A prevailing purpose of this podcast project has been to share effective teaching practices – but I started to wonder how we might define “teaching effectiveness” and what we can do to document our own teaching effectiveness. It turns out to be a rather complicated question! In this time-out I’ll share some more about the ambiguity here, as well as try to provide a reasonable, albeit broad, set of suggestions we can take to demonstrate how we approach teaching effectiveness when we communicate in our evaluation matierals.

Taylor and Charlebois: https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2024.1284726

Taylor and Thion: https://doi.org/10.3389/feduc.2023.1253622

KU Teaching Effectiveness Rubric: https://cte.ku.edu/sites/cte/files/documents/programs-initiatives/KU%20Benchmarks%20Framework%202020update.pdf

Does talking out loud help with learning?

Processing new information, and drawing connections across readings or concepts can be a challenging cognitive task, and yet our courses and assignments sometimes require this ability. In this time-out, I invited two colleagues to help me learn more about how a “think aloud” session or training might enhance students confidence, their ability to trust source information, and allow instructors to catch, in real time, how a student’s line of thought may be guiding them in the wrong direction.

Tarchi 2020: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/acp.3782

Barnett 1998: https://eric.ed.gov/?id=ED422288

Banning 2008: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17383056/

Tanner 2012: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22665584/

Can drawing out connections enhance learning?

Some students struggle with how to take notes in class, often because they don’t think in the linear logical way that traditional notes are organized. A creative alternative, that focuses on connections across a lecture or topics, seems to be really helpful for learning. In this time-out, along with a few guests, we’ll look at the evidence that supports mind-maps as an effective learning and note-taking approach to classroom success.

Kaup et al (2024): https://www.njppp.com/index.php?mno=215336

Jabade & Nadaf (2024): 10.4103/jehp.jehp_321_24

Edwards & Cooper (2010): 10.1111/j.1743-498X.2010.00395.x