Cult of Pedagogy

APRIL 27, 2025

In the 10 years since I chose a book called Make it Stick for a book study in the summer of 2015, I’ve been encouraging teachers to add more retrieval practice to their teaching. A big and growing body of research tells us that when we study with retrieval, we learn and remember things much better than we do by other review methods.

Multiple Choice Questions 80

Multiple Choice Questions Teachers Writing Questions 80

Cal Matters

JUNE 25, 2025

And they entered college with gaps in study skills and anxiety about social interactions. A professor lectures students during class at Sacramento State University on Oct. And the university introduced a freshman course with tips on identifying their interests, participating in campus events and even asking instructors for help.

Math 88

Math English Lecturing High School 88

Faculty Focus

JUNE 29, 2025

I offered students a chance to ask about my education, experience in finance, the time I lived and studied in Paris, or how I ended up teaching at a community college. Without the constant need to defend or assert one’s ego (our preferences and aversions), the instructor’s attention can open to what is happening in the room or on the screen.

Teaching 70

Teaching Motivation Learning Outcomes Instructors 70

Faculty Focus

JUNE 29, 2025

I offered students a chance to ask about my education, experience in finance, the time I lived and studied in Paris, or how I ended up teaching at a community college. Without the constant need to defend or assert one’s ego (our preferences and aversions), the instructor’s attention can open to what is happening in the room or on the screen.

Teaching 70

Teaching Motivation Learning Outcomes Instructors 70

Edsurge

JANUARY 5, 2018

I had a very knowledgeable teacher, but lecture slides were available online, and they covered almost all of the material for the course. It seems an hour can be better spent reading slides and doing a practice problem than sitting through a lecture. Online education and improved access to resources are changing the learning landscape.

Study 214

Study Lecturing Education Internet 214

Edsurge

MAY 25, 2020

What’s the Use of Lectures? Let’s start with one of education’s most hallowed traditions: the lecture. In his 1971 book “ What’s the Use of Lectures? The author’s work did not discount the fact that there are inspirational teachers whose lectures are so compelling they can hold student attention for hours.

Lecturing 206

Lecturing Questions Learning Attention 206

Edsurge

SEPTEMBER 20, 2023

At least, that’s according to a randomized study recently published in the peer-reviewed journal Science. The study, which occurred over three semesters, randomly assigned students to either learning through lectures, the old-school way, or through “active” calculus instruction that emphasizes student engagement. Its conclusion?

Instructors 198

Instructors Lecturing STEM Study 198

Edsurge

NOVEMBER 8, 2024

Once upon a time, educators worried about the dangers of CliffsNotes — study guides that rendered great works of literature as a series of bullet points that many students used as a replacement for actually doing the reading. It’s not as simple as assuming that students are all cheaters, the instructor stresses.

Study 214

Study Lecturing Instructors Students 214

Edsurge

JUNE 7, 2019

Dan Levy had long considered himself an equitable instructor in terms of calling on students to participate in class discussions. So in 2014, the senior lecturer in public policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government decided to test that assumption. Instructors can have biases toward picking particular students.

Lecturing 161

Lecturing Participation Instructors Beliefs 161

Edsurge

NOVEMBER 1, 2018

It’s a question that some higher education instructors have asked before, and one that two Penn State University educators sought to answer on Wednesday at this year’s EDUCAUSE conference in Denver. An instructor can type in a concept or idea, such as “industrial design,” into the tool his team built, called Eureka!,

Instructors 160

Instructors Intelligence Quizzes Textbooks 160

Edsurge

JANUARY 7, 2019

Instead of hearing only from the same six students, instructors get feedback from many more. Amazon Transcribe automatically creates text transcripts from the audio track in the videos and makes them available for students and instructors to view directly from within the classroom player. Source: Echo360. How are you measuring success?

Study 164

Study Lecturing Assistive Technology Exams 164

Edsurge

JANUARY 14, 2021

As the pandemic has forced more teaching online, plenty of instructors have been trying to figure out the best way to keep students’ attention and interest with lecture videos or Zoom sessions. It’s almost like this symphony that the instructor is the heart of.” That’s not to say that the transparent whiteboard is ineffective.

Instructors 218

Instructors Lecturing Teachers Attention 218

Scholarly Teacher

NOVEMBER 13, 2024

At times, however, that stone may feel like a boulder, especially to research faculty who are used to delivering lectures and to whom the switch to activity-based learning may seem like a daunting and demanding venture into unfamiliar territory. 2023; Hsu & Goldsmith, 2021; Venus & Sharma, 2024). Two birds with one stone.

