This is the blog for the Learning Made Easier podcast entries.
You’ve assigned a group project, and for weeks, no one reports a problem. But at some point in the middle or late in the term, as the deadline approaches, you start getting bombarded by questions and complaints (and denials) about their peers. Join Dinur and Adam as they talk about how to handle the dreaded […]
Worrying about things going wrong is a common stressor – not just for students, but for teachers. But if we allow that worry to take over our brains, nothing productive happens, right? In this episode, Adam and Dinur describe some tools for short-circuiting that constant worry problem. Show Notes The Spotlight Effect
In this guest episode, Dinur and Adam are talking with Megan O’Connor, Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Kaplan Test Prep, about the importance of experiential learning and how college students can actually be prepared for the modern workforce. SHOW NOTES Find Megan on Twitter at @MeganMOConnor
When your institution demands that you hold videoconference classes at the same time as you would have met in person, things can get tricky! Many of the stressors faculty face about videoconferencing fall into three groups: privacy issues, connectivity issues, and engagement. All three of these get worse and impact more students when we have […]
Should students be calling one another out when the discussions get contentious? What are the limits that we should consider? In this episode, by listener request, Adam and Dinur talk about different ways to manage this kind of divisiveness in the classroom. Show Notes No Show Notes This Episode
In this Teaching in Transition episode, Dinur and Adam discuss the inequities we don’t notice when your institution requires synchronous video teaching. Show Notes No Show Notes This Episode
How do you know your students are learning? More to the point, how do they know they are? In this episode, Adam and Dinur discuss the Hattie/Donoughe learning model, which looks at strategies that work best for surface and for deep learning. Show Notes KQED.org, “How Do You Know When A Teaching Strategy Is Most […]
In this episode of Teaching in Transition (formerly COVID-19 Special Episodes), Dinur and Adam talk about the issue of having to teach synchronously online because your institution or department requires it. Specifically, we’ll discuss the assumptions the institution is making about how teaching through videoconferencing ought to work, and how it actually does (or doesn’t). […]
You’re in class, and something doesn’t quite click for you. You’re lost, but you’re feeling embarrassed or scared to say anything. After all, you’re in college, right? Join Adam and Dinur as we go over how to handle it when you have to ask for help. Show Notes No Show Notes This Episode
Giving and receiving effective constructive feedback is a part of academic life (not to mention the workplace), but it is something that students struggle with. The key is finding areas in the work that are strong and recognizing them, and figuring out not only where work should be strengthened, but also how to do so. Join […]
Defining is kind of like summarizing, in that you want to use your own words to say the definition as simply as possible. Join Adam and Dinur as we go over this process!
Explaining is taking what you have learned, and tying it to your own experience by using examples and analogies. Join Dinur and Adam as we go over this technique! Show Notes No show notes this episode
Relating is when you take several things you’ve learned about different topics and tie them together. Join Adam and Dinur as we talk about how to do this! Show Notes No show notes this episode
Analyzing is when you take several things you’ve learned about a single topic and tie them together. Join Adam and Dinur as we talk about different ways to analyze what you’re learning! Show Notes No show notes this episode
Questioning is the art of finding the weak or missing points of any topic and knowing why they’re weak or missing. We do this by asking questions and finding out which ones don’t have answers. Join Dinur and Adam as we talk about which questions work best! Show Notes No show notes this episode
Discussion boards can seem boring if the questions aren’t formulated well. Ideally, you want questions that tap into learning at different levels – from memorization to evaluation. So we suggest using Bloom’s taxonomy to create your discussion board questions. Join Adam and Dinur as we go over this process! This is also our final (for […]
“Summarize” means to say the same thing in fewer words. Many students don’t know how to do this. In this first episode of our Critical Thinking series, Adam and Dinur go over how summarizing works. Show Notes Paragraph from our shared chapter: In the spring of 2020, the academic world was shaken to its foundations […]
Rapport in an online class doesn’t look anything like it would in an in-person class. So you need to find other ways to connect, instead of trying to recreate something that can’t be recreated. Join Dinur and Adam as we talk about how to do this. Show Notes No show notes this episode
With all that’s currently happening in the United States, teachers – and students – have to be prepared to have difficult conversations with one another. How can we have productive conversations about learning and action, instead of shouting matches in class? Join Dinur and Adam as we discuss this issue. Show Notes Roslyn R. Cecelia […]
In our fourth COVID-19 episode, we offered suggestions for how to keep your students engaged now that classes are taught online. Catlin Tucker offers eight additional methods to keep students engaged in online classes, and in this episode, Adam and Dinur go over her additional methods and how we’ve used or will use them. Show […]