Last week, I posted about some of the multimedia assessment guidelines we’re developing in the Graduate Multimedia Fellows Seminar. This week, I’d like to try to apply those guidelines to a professional video clearly intended to communicate an academic-style argument. Mike Rugnetta of PBS’s Idea Channel posts new videos once a week investigating “connections between pop … Continue reading »
Category Archives: Assessing Student Learning
Test Question Writing Activities May Not Just Be For Students
Today’s author is Cherie Lynn Ramirez, PhD (Curriculum Fellow, Harvard Global Health Institute) Bok Blog Editor Stephen A. Walsh recently reflected on Dr. Maryellen Weimer’s Faculty Focus piece offering some practical advice on how to get students to write their own test questions in a way that stimulates metacognition about learning and assessment. One particularly … Continue reading »
Last Minute Learning: Assessing the All-Nighter
We’ve all been there: you walk into class with an utterly splendid lesson plan. What discussion activities you have planned! What exciting, insightful, yet accessible questions you have prepped! What engrossing and provocative issues you have to discuss! You can hardly wait to begin. Let’s go! And then it all just fizzles out. Your activities … Continue reading »
The Science of Student Ratings
In early June, the Bok Center hosted a talk by Dr. Samuel T. Moulton, Director of Educational Research and Assessment at Harvard University and part of the team implementing the Harvard Initiative for Learning and Teaching. Dr. Moulton reviewed the research (more than 4000 articles!) that underlies the design and implementation of student ratings systems. … Continue reading »
Around the Web: What Counts
Conservatives are pushing back against the Common Core, arguing Continue reading »
A Truly Creative Assignment
I received this announcement from the Program in General Education and wanted to share it with our readers as one example of a thoughtfully designed, creative assignment: The teaching staff and students of Culture and Belief 12, “For the Love of God and His Prophet: Religion, Literature, and the Arts in Muslim Cultures,” invite you to the opening … Continue reading »
Grant Wiggins Lecture: Understanding Understanding
In February, Departmental TF for Physics Jason Dowd wrote a review of the book Understand By Design. On March 26th, coauthor Grant Wiggins will be speaking to the Harvard teaching community about understanding ‘understanding’. Continue reading »
How Do We Measure Learning?
What if every exam-based class in college started with the final exam? Students would file into the lecture hall (or multimedia interactivity space) on day one and take the test. Their teacher(s) would then use the students’ responses to gauge – immediately and precisely – what kinds of prior knowledge and experience they’ve brought into … Continue reading »
Around the Web / Assessing Student Learning / Innovations / Leading Discussion / Multimedia / Student Engagement / Teaching with Tech
A Reader Writes . . .
Frequent Bok Blog contributor and PhD candidate in Music Matthew Mugmon recently pointed me to a new technology, meant to facilitate classroom discussion. GoSoapBox is a customizable response tool that teachers can use to solicit real-time information from students – who no longer have to raise their hands. The idea is that students will feel less self-conscious … Continue reading »
Around the Web: Measuring Up, Down, or Maybe Sideways
Charles Duhigg’s New York Times Magazine feature on the power of habit and how advertisers exploit it makes for a fascinating read. The way habits work is also very suggestive for a university setting, where we form so many habits, only to form a new set the next semester. How might we identify the cues, … Continue reading »
