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Connecting with Students as a Motivator for Learning
Michelle Arroyo
Students want to feel cared for and that their instructors have their best educational interests in mind. Having an instructor who demonstrates compassion and shows empathy toward students creates a positive classroom climate and the course is more meaningful to the students at UNLV.
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Categorization of Exam Questions to Improve Metacognition
Tiffany Barrett
This practice addresses UNLV students’ need for greater metacognitive awareness. Students often employ memorization as a study strategy when preparing for an exam. This can create an inability to apply the knowledge in a complex or different scenario. We know that “practice retrieving” study activities produce greater gains in meaningful learning (Karpicke 2011) but often students don’t identify a need for a change in study habits and a deeper level of understanding, especially if their exam score is considered passing.
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What are Funds of Knowledge? A Collaborative Approach to Education
Janna M. Bernstein
It is important as educators to have a holistic understanding of students’ identities as these experiences influence classroom dynamics. As noted by Dugan (2017), “…identity, knowledge, and power are influenced profoundly by ideology and hegemony and in turn play a role in shaping people’s stocks of knowledge” (p. 40). “Stocks of knowledge” are characterized by five principles: they are familiar, serve to help navigate the world, “shaped by lived experience, altered only through novel situations, and socially constructed based on identity” (Dugan, 2017, p. 34). These “stocks of knowledge” are also known as “funds of knowledge” by multicultural educators.
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Reducing Anxiety While Boosting Creativity: Lessons from the Progymnasmata
Bryan Blankfield
The fear of public speaking is a widely shared among individuals. This can be difficult to overcome when students are assigned several large, heavily-weighted speeches with few opportunities to become acclimated to standing in front of an audience. Several times throughout the semester students are assigned a 2–3 minute long speech inspired by the progymnasmata (a series of rhetorical exercises from Ancient Greece). The speeches vary widely from presenting a fable to impersonating an individual.
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Critically Thinking about Real-World Content and Practices: The Theory Show & Tell
Erika Engstrom
Analytical and communication skills list high on employers’ priorities. Beyond assessing comprehension through exams and research papers, this project requires, pilot research using content analysis, in-class presentation, short-form synthesis of findings.
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Double-Loop Learning: An Approach to Critical Thinking
Joe Ervin and Nathan Slife
There is a general consensus that critical thinking is an essential part of college. Instructors should therefore be aware of the following: How they define and conceptualize critical thinking, how they are teaching critical thinking to their students, expectations for how students can exhibit critical thinking. Research-based how to strategies would be an example of single-loop learning, one form of critical thinking.
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Engaging Assignments Increase Performance
Jorge Ramon Fonseca Cacho
It is well known that students who complete homework assignments and other outside of class activities related to the course lead to improve student outcomes. However, engaging a student and motivating them to complete their assignments is no easy feat. To address this, we developed new assignments for two sections of the Fall 2018 course CS135.
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Benefits of Formative Teaching Observations
Dan Gianoutsos
Formative teaching observations by peer teaching faculty can provide helpful advice about small changes to teaching that can improve teachers’ and students’ experiences during the term (see reference list). The researcher posits that the UNLV Teaching Observation project catalyzed real-time changes to the participating faculty’s teaching and generated short-term solutions to some of their teaching challenges.
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Enacting Agency through Influence on Power Relationships
Steve Hayden
Agency is the temporal and ecological understanding of the capacity to make choices, take principled action,and enact positive change. Why is agency important? Because teaching is complex! 1. New policy directions 2. Wider variety of stakeholder voices 3. Increase in student diversity 4. Power relationships are embedded in school context: Hierarchical structure, Accountability Measures, Evaluative components
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Career Development in Curriculum: COLA 100E
Jenna Heath
Engagement with Professionals, from the local community, in the classroom allows for students to learn about a variety of career paths and gain career advice. This practice also provides the institution a tangible way of preparing students for their graduation plans and allows for mentorship to develop naturally among the students and professionals.
