Featured Theme: Small Teaching
This month’s theme is Small Teaching, which author James Lang defines as “an approach that seeks to spark positive change in higher education through small but powerful modifications to our course design and teaching practices” (Lang, 2016, p. 5). Based upon the latest advances in cognitive research, Lang and other proponents have skillfully bridged the gap between theory and practice, resulting in techniques that are readily applied. But how much effort is required to realize the results? Lang writes that “an essential shared quality of all…forms of small teaching is that they require minimal preparation and grading.“
Small Changes in Teaching
A series in six parts in The Chronicle of Higher Education (2016), by James M. Lang, Ph. D., author of Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning (2016).
Typical article reading length is 5 to 6 minutes.
Note: Access to The Chronicle is free, courtesy of a Penn State site license. Create an account with The Chronicle to enjoy unlimited reading.
Lang starts in a place we might not expect—before class even begins. He provides a set of three simple tips for using the last minutes before class to instructional advantage and explains why they work.
- Tip #1: Create opportunities to form relationships with your students. Even brief conversations before class result in more substantive relationships (and improved learning) than the ones that arise from routine classroom interactions.
- Tip #2: Display the instructional framework for the day. Give students an organizing structure they (and you) can frequently reference during the class.
- Tip #3: Create wonder. Post an image on the screen at the front of the room and ask two questions about it: “What do you notice? What do you wonder?”
Taking Pedagogy Seriously
By David Gooblar, Ph. D., author of The Missing Course: Everything They Never Taught You about College Teaching, featured by The Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning, Harvard University.
A single interactive video lecture in six parts, each about 7 minutes long.
Prefer to watch and listen rather than read? David Gooblar was invited to The Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning in May 2022 to demonstrate some of his most powerful Small Teaching strategies. Sharing insights from recent educational research, Gooblar offers practical methods that will help you foster student engagement and motivation in any academic discipline.
- Introduction; How Did You Learn?
- Learning is the Work of Students
- The Students are the Material
- Student Motivation: Values, Expectancies, Environment
- Invite Students In
- Structure Your Course
- Cultivate Community
The K. Patricia Cross Techniques Video Library
Each technique video is roughly three minutes in length.
A non-profit organization launched in 2019, the K. Patricia Cross Academy exists to provide higher education instructors with free, concise, and effective techniques known to produce learning results. The video library contains 50 techniques, such as Background Knowledge Probe, Active Reading Documents, and Individual Readiness Assurance Tests. The library may be searched by Teaching Environment, Activity Type, Teaching Problem Addressed, and Learning Taxonomic Dimension. These videos are professionally produced.
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Lang. (2016). In Small Teaching: Everyday Lessons from the Science of Learning. Jossey-Bass.