The COVID-19 pandemic forced institutions, faculty, and students to use emergency remote teaching (ERT) in the early stages of 2020. All educational levels, as well as schools and universities around the world, were affected. Although ERT and online education are not necessarily synonymous (see Thorkelson, 2021), most classes were delivered…

Learning computer programming is a challenging task for most beginners. Demotivation and learned helplessness are pretty common. A novel instructional technique that leverages the value-expectancy motivational model of student learning was conceptualized by the author to counter the lack of motivation in the introductory class. The result was a…

In this book Bill Hanlon provides examples and recommends highly effective and practical instructional and assessment strategies that classroom teachers can immediately implement and that school administrators can readily observe. These high yield strategies build on accepted practices and directly address the needs of struggling students or…

In fall 2014 we started the development of a series of short YouTube videos to help our introductory physics students better comprehend concepts they tend to find challenging. Our work is inspired by the PhD thesis of Derek Muller (author of the Veritasium channel) showing that lecture-based videos tend to be not only ineffective, but actually…

Many STEM subjects are strongly hierarchical: learning and progression depends upon threshold concepts and retained knowledge from previous study. To help progress learning, support can be offered during regular study periods, but what happens during breaks between studies? The requirement to provide continuity during study breaks is recognised as…

With the advent of online synopses, e-guides, and Internet study aids, millennial college students have many ways to evade direct interactions with the texts assigned in humanities classes. As a result, fewer and fewer of them are developing the analytical and close reading skills that college instructors value so highly. In this essay, the author…

It seems that instructors and professors--from community college to the Ivy League--are concerned by the lack of work completion in their courses, and therefore by student level of preparedness for class, or indeed, college. Work completion is typically a very large portion of course expectations-- often beginning on day one--and it is generally…

Academic advisors see it all the time--skills successfully applied by underclassman in high school are not working in college. This article describes how advisors can help struggling students in self-monitoring and self-regulating their study experiences using metacognitive development as an intervention. Metacognition development includes…

This field report is the seventh in a series produced by the Center on Innovations in Learning's League of Innovators. The series describes, discusses, and analyzes policies and practices that enable personalization in education. This report introduces sessions from the "Conversations with Innovators" event held at Temple University,…

The "Current Insights" feature is designed to introduce life science educators and researchers to current articles of interest in other social science and education journals. In this installment, I highlight three diverse research studies out of psychology journals that address student study strategies, faculty change, and the influence…

Students with disabilities often find writing extremely challenging (Harris & Graham, 2016). Special educators can, however, promote tremendous gains in students' ability to write by understanding common challenges students face and mastering specific teaching techniques. Students' writing success depends on reducing how much attention and…

This author recently spent a year studying best practices in serving students with learning and other disabilities, and, surprisingly, the experience altered his thinking in significant ways. He came to this study not as a specialist in disabilities but as an academic administrator with years of faculty experience, and that perspective helped him…

A 20-year veteran teacher of college Spanish, the author decided to take an intensive First-Year German course during one summer. The author found the German class was not only a great opportunity to acquire another language, but a rich source of insight about the language teaching and the learning process itself. Not only did she take German…

Affective teaching plays an increasing significant role in the teaching process; it not only attaches great importance to the teaching of knowledge and skills, but also pays specific attention to students' attitude and emotional needs in the process of teaching, so as to promote students' overall development as well as improving their…

This article illustrates how coaching students to think about their study processes and to monitor their learning can really pay off. Grazyna Niezgoda, a veteran instructor at New York City College of Technology, is reviewing an algebra quiz in front of a crowded section of developmental mathematics--a noncredit course for students who have failed…