? Jennifer Patterson Lorenzetti has an interesting post about blended courses and offers, "Think about what it takes to make a blended learning class successful. Of course, you need a faculty member who is able to teach the course, a robust set of learning objectives, a clear instructional design that integrates both the online and face-to-face aspects, and the instructional content required to successfully teach the course. But you also need support of librarians who can help students with varied types of assignments, academic advisors who can effectively counsel students into the right kind of blended course for their learning style, plus various student support services that can help students with variable campus attendance requirements navigate registration, book purchase, and payment. Indeed, the decision to offer a blended course or program can influence the entire university." Read more here.

GROUP ASSIGNMENTS FOR ELEARNING CLASSES
Group assignments teach students far more than simply what they glean from the research they conduct and the project they complete. Astute students will also learn important lessons about communicating clearly, establishing plans and schedules, and collaborating in a proactive and positive manner. They may also hone their leadership skills along the way.Students taking online courses gain the additional benefit of learning to work with others in technology-mediated settings. To learn more about this topic, click here.

NOTHING BAD HAS HAPPENED
Dr. Maryellen Weimer gives us some ideas for the last class of the semester. She writes, "First and last class sessions are the bookends that hold a course together.” I heard or read that somewhere—apologies to the source I can’t acknowledge. It’s a nice way to think about first and last class sessions. In general, teachers probably do better with the first class. There’s the excitement that comes with a new beginning. A colleague said it this way: “Nothing bad has happened yet.” Most of us work hard to make good first impressions. But by the time the last class rolls around, everyone is tired, everything is due, and the course sputters to an end amid an array of last-minute details. Here are a few ideas that might help us finish the semester with the same energy and focus we mustered for the first class." Continue reading here.

ARE YOUR STUDENTS GRITTY
Before she was a psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania, Dr. Angela Duckworth was a middle school math teacher. As a rookie teacher, she was surprised when she calculated grades. Some of her sharpest students weren't doing so well, while others who struggled through each lesson were getting A's. "The thing that was revelatory to me was not that effort matters—everybody knows that effort matters," Angela told Shankar. "What was revelatory to me was how much it matters." Read more about the power and problem of grit here.


CARING THAT OUR STUDENTS LEARN
At this time of the semester, our attention turns to finals, projects, and the inevitable student ratings. Dr. Stephen Burt, a professor of English at Harvard University, explains how he has come to see the value in this ritual. He writes, "O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us/ To see oursels as others see us!” Robert Burns wrote, in a poem with a thick Scottish accent. “It wad frae manie a blunder free us.”  That power lies in student evaluations. They have obvious flaws, and all college teachers know how they can be misused—but colleges, and instructors, do better with them than without them. They can free teachers from blunders as well as flatter our self-regard, they remind us that if we care what our students learn, we ought to care about what they think; anonymous evaluations are one of the few ways that we can try to find out. Read the entire post here.

LET'S BE HONEST
David F. Feldon in his article Why Magic Bullets Don't Work (Change ) encourages us to "let our students in on the secret once we have figured out what content needs to be taught." He notes that students "sincerely appreciate knowing up front what they will be learning, what is expected of them, how they will be assessed, and how all of these elements fit together." Sharing this, he explains, prevents them from "extraneous effort."

MEETING STUDENTS EXPECTATIONS
Rediscovered this op-ed by Steven J. Bell in which he opines that many professors are perplexed by their students’ entitlement complex. To their way of thinking, say the faculty, students see themselves as customers who deserve being treated as “always right” no matter how wrong, rude, inconsiderate, or otherwise bizarre they behave. Bell suggest that "faculty members should try designing an actual experience for their students, modeled on the principles and qualities of iconic user experiences."

FLIPPING DONE RIGHT
If you are open to trying some new techniques to ramp up student learning in your classes, take a look at this short post by Anthony Persico. The use of videos in his mathematics class has proven to him that active learning is enhanced by flipping. "My students’ final-exam pass rates nearly doubled from the previous year," he writes. Read the entire post here.