Teaching

Laptops and knitting in class

Twitter is burning up with discussion of Sue Dynarski’s November 22 NYT column on laptop use in class. Dynarski summarizes some of the research on how laptops affect students in classes heavy in formal presentations (such as many economics classes) and explains why she generally bans electronic device use in her classes as a result. Loads […]

Developing courses for others

Yesterday, I found myself hip-deep in course planning at the undergraduate, masters, and doctoral level. The doctoral course is for a major initiative that is on my plate this year, the undergraduate course helps the Division of Teacher Preparation with one of their curriculum initiatives, and the third is from a very clear need for redevelopment of the masters-level […]

Observations from a doctoral research forum

ASU’s EdD program students are great in describing problems of practice and focused in tackling them. That’s part of what I learned last Thursday night, when I welcomed dozens of ASU doctoral students, faculty, and several guests to the fall Doctoral Research Forum on the ASU West campus.

“Instructional design” and “authentic assessment” strike me as hubris

If I were a sloppy New York Times reporter, I’d start this blog post by constructing a faux-trend narrative about the increasing use of “design” in educational discourse or practice. But I’m not a reporter and don’t work for the Times, so I will just note that in the past six months I have come across enough […]

How to teach critical thinking: an immodest idea

This entry is going to proceed through some maddeningly vague statements, so I will start with the bottom line: currently my best idea for teaching critical thinking in social sciences or related areas is to have students wrestle with an important substantive question or puzzle in a reasonably-well-bounded area of knowledge. The structure may be […]