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Student Outcomes -Online vs. Hybrid
Sharon Jalene
The purpose of this class is to introduce the student to the field of Kinesiology -the science of human movement. Concepts in the various subfields of Kinesiology are examined and career opportunities are explored. Students will also gain a better understanding of the course concepts through online lectures, discussions, assignments, and quizzes
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Using Microanalysis (MFD) to Teach & Train Students
Sara Smock Jordan
Microanalysis of face-to-face dialogue (MFD), that is, the detailed and replicable examination of any aspect of observable communicative behavior as it occurs, moment by moment, in a face-to-face dialogue (Bavelas, Gerwing, Healing, & Tomori, 2016) to examine professional conversations. MFD is an inductive methodology which uses detailed operational definitions and analysis rules, rather than relying on subjective judgment, to produce high inter-analyst agreement (Bavelas et al., 2016). MFD principles are applicable to teaching, training, and supervising clinicians in our CFT program.
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Nifty Data Structures Projects
Ed Jorgensen and Laxmi Gewali
For computer science, and many technical fields, it is recognized that projects with real-world applicability play a significant roll in what students get out of the course. Creating applicable projects for upper division such as our data structures classes is very difficult and time consuming. We have utilized the Nifty assignments concept and applied it locally to an upper division data structures course. Our primary goal is to provide a forum for the sharing of data structure project ideas and materials (as applicable).
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Embedding Accessibility in Course Development
Gabriel Judkins and Rex Suba
Accessibility as practice allows all to independently: acquire the same information, engage in the same interactions, enjoy the same services within the same time frame with equivalent ease of use.
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Using Problem-Based Learning to Promote Self-directed Learning at UNLV School of Medicine
Rosalie Kalili
It is imperative that medical students develop skills that promote life-long learning and manage the doubling rate of medical knowledge. Through the use of problem-based learning (PBL), self-directed learning (SDL) can be practiced; and both can serve as ongoing learning approaches beyond medical school.
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Design Data-driven Assignments for Clear, Transparent, and Efficient Teaching
Julian Kilker
Working with students in hybrid, inperson, or online courses involves many data interactions. Data-driven assignments are structured to gather and evaluate student work at both macro and micro levels needed to evaluate learning and improve course materials. This practice uses Google Forms and linked Sheets to create data-driven assignments and custom dashboards.
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Fostering Student Engagement: Four Strategies
Erica Marti, Ryan Sherman, and Haroon Stephen
In response to studies demonstrating that poor teaching was the cause of many students leaving math, science, and engineering programs, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) developed the ExCEEd(Excellence in Civil Engineering Education) Teaching Workshop. Several faculty from the UNLV Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering and Construction have attended the highly intensive five-day workshop. To evaluate the impact on student engagement, four basic instructional strategies from the ExCEEdworkshop, applicable to all fields, were tested and assessed during the Fall 2018 semester: Questioning techniques, physical models, instructor involvement, and group work.
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Trauma-Informed Schools and Educators
Carolina Meza Perez and Michelle Paul
Educators, staff, and administrators in the school community will be prepared to recognize and respond to those who have been impacted by traumatic stress.
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Professional Development: COLA 100L
Kassandra Moore
The need for professional development integration into curriculum is vital for student success. Colleges and universities across the country are implementing career and professional development opportunities into classroom curriculum to better prepare students for life outside the classroom. Specialized events and focused learning opportunities help students successfully navigate through the career development process, and is exactly what students need.
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Infographics as Data Visualization Class Assignment
Kim Nehls
Data visualization is commonplace. UNLV students need to be prepared.
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Student-Led Discussions
Deborah A. Obara
According to constructivist learning theory informed by cognitive and educational psychology, the optimal conditions needed for learning include accurate assessment of student background knowledge; engaging, scaffolded activities; cognitive elaboration; and more knowledgeable others available to assist when needed.
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Mentoring Meetings Increase Student Performance on “High Stakes” Projects in STEM
Elana A. Paladino
The current project addresses whether one-on-one, mentoring meetings to discuss poster rough drafts will impact learning more consistently.
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The Importance of Universal Design in Teaching
Maria Pena
Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is an educational framework based on research in the learning sciences, including cognitive neuroscience, that guides the development of flexible learning environments that can accommodate individual learning differences.
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Student Polling in WebCampus
Benjamin Root, Jennie Tran, Joey Kim, and Philip Cheung
Our goal was to increase student engagement with online courses by building a student polling system that works inside of WebCampus.
UNLV's Best Teaching Practices Expo highlights great ideas from UNLV's teaching community.
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