Educational Methods Commons^™

A Strategy To Increase Formative Assessment And Student Engagement During Labs, Jennifer C. Utz, Angela Hammond

UNLV Best Teaching Practices Expo

In a 200-level biology laboratory course, we developed learning objectives (LO) for each lab. We also developed practice activities that directly corresponded to each LO. Students earned participation credit through completing the practice activities. As students progressed through their lab work and felt ready, they would request that the lab instructor come check their progress towards mastering a particular LO. If students were successful with the practice, the instructor would mark completion for that LO on the students’ lab handout. If students were not successful, the instructor would provide feedback and recommend additional learning approaches. Since the purpose of the …

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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).

Civic Engagement And Service Learning Partnerships, Diane Villa, C. Stockwell, M. Cohen, K. Stucki

UNLV Best Teaching Practices Expo

Service learning is designed to promote volunteerism and civic awareness. Community engagement in higher education specifically involves university members partnering with local community organizations to address a need. Students engage with community partners through service learning and other activities (Moore & Mendez, 2014). Service learning is a practice that connects new knowledge and social responsibility through active learning (Benson & Younkin, 1996).

Using Thinking Maps In Chinese Novel Analysis And Instruction, Qiuping Yuan

Chinese Language Teaching Methodology and Technology

The technique of Thinking Maps created by Hyerle proves effective in helping comprehending complex information. This paper employs Hyerle’s eight thinking maps to illustrate how to analyze a novel, for the purpose to help CFL students better understand the elements of a novel and improve students’ Chinese language reading comprehension skill. The novel “Charlotte’s Web” is used as an example.

Data Diving Into “Noticing Poetry”: An Analysis Of Student Engagement With The “I Notice” Method, Scot Slaby, Jordan Benedict

Journal of Inquiry and Action in Education

This paper explores students’ engagement in reading poems, examining data on their self perceptions of their confidence and competence in reading poems before, during, and after using the “I Notice” methodology as adapted from The Academy of American Poets’ unit plan, “Noticing Poetry” (Slaby, 2017). The data was collected over the course of a month from January 9 through January 30, 2018 and involved five classes of one hundred general English tenth grade students across three teachers’ classrooms at Shanghai American School’s Puxi High School Campus. Data indicates that the “I Notice” method and the “Noticing Poetry” unit and its …

Using The Cornell Note-Taking System Can Help Eighth Grade Students Alleviate The Impact Of Interruptions While Reading At Home, Bradley Evans, Christopher Thomas Shively

Journal of Inquiry and Action in Education

A large group of eighth-grade social studies students (N=-101) received instruction and practice using the Cornell note-taking system and were assigned to one of three note-taking groups or one non-note-taking group. Students were asked to read an article about persuasion and use their assigned note-taking system to take notes at home. A 10-question multiple choice reading comprehension test and questionnaire were given. A one-way ANOVA found a significance in the group’s means and a Tukey HSD found significant differences between each note-taking group and the non-note-taking group. The students’ self-reported feelings of preparedness, their time spent reading and taking notes, …

The Transition Experiences Of High Achieving High School Students From Secondary Education To College : A Case Study, Lori Christine Lachowsky

CUP Ed.D. Dissertations

This qualitative multiple case study explored the experiences of eight students as they transitioned from high school to college. Eight students from an urban high school in the southern United States agreed to participate in this study. Participants were high-achieving students, 18 years of age, who participated in a teacher preparation class and took the MSLQ for a class project during the last semester of their senior year of high school. The researcher collected and triangulated data to ensure reliability: archival MSLQ scores from the participants’ senior year, open-ended interviews after the participants’ first year of college, document review of …

Fail Forward! Perspectives On Failure In The Writing Classroom, Brandie Bohney, Missy Springsteen-Haupt, Stacy Stosich, Nora K. Rivera

English Faculty Articles and Research

"In this inaugural Teacher-to-Teacher column, three classroom teachers discuss how they approach failure to normalize it and help students work toward problem solving rather than answer getting in their own classrooms. Missy Springsteen-Haupt explains how sharing her own authentic writing failures helps students see the natural emotional connection to their writing as normal and also to prove to them, as Shirley Rose notes, that 'all writers always have more to learn about writing' (59). Framing student writing in terms of growth mindsets, Stacy Stosich discusses a practical strategy for allowing for ugly drafts and redefining success and failure. Finally, Nora …

The Intentional Fieldwork Educator: Applying The Intentional Fieldwork Education Model (Ifwem), E. Joy Crawford, Nadine Hanner

Occupational Therapy Collection

This presentation introduces the Intentional Fieldwork Education Model (IFWEM). This model emphasizes intentional teaching and the application of the occupational therapy lens in the clinical education process. The IFWEM incorporates the frameworks of "Transformational Learning Theory" (Canton & Taylor, 2012), "Experiential Learning Theory" (Lisko & O’dell, 2010), and "Pedandragogy" (Samaroo, Cooper & Green, 2013) to improve the effectiveness of teaching-learning during the fieldwork experience through intentional engagement. The creation of intentional learning experiences, student assimilation into the clinic culture, and modification and pacing of learning during the clinical education process are discussed. In addition, the impact of collaborative relationships, effective …

February 2019, Marci Grant

The CETL Correspondent

New Teaching and Learning Coordinator has been hired!

Mr. Steve Ray has joined the ranks of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning, please contact Steve and give him a warm SWOSU welcome.

Perspectives Of Student Dis/Engagement In Youth Attending An Alternative School As Viewed Through A Lens Of Respect And Relationships, Daniel Vallee

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study enlists the voices of youth attending an Alternative School in a small town in Western Canada to further theorize what it means to be dis/engaged with/from school. Findings suggest that school relationships with both staff and peers are key to understanding student dis/engagement, and that relationships are understood in terms of their degree of respect or un/fairness.