Lecturing 98

Lecturing Active Learning Activities STEM 98

Faculty Focus

FEBRUARY 2, 2025

Despite debate and disagreement about how to define and measure attention spans, numerous studies have put student attention spans in approximately the 10-minute range (Bradbury, 2016). So then, why do so many educators lecture and click through PowerPoints for 30-,40-, or even 60-minutes at a time with no breaks or learning activities?

Lecturing 104

Lecturing Attention Students Discussions 104

Edsurge

JANUARY 28, 2021

Studies have shown that students learn better from instructors displaying positive emotions—in other words, an upbeat lecturer is more effective than someone delivering in monotone. But when video lessons are led by computer animations instead of live instructors, how much do their simulated emotions matter?

Teaching 192

Teaching Instructors Lecturing Motivation 192

Edsurge

FEBRUARY 22, 2024

But since the COVID-19 pandemic forced instructors around the world to try online education, something unexpected has happened: Professors have found that there are some online teaching methods that work better than what can be done in the limits of a physical classroom. Each week, I’d assign several lectures I’d recorded earlier on video.

Teaching 218

Teaching Lecturing Blended Courses Instructors 218

Edsurge

FEBRUARY 16, 2023

Since the pandemic, more instructors at schools and colleges appear to have embraced “flipped learning ,” the approach of asking students to watch lecture videos before class so that class time can be used for active learning. The study considered 173 studies of flipped learning, as well as 46 previous meta-analyses of the approach.

Lecturing 213

Lecturing Learning Instructors Failure 213

Faculty Focus

FEBRUARY 2, 2025

Despite debate and disagreement about how to define and measure attention spans, numerous studies have put student attention spans in approximately the 10-minute range (Bradbury, 2016). So then, why do so many educators lecture and click through PowerPoints for 30-,40-, or even 60-minutes at a time with no breaks or learning activities?

Lecturing 96

Lecturing Attention Students Discussions 96

Edsurge

JANUARY 11, 2021

Yet as instructors in the new world of online education, we have access to ever-increasing amounts of data—from recorded lecture videos, electronically submitted homework, discussion forums, and online quizzes and assessments—that may give us insights into individual student learning. This is where machine learning comes in.

Teaching 213

Teaching Instructors Quizzes Intelligence 213

Dangerously Irrelevant

JANUARY 23, 2017

Annie Murphy Paul said: a growing body of evidence suggests that the lecture is not generic or neutral, but a specific cultural form that favors some people while discriminating against others, including women, minorities and low-income and first-generation college students. Related Posts.

Lecturing 81

Lecturing Active Learning Activities Learning 81

Faculty Focus

MAY 11, 2025

As the capacity of AI grows to complete increasingly complex tasks, we (as college instructors) may wonder what we can offer our students in the age of AI. Why College Instructors Matter: A Student’s Perspective I had a conversation with one of my students recently about this exact question. Schoeder, 2024).

Instructors 114

Instructors Motivation Critical Thinking Students 114

Faculty Focus

JUNE 18, 2023

In a face-to-face class, students see the instructor and other students and, even if not interacting with them directly, know they are not alone. But asynchronous courses, and especially asynchronous independent study courses, present a different scenario with challenges for both instructors and students. Who is my instructor?”

Instructors 105

Instructors Syllabus Assignments Feedback 105

Edsurge

APRIL 27, 2023

It turns out, one of the world’s most-cited educational researchers, Richard Mayer , is working on a series of studies looking at what kind of computer-generated voices and images are most engaging to learners and lead to the best outcomes. How do we create online tutors who are approachable and we want to learn from?’”

Lecturing 186

Lecturing Instructors English Textbooks 186

Edsurge

FEBRUARY 10, 2022

Student-centered approaches such as active learning , in which faculty facilitate opportunities for small-group collaboration and minimize lecture time, have been linked to improved student performance. Another version of this approach supplements large lectures with smaller interactive sections.

STEM 217

STEM Lecturing Math Beliefs 217

Edsurge

SEPTEMBER 21, 2023

Most of us know what to expect in a face-to-face classroom: Students sitting in rows, facing instructors and listening to lectures, watching videos displayed on screens up front, or, in smaller classes, participating in lively discussion. But are colleges paying attention to what online students want most?

