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“Messy” Questions Often Elicit Critical Thinking
One strategy to elicit critical thinking is to omit important facts when presenting scenarios to students for classroom discussion. Often instructors take considerable care in class to articulate each important fact within a particular scenario that students will...
It’s a Lesson…It’s a Study Guide…No, it’s a Moodle Quiz!
That’s right! Ever thought about using a quiz for a lesson? Or how about as a study guide? It’s easy, and it’s all in how you set it up. Instead of an assessment tool, re-purpose as an active learning activity where students can: Watch a video clip. Go to websites...
Lifetime Writing Prompt & Order of Magnitude
Instead of telling the students what the concept of order of magnitude is, I let them discover its meaning through a writing prompt. Following is the prompt statement (derived from a Just-In-Time physics question), the students' results, & the lead up to the...
An Argument Against Averaging Student Grades & Using the Killer Zero
Averaging student grades is an inaccurate way of measuring what they've achieved in class. At the end of the semester, do you add up all the points a student has earned throughout the term and then divide that number by the total amount of points possible to determine...