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Tag Archives: The Spark of Learning
“Some people hold the view that if you are a learned scholar in a field, that should be enough to make you a good teacher.”
We all know this isn’t true. Is there a person alive who hasn’t suffered through a class taught by an expert who was boring? And yet, it seems to me that we are reluctant to acknowledge that “emotion” can support … Continue reading
“You want to aim for what D’Mello and colleagues call a ‘zone of optimal confusion.’”
D’Mello and his research team identified three guiding principles for implementing confusion in the college classroom: it should be appropriate, intentional and in the context of learning; students should possess the ability to successfully resolve the confusion; and when students … Continue reading
“Students rated sociability (e.g., friendliness, warmth) as significantly more important than did faculty.”
A 2014 study by Megan Gerhardt evaluated how instructors and students ranked contributors to teaching credibility. While everyone agreed that competence in subject matter and character are most important, students noted a desire for sociability that “has important implications for … Continue reading
Five Intriguing Ideas from 2016 Books
This blog focuses on one idea from one book each week, and so selecting just five from the 50 or so that I’ve published in 2016 is a challenge. But after looking through them all, I have to say that … Continue reading
“Attributes like confidence, enthusiasm, and likability can be perceived in the briefest of exposures.”
In The Spark of Learning, Sarah Rose Cavanagh describes a study where students were asked to rate professors after seeing 30-second videos of lectures that had no audio. The students’ ratings predicted with surprising accuracy the professors’ actual end-of-semester evaluations. … Continue reading