Author: Celia Ann Evans

Celia is the Associate Director of Engineering Learning Initiatives at Cornell, and a happy blog writer! We welcome, encourage and publish blogs by other contributors from the STEM teaching and learning community particularly our graduate and undergraduate peer educators and all members of the Cornell Engineering Community who through their interaction with students, make learning happen!

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

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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 sets 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

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– 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

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

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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

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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

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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’

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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

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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

4 Steps for a Successful Semester – Build and keep a schedule, attend classes, reach out, and believe in yourself!!

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Put your ‘Ducks in a row’  It takes time to transition to a busy college schedule.  And by ‘time’, we mean sometimes several semesters!  If you don’t feel you are there yet, you are not alone!  We all come to new experiences with different strengths, and sets of experiences.   If you are an undergraduate student… Continue Reading 4 Steps for a Successful Semester – Build and keep a schedule, attend classes, reach out, and believe in yourself!!

3 TYPES OF ‘STRUCTURE’ CREATE INCLUSIVE COLLABORATION in a student-centered classroom

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  As we know, collaboration does not typically happen by simply asking students to collaborate. Without structure, students familiar with the still-common passive forms of teaching often default to working independently, or occasionally cooperating with a peer nearby, and then only if they are confident and feel safe in a classroom. Creating the sort of… Continue Reading 3 TYPES OF ‘STRUCTURE’ CREATE INCLUSIVE COLLABORATION in a student-centered classroom