Instructors who regularly use stress-reducing strategies increase their abilities to cope with the demands of the career and are positioned to do a better job educating students, according to results from a program administered by the University of Virginia’s Curry School of Education. Want to learn more? Register for the upcoming professional development session sponsored by the Center for Teaching+Learning Enhancement. You can view other professional development opportunities here.
MOVING TO HAPPINESS
It’s helpful to know that the brain is plastic and can adapt to challenges. And when it comes to learning new things, we can build up mental resources through intentional effort. People can get better at realizing self-regulation, executive functions, a sense of perspective or meaning, positive emotions like gratitude, a sense of strength and the feeling of being cared about. “Any kind of mental activity, including experiences, entails underlying neural activity,” said Rick Hanson, a psychologist and senior fellow at the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley, at a Learning & the Brain conference. He has developed practices to help people build up their mental capacity for happiness by creating patterns of neural activity that with time and repetition become neural pathways. Read the entire article here.
KEEPING THE HUMAN ASPECT IN ONLINE COURSES
“Wow. I always thought my online instructors were computers.” An online student shared this comment with his instructor after
receiving an email from her that included feedback on an assignment.
This story, shared with me by the student’s instructor several years
ago, resonates with me on an emotional level each time I reference it.
It motivates me to ensure online instructors understand how vital their
authentic, human presence is to their students, and it conveys how
deeply meaningful online classes can be when they are facilitated and
designed with a focus on the student experience. To continue reading Michelle Pacansky-Brock's post click here.
