For Teachers

Cover image by Prawny from PixabayBy Megan SumerackiIn the first year that our blog was created—2016—I wrote a piece titled, Retrieval Practice Improves Learning, But Will it Help ALL of My Students? In this piece, I covered an experiment conducted by Pooja Agarwal and colleagues (1) about the benefits of retrieval practice for students with…

How do use the science of learning in your classroom? Describe one activity in detail so other educators can use it too!Both biology and anatomy and physiology are vocabulary rich courses. Without the foundational vocabulary, it is difficult for students to gain true understand of the big concepts. At the beginning of each unit students…

References1.      DuPaul, G. J., Eckert, T. L., & Vilardo, B. (2012). The effects of school-based interventions for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: A meta-analysis 1996-2010. School Psychology Review, 41(4), 387–412.2.      van der Oord, S., Bögels, S. M., & Peijnenburg, D. (2012). The Effectiveness of Mindfulness Training for Children with ADHD and Mindful Parenting for their Parents.…

Participants received feedback about their percentile after every task they did. After receiving all of the tasks, they were again assessed on their anxiety and motivation as well as their perception of their performance.ResultsDespite receiving varied feedback, there were no actual performance differences on any of the tasks. However, there were differences for perceived performance.…

Generative chatbots like ChatGPT also have a remarkable ability to pass for human-like performance in some limited social contexts, scoring well on standardized exams assessments typically used to measure aptitude and performance in a field (2). However, the lack of agency in chatbots means that they are unable to take responsibility for their actions.They cannot…

Cover Image by cottonbro studio from PexelsBy Althea Need KaminskeNote: To the best of my knowledge I did not use generative AI to write this post. Any mistakes or insights are my own. AI is big right now. It’s been big for a while, but it seems to be more and more aggressive in the…

Cover image by Pavel Danilyuk from PexelsDelivering engaging and effective presentations is important when it comes to teaching or when presenting work at conferences. As teachers, we may want to help our students to develop their presentation skills and prepare them to become confident speakers. Today’s digest offers resources on boosting presentation skills. 10 Tips for…

I love knowing that the lessons we learn in class stretch beyond our classroom walls! I love receiving emails from students’ parents that say, “Mikayla made me take this picture of the moon and send it to you,” or, “Jack saw all of these spider webs in our grass this morning and made me promise…

Cover image by Kei from PixabayBy Megan SumerackiLast week, my blog post covered a paper by Simon Cullen and Daniel Oppenheimer. Their paper is titled Choosing to Learn: The Importance of Student Autonomy in Higher Education (1). In their paper, they present two studies. The first study, covered in Part 1, was a randomized controlled…

Cover image by Ulrich from PixabayBy Megan SumerackiIn today’s post, I want to share a cool, relatively new paper by Simon Cullen and Daniel Oppenheimer from Science Advances (1). The paper is titled, Choosing to Learn: The Importance of Student Autonomy in Higher Education. The methodology is neat, the results are interesting, and while this…