Education Commons^™

Counseling Skills For Educators, Craig Hall

UNLV Best Teaching Practices Expo

The University of Nevada, Las Vegas is touted as a diverse campus. Indeed, students represent a wide range of demographics concerning race, gender, identity, socioeconomics, physical and mental ability issues, as well as non traditional students and those the intersectional representation of multiple demographic groups. It is incumbent upon educators to provide safe spaces for all students. This is an equitable practice. How can educators be more equitable? By using counseling skills in their education such as: empathy, active listening, belief in the capabilities of students, and avoiding labeling students. It must be noted that the use of counseling skills …

Why Ask That? Low Stakes Questions Build Engagement, Van Whaley

UNLV Best Teaching Practices Expo

A few low-stakes questions during the term build engagement, encourage persistence, and can improve learning outcomes.

During labs, students work together to learn Anatomy & Physiology… plus answer these Engagement Booster Questions.

The Need
Students need to meet classmates. After two years of online-only education, returning to in-person labs is a new experience many students find uncomfortable and challenging.

The Existing Resources
Students in the same lab have several similarities that include enrolling in the same lecture section, similar schedules, the same completed prerequisites, similar majors, and career aspirations.

The Goal
Building engagement between students should help more students complete …

Teaching How To Recycle Through The Medium Of Virtual Reality, Nathan Kassai

Undergraduate Research Symposium Posters

Students, especially children in elementary and middle school, have difficulty focusing and or absorbing information from their courses. The problem lies in the scarcity of hands-on/interactive elements in classrooms as most lectures contain topics most students would be interested in but are presented in a monotonous way. To properly educate and inspire students to work on improving their academic knowledge, alternative educational mediums must be sought. Such mediums like Virtual and Augmented Reality allow students to interact with virtual objects to learn more about a wide variety of subjects, hence increasing their engagement and enjoyment in any particular topic. The …

Inservice Middle School Teachers' Understanding Of Views Of Nature Of Science (Vnos), Merika Charupoom, Emily Carter, Yasmeen Hernandez

Undergraduate Research Symposium Podium Presentations

What is a misconception? A view or opinion that is incorrect based on faulty thinking or understanding. Misconceptions may originate from personal experience, imprecise language, lack of examples and non-examples in concept formation, media representation of phenomena, errors in logic, and textbooks. Often occurs from the inconsistency in science curriculums among instittuions and education systems.

Effects of Misconceptions: Gap in knowledge/understanding that is taught from teacher to student; Decrease in the academic success of students.

Nevada is ranked 49th in educational attainment, 42nd in school quality, 46th in best school systems in America.

One way to help us understand whether …

Remote Learning, Van Whaley, Dustin Davis

UNLV Best Teaching Practices Expo

• One instructor presents live, virtual, synchronous lectures while another instructor builds engagement and support using the live chat feature.

• An engaging way to highlight concepts and explain key figures, pictures, and drawings using shared screens.

I share my screen and move through the e-textbook to discuss the most important topics from each week’s chapter. During each discussion, I intersperse my drawings of body structures on Google Jamboard. While I present, Dustin works in the chat to ask recall and application questions, answer students’ questions, and link resources such as educational YouTube videos and practice quizzes. Our DVDs address two key …

Mid-Semester Reset: Approaches For Student Self-Assessment, Self-Efficacy And Support, Paige W. Johnson Ed.D.

UNLV Best Teaching Practices Expo

A full college semester, like any long-term project, benefits from periodic reflection, and reconfiguration to make it to completion successfully. This is the thinking behind creating a mid-semester reset framework for first-semester students aligned with lessons on health and wellness. Students asked to reflect on themselves personally, each class during the semester and create an actionable plan was useful in helping to find their power, remember and reconfigure their motivations and see what they're doing right and well as what they can improve.

Benefits Of Formative Teaching Observations, Dan Gianoutsos

UNLV Best Teaching Practices Expo

Formative teaching observations by peer teaching faculty can provide helpful advice about small changes to teaching that can improve teachers’ and students’ experiences during the term (see reference list). The researcher posits that the UNLV Teaching Observation project catalyzed real-time changes to the participating faculty’s teaching and generated short-term solutions to some of their teaching challenges.

