Teaching

Curious about teaching curiosity? Here's my talk from U of Waterloo on curiosity as a practice we can develop.

In this second bite-sized episode of PodBites, Adam Barger talks with Betsy Barre from Wake Forest University about how educational developers can “build a bigger tent.” In just a few minutes, Betsy offers five thoughtful and practical insights, from avoiding the word “training” to designing for disagreement, that invite educators to reimagine how we welcome diverse perspectives, foster inquiry, and create spaces where genuine dialogue about teaching can flourish.This episode was edited and produced by Roy W. Petersen.Transcript

In this post I share how I discovered a peer-reviewed article on postplagiarism that includes fake references, including attributed work that I never wrote. I summarize legitimate contributions to …

Simply grading the final group output is insufficient, Lauren Vicker and Tim Franz write.

Recommendations, reflections, and tips on teaching, learning, and being human from psychology, pedagogy, and literature.

The not-so-hidden features of learning that we receive from long-form writing (i.e., books).

This morning, our six-year old first grader - a kid who has no experience with or conceptual understanding of school grades - showed us a "neat trick." On a piece of paper next to some of his writing (we'd been playing Boggle last night), he drew a lower case "f" next to a minus sign (-) and told us that "f minus is a bad grade." Oh, OK, we said. However, he slyly continued, "Look at this!" And then he drew a curved-ish line down, turning his lower case "f" into an upper case "A." With a finishing flourish, he also struck through the minus, turning that symbol into a plus (+). "It's an A plus," he exclaimed. "What does that mean?" we asked. He didn't know. And we have no idea where he picked up this knowledge of grading, perhaps from a chapter book because his first-grade teacher does not assign grades to the many projects he creates in class. He has never received a grade from an educator in his life, yet he's approximating the act of assigning a grade to himself and believes it's best to avoid an F- and aspire toward an A+. The logics of conventional schooling and success are so pervasive, are odd at face value, and are frankly incomprehensible to children unless they are first trained into a culture of what "counts" as rewarded achievement.

Their professor thinks that when students make choices in their course, it helps them invest in it.

A statistical case against points-based grading

Four ways to nurture academic well-being in these uniquely challenging times.

Or lack thereof

By Cecilia Ellis, Callie Lees, Mirta Momo Mochi, et al., Published on 05/20/25

By Katharina De Vita, Guido Conaldi, Sara Gorgoni, et al., Published on 05/20/25

How might we reframe assignments as opportunities for meaning and well being in students' lives?

September 2025 Professional Learning Opportunities for Instructors Last updated by Tolu Noah on September 2, 2025 Date Time (PT) Title & Registration Link September 3 7:00-7:30 a.m., 9:00-9:30 a.m., or 4:00-4:30 p.m. Padlet's New Features in September (Padlet) September 4 October 2 No...

I’ve been teaching—with kids and adults, in schools and online—since 2005. But not this academic year. As the new year starts, ten provocations about education are on my mind. Perhaps one wil…

As the academic year begins, concerns arise for equity-deserving students who may struggle without adequate support. Promoting academic integrity involves fostering an inclusive environment where a…

What teaching writing and defeating nascent fascism have in common.

responding to individual student challenges early in the school year

The two notebook pages below capture the miracle of the human brain, and the power of dedicated, effortful learning. During some recent housecleaning, I found the first one, dating from the days I came home from the hospital after a heart transplant and surgery-induced stroke. I had lost the ability to write and speak. These were some of my first efforts to form letters again. That was three and a half years ago. As my body and brain healed, and the words came back, I decided to rekindle my love of languages, and began re-learning ancient Greek (which I had studied in high school and college). Every morning this summer I have been getting up early, making a cup of tea, and studying Greek for thirty minutes. I review vocabulary, read my textbook, translate practice sentences, and write out verb conjugations and noun declensions to affix them in my memory. You see a recent effort at this on the notebook page on the right. Repetitive work sometimes, yes, but I see its unquestionable results when I am faced with translating an unfamiliar sentence. Let me never forget what gifts learning--even when it has been difficult, monotonous, and repetitive--has brought me, and continues to bring me at the start of every day. In the coming academic year, what are the challenging tasks that will motivate and guide us--and our students--from wherever we are now to whatever we hope to achieve? #learning #teaching #joy

Designing courses for success in the year to come

Questions or comments about this episode? Send us a text message. We’re back with another Take It or Leave It panel. I invited three colleagues whose work and thinking I admire very much to come on the show and to compress their complex and nuanced thoughts on teaching and learning into artificial binaries! The panelists for this edition of Take It or Leave It are… Liz Norell, associate director of instructional support at the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at the Univer…