Category Archives: Teaching Tips
Learn (and Teach) by Doing
Learning by “tinkering” has caught on at San Francisco’s Tinkering School. The idea is to enhance education by having children learn by carrying out projects. For example, have students form a construction crew to create a small cardboard city. Or … Continue reading
Big Data, Technology, and Teaching
Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee’s New York Times bestseller, The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies (W. W. Norton) argues that we are at an inflection point of exceptional change in society due … Continue reading
Research That Matters, Testing That Counts
How many students would vote to have more tests in their classes? It’s hard to imagine that adding more tests would increase instructor popularity, but new research indicates that when testing is done in the right way, it can increase … Continue reading
Secret photographing of classes at Harvard??
Maybe you missed it, but it has been big news in the Boston area: classes were secretly photographed in spring 2014 as part of a Harvard University research project about classroom attendance. About 2,000 students in 10 lecture halls were … Continue reading
The joys of electronic media
With all due respect to the research that suggests reading on paper results in better understanding and learning…, it’s hard to resist the appeal of a well-constructed e-book. Consider chapter 1 of Investigating the Social World: It’s an introduction to … Continue reading
So much to do, So little time to do it
I often feel this way as I plan my research methods class and think about activities to assign. Of course, I’ve sort of created the problem in Investigating the Social World by including far more exercises and other activities for … Continue reading
Researching in a Social World 