Student Outcomes -Online Vs. Hybrid, Sharon Jalene

UNLV Best Teaching Practices Expo

The purpose of this class is to introduce the student to the field of Kinesiology -the science of human movement. Concepts in the various subfields of Kinesiology are examined and career opportunities are explored. Students will also gain a better understanding of the course concepts through online lectures, discussions, assignments, and quizzes

Mentoring Meetings Increase Student Performance On “High Stakes” Projects In Stem, Elana A. Paladino

UNLV Best Teaching Practices Expo

The current project addresses whether one-on-one, mentoring meetings to discuss poster rough drafts will impact learning more consistently.

The Importance Of Universal Design In Teaching, Maria Pena

UNLV Best Teaching Practices Expo

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is an educational framework based on research in the learning sciences, including cognitive neuroscience, that guides the development of flexible learning environments that can accommodate individual learning differences.

Trauma-Informed Schools And Educators, Carolina Meza Perez, Michelle Paul

UNLV Best Teaching Practices Expo

Educators, staff, and administrators in the school community will be prepared to recognize and respond to those who have been impacted by traumatic stress.

Student Polling In Webcampus, Benjamin Root, Jennie Tran, Joey Kim, Philip Cheung

UNLV Best Teaching Practices Expo

Our goal was to increase student engagement with online courses by building a student polling system that works inside of WebCampus.

Connecting Ethics To Fys Class Participation, Emily Shreve

UNLV Best Teaching Practices Expo

One goal of UNLV’s First-Year Seminars is that students are introduced to, and understand the purpose of, the University Undergraduate Learning Outcomes (UULOs). This activity introduces students to Citizenship and Ethics, focusing especially on applying ethics in situations directly relevant to students’ daily lives.

Engaging Assignments Increase Performance, Jorge Ramon Fonseca Cacho

UNLV Best Teaching Practices Expo

It is well known that students who complete homework assignments and other outside of class activities related to the course lead to improve student outcomes. However, engaging a student and motivating them to complete their assignments is no easy feat. To address this, we developed new assignments for two sections of the Fall 2018 course CS135.

Reducing Anxiety While Boosting Creativity: Lessons From The Progymnasmata, Bryan Blankfield

UNLV Best Teaching Practices Expo

The fear of public speaking is a widely shared among individuals. This can be difficult to overcome when students are assigned several large, heavily-weighted speeches with few opportunities to become acclimated to standing in front of an audience. Several times throughout the semester students are assigned a 2–3 minute long speech inspired by the progymnasmata (a series of rhetorical exercises from Ancient Greece). The speeches vary widely from presenting a fable to impersonating an individual.

Categorization Of Exam Questions To Improve Metacognition, Tiffany Barrett

UNLV Best Teaching Practices Expo

This practice addresses UNLV students’ need for greater metacognitive awareness. Students often employ memorization as a study strategy when preparing for an exam. This can create an inability to apply the knowledge in a complex or different scenario. We know that “practice retrieving” study activities produce greater gains in meaningful learning (Karpicke 2011) but often students don’t identify a need for a change in study habits and a deeper level of understanding, especially if their exam score is considered passing.

Using Microanalysis (Mfd) To Teach & Train Students, Sara Smock Jordan

UNLV Best Teaching Practices Expo

Microanalysis of face-to-face dialogue (MFD), that is, the detailed and replicable examination of any aspect of observable communicative behavior as it occurs, moment by moment, in a face-to-face dialogue (Bavelas, Gerwing, Healing, & Tomori, 2016) to examine professional conversations. MFD is an inductive methodology which uses detailed operational definitions and analysis rules, rather than relying on subjective judgment, to produce high inter-analyst agreement (Bavelas et al., 2016). MFD principles are applicable to teaching, training, and supervising clinicians in our CFT program.

Using Problem-Based Learning To Promote Self-Directed Learning At Unlv School Of Medicine, Rosalie Kalili

UNLV Best Teaching Practices Expo

It is imperative that medical students develop skills that promote life-long learning and manage the doubling rate of medical knowledge. Through the use of problem-based learning (PBL), self-directed learning (SDL) can be practiced; and both can serve as ongoing learning approaches beyond medical school.

Design Data-Driven Assignments For Clear, Transparent, And Efficient Teaching, Julian Kilker

UNLV Best Teaching Practices Expo

Working with students in hybrid, inperson, or online courses involves many data interactions. Data-driven assignments are structured to gather and evaluate student work at both macro and micro levels needed to evaluate learning and improve course materials. This practice uses Google Forms and linked Sheets to create data-driven assignments and custom dashboards.

