Tackling Effective Peer Review: Structuring and incentivizing the process for inclusion

Celia Ann Evans on

I recently attended a great talk on the critical process of sharing feedback with students. Timely, specific feedback from instructors on draft assignments, or on work that bears similarities to future work, or lays a foundation for next steps, is one of the most important aspects in supporting student learning.  Feedback is a universal necessity… Continue Reading Tackling Effective Peer Review: Structuring and incentivizing the process for inclusion

ATTENTION IN THE DIGITAL AGE: Revisiting the critical issues posed by cellphones in the university classroom

Celia Ann Evans on

– content contributed by TA consultant Saif Siddique, PhD candidate Material Science and Engineering, Cornell University Attention… “… is the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of what seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought. Focalization, concentration, of consciousness are of its essence.”             … Continue Reading ATTENTION IN THE DIGITAL AGE: Revisiting the critical issues posed by cellphones in the university classroom

Supporting our International Graduate Students in Their Teaching Roles

Wenjing Luo on

With increasing global mobility, international teaching assistants (ITA) are now a major part of the workforce in higher education institutes in the U.S. In 2020 National Science Foundation reported that 29% of science and engineering faculty were ‘foreign born’ and this same demographic received 6 out of 10 doctoral degrees in engineering, math and computer… Continue Reading Supporting our International Graduate Students in Their Teaching Roles

The value of being a teaching assistant when teaching is not the chosen path: A reminder for graduate TAs

Celia Ann Evans on

Regardless of the path you take after attaining your degree, the skills you gain by working on a teaching team will be valuable in your professional career! The knowledge and skills that support effective learning are the same as those that result in the best work environments and business outcomes. Being a teaching assistant (TA)… Continue Reading The value of being a teaching assistant when teaching is not the chosen path: A reminder for graduate TAs

Recognizing and Requesting Transparency in the College Classroom

Celia Ann Evans on

Black boxes are useful in a model system or the research we do as we work to understand the world.  In those cases, the ‘unknowns’ are exciting and they represent what we are working to ‘know’.  However, when it comes to what is expected of you as a learner in your classes, there should NOT… Continue Reading Recognizing and Requesting Transparency in the College Classroom

Do well on finals AND retain knowledge: Strategies for short and long-term success

Celia Ann Evans on

Many of us have experienced that doing well on an exam, may not mean all that information we used to successfully answer the questions on the test is retained. Both remembering and forgetting are physiological processes likely driven by the need to prioritize bits of the massive amount of information to which we are exposed.… Continue Reading Do well on finals AND retain knowledge: Strategies for short and long-term success

USING THE METACOGNITIVE CYCLE TO TURN ‘PROBLEM SETS’ INTO ‘STUDY SESSIONS’

Celia Ann Evans on

After a fun and productive meeting with a couple of our undergraduate educators in my office last week, we shifted gears and started to talk about how very busy their own semesters were.  One of them confided that they were committed to getting a good night’s sleep (Bravo!), and they had time for doing homework… Continue Reading USING THE METACOGNITIVE CYCLE TO TURN ‘PROBLEM SETS’ INTO ‘STUDY SESSIONS’

Cognitive and Affective Domains: Critical parallels for effective teaching

Celia Ann Evans on

The Cognitive Domain – Learning as a hierarchy of increasingly difficult cognitive work Educators use Bloom’s Taxonomy to think about and scaffold the degree of cognitive difficulty in courses and for helping to design activities and assignments appropriate to learning expectations. Cognitive challenge increases as we move ‘up’ the pyramid from ‘remember’ toward the pinnacle… Continue Reading Cognitive and Affective Domains: Critical parallels for effective teaching