Cluster Pedagogy Learning Community
Season 2
Avoiding the Calculator Problem Millions of Western adults had this sentiment drubbed into them as schoolkids. Well-meaning teachers implored pupils to practice long division not knowing how cheap, powerful, and ubiquitous calculating devices would soon become. Of course, learning those rote skills may still have been best for the students, just not for the reasons …
Continue reading “Back Into the Meatgrinder: Using A.I. to QA Itself”
Reason is the slave of the passions. David Hume I wrote the title of this post in the style of a personals ad not (only) to showcase my bottomless wit, but because, like a good personals ad, it suggests there’s a match which, once made, makes the world just a bit happier and more fulfilled. …
Continue reading “Righteous Mind Seeks Integrated Perspective”
Shockingly, although I had taken part in discussions of interdisciplinarity before, I had not really considered my own disciplinary affiliation in those discussions. At least, I had hitherto failed to contend with the fundamental question Do I even have a discipline? Watching Matt Cheney’s ID video a couple times woke me from my dogmatic slumber. …
“To fill a gap in my teaching I hadn’t realized was there.” Personal Connections A fringe benefit of my CPLC involvement has been the happenstance connections I’ve made with other faculty and staff. I’ve met several interesting and talented people from diverse disciplines and far flung places. During that first session on June 4, when …
“The impulse to repeatedly tell and listen to stories appears to be a lock-and-key mechanism of intergenerational information transfer.” Cozolino, L. (2013). The social neuroscience of education : Optimizing attachment and learning in the classroom (First ed., Norton books in education). New York: W.W. Norton & Company. Storytelling, easily dismissed as the domain of fantasy …
I stumbled across a provocative tidbit while reading sections fromWhy Don’t Students Like School? by cognitive scientist Daniel Willingham. “College professors typically get written student evaluations of their teaching at the end of every course… Researchers have examined these sorts of survey to figure out which professors get good ratings and why. One of the …
The Question Formulation Technique “Our methods often presume students can pivot effectively from an information need to information discovery. The QFT does away with that presumption.” I’ve devoted a fair amount of time to studying a classroom activity that has the potential to strengthen a soft spot in my teaching. The Question Formulation Technique (henceforth …
On June 4, 2019, all members of the CPLC Wicked Track were tasked with developing a personal action plan to answer the following questions over the course of the ensuing two months: What will I need to learn about the course? I will need to determine from CPLC discussions whether and how the TaWP mission …
To ready myself for teaching the first year seminar (now Tackling a Wicked Problem) a second time, I’m planning to read How Humans Learn (Joshua Eyler, 2018). It’s one of six books recommended by the leaders of the Cluster Pedagogy Learning Community, a group of Plymouth State faculty who committed themselves to advancing certain learning …