Posted on 16 January 2018 Researchers at the University of York have found no evidence to support the theory that video games make players more violent. Source: No evidence to support link between violent video games and behaviour – News … Continue reading →
Most Recent Articles
What?! No Deadlines on Assignments?!
A common kind of complaint among many HE faculty: My student comes with a long story about why they need an extension on an assignment. I have already gone to some lengths to make sure my students...
Is Contemporaneous Grading More Consistent than Grading over a Long Period?
I have an education question for anyone with expertise in assessment: Are there any studies examining the notion that marking all of one assignment/paper contemporaneously leads to more...
STILL Worth Sharing: Constructivism vs. Constructivism vs. Constructionism | Computing Education Research Blog
This post distinguishes between Constructivism, the cognitive theory, Constructivism, the educational philosophy, and Constructionism. It does an excellent job. Thanks Mark Guzdial! Source:...
Worth Sharing: Why Design Thinking is bullshit
With a Hat-Tip to Alex Bruton for sharing this. This is yet another one of these “hot new terms” that people like to say in the hopes it will make them sound “with it”. It seems to be one of …...
Worth Sharing: The Misguided Drive to Measure ‘Learning Outcomes’ NYT
Colleges should stop trivializing the transmission of knowledge. Source: Opinion | The Misguided Drive to Measure ‘Learning Outcomes’ I love having objective, clear-cut descriptions of what my...
Worth Sharing: Would College Students Retain More If Professors Dialed Back The Pace?
Why do we forget so much of what we read? Anthropologist Barbara J. King suggests that the answer might point toward benefits of a slower pace of teaching in the college classroom. Source: Would...
Worth Sharing: Why I Stopped Writing on My Students’ Papers
A professor decides it’s time to reconceive how he comments on essay assignments. This is GREAT! I have taken to requiring my students to do reflections (3 Up; 3 Down – Thanks for the great...
Thousands of teachers caught cheating in exams
I have long thought that the way to change the problem of cheating in exams (and assignments) is to reduce the risk associated with any single task. Stay tuned for future posts on how to do that....
Worth Sharing: Education Is Performance Art
The first job of a teacher is to make the student fall in love with the subject. That doesn’t have to be done by waving your arms and prancing around the classroom; there’s all sorts of ways to go...
Another example of the Randomness of Grades
I Can’t Answer These Texas Standardized Test Questions About My Own Poems | The Huffington Post Source: I Can’t Answer These Texas Standardized Test Questions About My Own Poems | The Huffington...
The Randomness of Grades: Are all ‘B’s the Same?
Last time we looked at how different a score of 75% can be, depending on which 75% the student got right in an exam where the questions are ‘perfectly balanced’. BUT, what if the exam ISN’T...
Kua Tale, as Retold by Helga Ingeborg Vierich
Written by Helga Ingeborg Vierich (*) The Kua told me one of their sacred stories – of the beginning times – in which the creator spirit saw a human being marrying an animal instead of killing...
The Randomness of Grades: What is an ‘A’ Student?
We all have a sense of what an ‘A’ Student is. They are the ones who have earned our top marks, of course. But comparing our own personal ‘A’s with that of other faculty quickly becomes...
Grades: The Random Factor, Problem 2
Problem 1, as outlined yesterday is that we really have no objective way of ensuring that our exams actually ‘cover’ the course content. Now, what about exams from the student’s perspective? I...
Grades: The Random Factor
How much of your students’ grades in your courses is subject to random chance? Is your first reaction a defensive one? “Why, NONE, of COURSE!” We all like to think we are assessing our students...
What’s the difference between serious games, educational games, and game-based learning? Episode 2
I recently posted a table explaining the differences between games, serious games, educational, games, GBL, etc. I thought a concrete example might help to understand the distinctions. Say we...
What’s the difference between serious games, educational games, and game-based learning?
This question keeps coming up. Here’s a handy table to help. This is an updated version of the table I created back in 2015. Note: This image is not to be posted anywhere or re-used without my...
Worth Sharing: How Long Does It Take to Develop One Hour of Training? Updated for 2017
This article is an update to a study that tried to answer the question: How long it takes to design one hour of instruction? Source: How Long Does It Take to Develop One Hour of Training? Updated...
Finding meaning in life in a world without work
This article misses the point. Assuming robotics renders many jobs obsolete AND we have the means to provide a basic living wage to all, this has the potential to free up masses of people to spend...
Worth Sharing: 3 Ways to Get More Women Into Tech