Students with a growth mindset believe that intelligence can be developed. These students focus on learning over just looking smart, see effort as the key to success, and thrive in the face of a challenge.  -Stanford’s PERTS Mindset Kit (Beta)

Brainiac Image CartoonTeaching this to college students challenges many of us at times in the face-to-face environment, but teaching a growth mindset online can be even more difficult.  How do we help students thrive at new online learning challenges when we cannot even “see” when they get stuck or avoid things?

The PERTS Mindset Kit is a free resource for educators and students designed to be used in a fully online setting, teaching students in short (really short!) lessons how the brain grows and learns.  Give it a try yourself–you may find you learn just as much about yourself as you want your students to learn!

If you haven’t heard of PERTS, it creates Open Education Resources (OER) and is part of Stanford’s applied research center:  Project for Education Research That Scales.   Have an idea for a useful resource?  They have a spot on their website for suggestions and other ways to get involved, using the power of crowd-sourcing.

Additional research about Growth Mindsets can be found in this Tomorrow’s Professor posting.