Cognitive Learning Strategies for Students

Dear Students, Here are some cognitive strategies that will help you learn and remember the information in the long term. 1. Concept mapping – This is a spatial cognitive strategy that utilizes visual arrangements. When you create a concept map for something, you’re learning. This activity takes the new information learned and places it into an organized structure. There are

Student Learning Organizer for Metacognitive Strategies

Metacognition is a way for you to self-monitor your learning and expand on it to increase short and long-term memory. Cognitive strategies differ from metacognitive strategies in their concreteness such as concept mapping and frames (tables with or without formulas like below). Metacognition is thinking about thinking, hence, meta-awareness. When you engage in this self-talk, you’re monitoring your cognitive processes. This is referred

Teaching Tips for Critical Thinking

In light of current events, I’d like to share a selection of my blogs on critical thinking with K-12 educators some of which could also be used with college freshmen. Ideas for Teaching Problem-solving, Critical Thinking, and Reasoning: If I were to teach problem solving, critical thinking, and reasoning, I’d embed it into the content already being taught (e.g., math or

VR with Google Cardboard for Irish Literature Hybrid Course

I’m co-designing a new Irish literature hybrid course with an English professor and her teaching assistants (TA) where college students will use Google Cardboard with their mobile phone applications (app) for virtual reality (VR) experiences with 360 media. This is my first time preparing VR learning experiences, and I wanted to share what I’ve figured out so far. This is

What’s Grit Got to Do with Learning?

What’s Grit Got to Do with Learning? was previously posted on the AACE Review (Rogers, 2017) Grit In terms of education, ‘grit’ is a combination of your passion for learning, perseverance at task, and purposeful activities. Volition and conation are synonyms for grit. During his AECT 2017 keynote, Thomas Reeves, professor emeritus at the University of Georgia and AACE Fellow since 2003

Online Course Design for Active Learning within the UDL Framework

This is a WordCloud based on my blog post on active learning. Active Learning Defined Active learning engages students directly in the learning process through instructional activities with differing degrees of interaction that’s student-centered, whereas passive learning occurs indirectly and without interaction. The latter is often, but not always, teacher-centered. Student-centered learning emphasizes learner control and manipulation of information, so

Bibliography on Active Learning

Want to learn more about active learning? Check out this reading list. Bibliography Astin, A. W., & Antonio, A. L. (2012). Assessment for excellence: The philosophy and practice of assessment (2nd ed.). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Baird, J-A., Hopfenbeck, T. N., Newton, P., Stobart, G., & Steen-Utheim, A. T. (2014). Assessment and learning: State of the field review, 13/4697.

Remember the Human in Online Courses

Remember the human is something we intuitively do in traditional face-to-face classrooms, but somehow this gets lost in distance education. If it’s only a text-based independent study, then we’ve silenced our students and treated them as mutes by not providing communication platforms that are supported in the grading criteria. Virginia Shea (1994) asks us to remember the human in the

Using Google Suite for the Universal Design of Learning

Google Suite, along with Google’s Chrome browser’s Omnibox and useful extensions, can be used to enhance the teaching of all learners with universal instructional design principles. Google Suite is the new name for these features: Google Apps (Docs, Forms, Sheets, Slides), Classroom, and Drive. This blog focuses on the use of technology to augment instruction through differentiation via scaffolding, formative assessments,

Guest Blogging for the new AACE Review

I’m enjoying the challenge of guest blogging for the Association for the Advancement of Computers in Education’s (AACE) new blog, the AACE Review.  AACE is the professional organization that produces the LearnTechLib database and several educational research journals (i.e., International Journal on e-Learning, Journal of Computers in Math and Science Teaching,  Journal on Online Learning Research). It hosts several educators’