Yesterday I shared three keys for designing effective homework: Interest: students need to find the material itself interesting Relevance: students need to believe that the activity will cause them to learn the material Appropriate Level of Challenge: students need to be stretched, not broken When […]
Month: January 2018
Dear Prof., Your Homework Stinks
Homework. Many students hate it. Many have only one goal: get it done as quickly as possible because they’d rather do anything else with their time. And I don’t blame them. Today, for the first time in over a year, I am writing critically about […]
Homework: Learning Tool or Academic Arms Race?
During my freshmen and sophomore years, I had one goal for my homework: get it done in as short a time as possible. Why? Because I would rather be doing anything else! I know I am not alone. I meet very few students who are […]
What’s On Your Mind?
I’m writing this post on a Friday (Happy Friday!). Here’s my question for you: What’s on your todo list that will nag at you all weekend if you don’t get it done? List the unresolved tasks that are stressing you out. Next question: Does this […]
Writer’s Block
That’s what I have today. Not because I don’t have anything to say, but because I have so many half-baked ideas floating around in my head. But that much is a daily reality for me. For some reason, today, I am struggling with latching on […]
Noise Cancelling Headphones
Have you ever overheard a conversation that you just couldn’t tune out? Maybe you were on a date, and no matter how good of a time you were having, you just HAD to hear the rest of the loud-talker’s work story from the next table. […]
Remember Boredom
When was the last time you were bored? I don’t mean “playing on your phone instead of paying attention,” I mean B-O-R-E-D. Not very long ago, the world forced boredom on us regularly. Now, I can’t remember the last time I was in a situation […]
Urgent v Important
Yesterday I talked about how I hide out once a week: I work remotely to avoid distraction so that I can focus on my most important tasks. Today I would like to unpack this for you even more. We have trained ourselves to respond to […]
Hideout
What’s the most important thing you do? If you had to had to pick just one activity, what would it be? I have an answer for each of the major roles I play (husband, dad, professor…) The most important thing I do as a professor […]
Let’s Trade
Yesterday I talked about “unlearning the value of hard work.” The punchline was that we overload ourselves with “good” things to do, when we should be more picky and wait for the “great” ones. Hard work is good, when it gets you somewhere. Otherwise, it’s […]