Mobile Devices 211

Mobile Devices Lecturing Quizzes Participation 211

Edsurge

OCTOBER 19, 2023

Even vocal proponents of HyFlex admit it’s not widely popular among college instructors. He says instructors who felt forced to quickly allow for remote options or teach remotely are now eager to get back to what they consider normal. As one instructor wrote in an essay last year , “everyone lost something in HyFlex courses.

Teaching 208

Teaching Instructors Lecturing Blended Courses 208

Edsurge

OCTOBER 4, 2017

Edward’s University , where he works as an associate professor of philosophy and the director of the Center of Ethics and Leadership , was one of the 21 institutions taking part in a study to explore teaching upper-level humanities courses online. He says there’s a concern about instructors teaching online courses without assistance or pay.

Art 120

Art Study Teaching Lecturing 120

Edsurge

MAY 5, 2021

It’s common today for colleges to invite professors from other institutions to deliver distinguished lectures on campus. On their own and in their own time, students watch pre-recorded video lectures and demonstrations, enter discussion boards and work together in groups employing collaborative software tools day and night.

Online Learning 200

Online Learning Teaching Lecturing Instructors 200

Edsurge

MAY 13, 2020

Looking for an easy way to become a better online instructor? The in-depth workshop or multi-day training can come later.) “It’s one of the easiest things to do to really understand what that environment looks like, feels like and behaves like,” says Kerry Rice, a professor at Boise State University who has studied effective online learning.

Online Learning 216

Online Learning Interdisciplinary Lecturing Learning 216

Edsurge

MARCH 19, 2020

That’s the view of Jesse Stommel, a digital learning fellow and senior lecturer at the University of Mary Washington. “I Studies suggest, for example, that grades can frustrate students’ intrinsic motivation and make them more focused on how they’ll be measured than on the material they should be studying.

Grades 217

Grades Questions Instructors Motivation 217

Edsurge

OCTOBER 17, 2023

He devoted the bulk of his time and energy to studying how to improve teaching. “I So what has he learned in more than 20 years from applying his persistence (and much of the money he won from the Nobel) to studying teaching? You’ve famously compared lecturing to bloodletting. And this isn't just flippant.

Teaching 200

Teaching Lecturing Evaluation Teaching Evaluations 200

Edsurge

SEPTEMBER 5, 2023

Changing the way calculus is taught, proponents argue, helps more students find math approachable and relevant, making them therefore more likely to succeed while studying it. The educators sat through lectures on pedagogy, the finer points of math and how to apply it to actual biological problems. the instructor asked.

Math 218

Math Instructors Science STEM 218

Edsurge

MAY 24, 2018

In most cases, what professors ask students to do outside the classrooms is watch video lectures, and Barba thinks that part of the flipped approach needs to go, and that professors are relying too much on such videos as a crutch. STEM has always been lecture heavy,” she says, “and that's the big difference.”

Lecturing 161

Lecturing Learning STEM Instructors 161

Edsurge

NOVEMBER 19, 2021

A recent Educause study found that 63 percent of colleges and universities in the U.S. Check out our related article, " The Pandemic Pushed Colleges to Record Lectures. We randomly put students into four groups,” says Tara Carpenter, a lecturer at UMBC who taught the course. “We The Practice May Be Here to Stay." “As

Exams 186

Exams Lecturing Instructors Testing 186

Edsurge

JANUARY 31, 2023

But getting and holding the attention of students has become more difficult since the pandemic, according to many college instructors around the country. A couple months ago I visited a big public university – Texas State University – and observed three large lecture classes, to get a sense of what teaching looks like these days.

Attention 194

Attention Lecturing Instructors Students 194

Edsurge

JUNE 16, 2023

We broke through the temporary status of contingent higher ed employment under a framework that offers some semblance of job security,” said Amy Higer, a lecturer at Rutgers’ Newark School of Arts and Sciences and president of PTLFC-AAUP-AFT, unions representing part-time employees. Every virtual class is taught by contingent instructors.

Attention 204

Attention Teachers Instructors Fairness 204

Edsurge

JANUARY 7, 2019

Instead of hearing only from the same six students, instructors get feedback from many more. Amazon Transcribe automatically creates text transcripts from the audio track in the videos and makes them available for students and instructors to view directly from within the classroom player. Source: Echo360. How are you measuring success?

Study 97

Study Lecturing Assistive Technology Exams 97