Embedding Accessibility In Course Development, Gabriel Judkins, Rex Suba

UNLV Best Teaching Practices Expo

Accessibility as practice allows all to independently: acquire the same information, engage in the same interactions, enjoy the same services within the same time frame with equivalent ease of use.

Fostering Student Engagement: Four Strategies, Erica Marti, Ryan Sherman, Haroon Stephen

UNLV Best Teaching Practices Expo

In response to studies demonstrating that poor teaching was the cause of many students leaving math, science, and engineering programs, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) developed the ExCEEd(Excellence in Civil Engineering Education) Teaching Workshop. Several faculty from the UNLV Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering and Construction have attended the highly intensive five-day workshop. To evaluate the impact on student engagement, four basic instructional strategies from the ExCEEdworkshop, applicable to all fields, were tested and assessed during the Fall 2018 semester: Questioning techniques, physical models, instructor involvement, and group work.

Infographics As Data Visualization Class Assignment, Kim Nehls

UNLV Best Teaching Practices Expo

Data visualization is commonplace. UNLV students need to be prepared.

Student-Led Discussions, Deborah A. Obara

UNLV Best Teaching Practices Expo

According to constructivist learning theory informed by cognitive and educational psychology, the optimal conditions needed for learning include accurate assessment of student background knowledge; engaging, scaffolded activities; cognitive elaboration; and more knowledgeable others available to assist when needed.

Designing Engaged Learning Experiences: Service-Learning At Unlv, Rian Satterwhite

UNLV Best Teaching Practices Expo

“Service-learning is a form of experiential education in which students engage in activities that address human and community needs together with structured opportunities for reflection designed to achieve desired learning outcomes.” Jacoby and Associates, 1996

Active Learning And Transparency In Teaching Gateway Mathematics Courses, Viktoria Savatorova

UNLV Best Teaching Practices Expo

The need: we concentrate our attention on the gateway courses (for example, PreCalculus ) which have had traditionally low passing scores and retention. Objectives: in our teaching practice we aim to be consistent assuring: Active participation in the class work based on understanding the concepts and ability to implement them; Clear understanding of the requirements and the grading system (what should be done, when it needs to be done, and how to do that?)

Reality In The Classroom: Teaching Critical Thinking With Scenarios, Timothy T. Self

UNLV Best Teaching Practices Expo

One of the challenges for hospitality educators is to develop critical thinking skills in the future leaders of the industry. It is often thought that students will develop this skill as a by product of course work, but research indicates that it must be explicitly taught.

Dynamic Lightboard Videos, Kristina Schmid, Peter Mccandless, Eddie Gomez

UNLV Best Teaching Practices Expo

STEM content in online courses can be difficult to convey. Instructional videos are often limited to voiced-over, handwritten examples which can limit the quality of dynamic presentation. The need is for a technological medium that facilitates a personal connection. The Office of Online Education’s new lightboard technology enhances video presentation. This solution supports online learning and student engagement to promote student success.

Pre-Tests Improve Students’ Critical Thinking, Alison Sloat

UNLV Best Teaching Practices Expo

First-year students’ critical thinking and analysis in science is rudimentary in SCI 101, the College of Sciences First Year Seminar. I tested whether the use of Pretests (Figures 1 and 2) can improve students’ inquiry, critical thinking, and analysis skills.

Body Continuum Polling: A Dynamic Technique For Any Classroom, Erica S. Tietjen

UNLV Best Teaching Practices Expo

Body continuum polling is an active technique designed to engage students physically in the classroom space, by getting them move around the classroom to place themselves along a gradient (less to more, low to high, etc.) that spans the room. Students provide their opinion on a question or topic, combined with a kinesthetic approach that engages them with movement (Mobley & Fisher, 2014).

Quote Of The Day: Increasing Student Engagement With Textbooks And Common Readers, Brandy Smith

UNLV Best Teaching Practices Expo

Ensuring that students not only complete assigned readings, but also actively engage with the readings, is a common challenge faced by faculty. Research indicates that approximately only onethird to one-half of students complete assigned readings for any given day (Hatteberg & Steffy, 2013; Hoeft, 2012; Burchfield & Sappington, 2000).