Learning Innovation staff regularly share articles and other media in a section at the bottom of our main page titled “What We’re Reading.” These articles pique our interest and often spark discussion among our team. ICYMI, here’s what we read last month. We hope some of these articles inspire and challenge your thinking around teaching and learning.
Celebrating 5 Years of Learning Innovation, Looking Toward the Future
Learning Innovation
As I am completing my first 90 days as Duke’s Vice Provost for Learning Innovation and Digital Education, I am in awe of the talent of my team and the energy around learning innovation that I feel from the students, faculty, staff, alumni, and friends of Duke. While we celebrate the past five years… Continue reading >>>
Strategies for Accommodating Students with Disabilities in Higher Education
Faculty Focus
Over the last 30 years, federal laws like the Americans with Disabilities Act (1990) opened the door for more students with disabilities to enroll in college. While statistics show that the 2015-2016 academic year ushered in an increasing number of students with disabilities in higher education, countless… Continue reading >>>
Wellbeing in Course Design
Dartmouth Center for the Advancement of Learning
The relationship between learning and wellbeing in college is bidirectional. Research indicates that student wellbeing is critical for engaged learning and that students’ academic experience can have a profound impact on their wellbeing. As educators and as active members of the Dartmouth… Continue reading >>>
Using a Class Journal to build writing skills
Grading for Growth
Robert’s post about video assessments last week inspired me to think about unusual types of assessments that I use. This week, I’ll share one of the most successful: a Class Journal. A Class Journal is like an academic journal, run entirely for the students in one class. It gives students a venue to… Continue reading >>>
What Happened When I Made My Students Cheat
Inside Higher Ed
It could be that I’m naïve, but I’ve rarely encountered what I’d characterize as true, barefaced cheating in the first-year writing and other courses I teach. My experience with what some people call plagiarism has involved students attempting—and failing—to understand the conventions of paraphrasing… Continue reading >>>
Assessment for Growth
Grading for Growth
As we talk about grading systems such as standards-based grading or specifications grading or some blended style many of us implement, we should also discuss what we are grading. The first step of backwards design is to align your learning objectives with the course aims, goals, and “big ideas”. Continue reading >>>
All People Are Created Educable, a Vital Oft-Forgotten Tenet of Modern Democracy
Ex Urbe
Many shocking, new ideas shaped the American Experiment and related 18th century democratic ventures; as an historian of the period, I often notice that one of the most fundamental of them, and most shocking to a world which had so long assumed the opposite, often goes unmentioned… Continue reading >>>
The Deadline Dilemma
Chronicle of Higher Education
onstance Kassor thought she was helping her students. Like many professors, she’s been more lenient about accepting late work since the pandemic hit. But last year, she tried something new: She did away with point deductions entirely. She still had deadlines, but she didn’t penalize her students… Continue reading >>>
Clarity, Confusion on ‘Regular and Substantive Interaction’
Inside Higher Ed
In 2017, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Inspector General audited Western Governors University and labeled it a “correspondence education” provider rather than a “distance education” provider. Only online colleges that provide “regular and substantive interaction” between… Continue reading >>>