• The Fundamental Laws of Physics Class

    The introductory college physics class is governed by a few fundamental principles. Among them: •        Energy can be neither created nor destroyed •        Every action has an equal and opposite reaction •        The universe tends toward larger entropy •        Lecture, lab, lecture, lab, exam Until recently, this was the basic framework of Professor Robyn Millan’s introductory course, Physics 13, the first of a three-course sequence that verses students in the laws of mechanics, thermodynamics, and kinetic theory as they are entering majors in the physical sciences and engineering. Last summer, though the laws of physics remained largely intact,…

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  • Student-Led Publishing: Experiential Learning at Dartmouth

    Spirituality, business, fiction, opinion, world politics, art, comedy, science…whatever your interest, it seems, there is a Dartmouth student-led publication for you. This great variety, and the students behind it, were on hand in Baker Main Hall last week at the Student Publishing Fair, an event hosted by the Dartmouth College Library. The publishing fair is one of several components of the Library’s experiential learning project, “Preparing students to be arbiters of new scholarship: Editing, reviewing, and publishing in the 21st century,” which received support through DCAL’s Experiential Learning Grant. The project is coordinated by Barbara DeFelice, Program Director for Scholarly Communication, Copyright, and Publishing and Laura Barrett, Director of Education & Outreach in…

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  • DartmouthX: Bringing Seminars to Scale

    In a typical Dartmouth course, you’re one of a dozen students convened around a seminar-style table to discuss the details of last night’s reading assignment with your professor. In another, you’re one student among thousands, representing one country among hundreds, convened in a digital classroom to do…much the same thing. These two course delivery models, occurring in tandem, have become the norm for colleges since the inception of edX, an online learning platform and consortium founded by Harvard and MIT in 2012. Dartmouth joined edX and formed DartmouthX in 2014, and since then has produced five massive open online courses (MOOCs) through the platform and reached 75,000 learners. And while these two course delivery…

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  • Apgar Award Recognizes Course for Crossing Boundaries

    What kind of society should we aim to have, and why? Are there objectively right answers to these questions, or are there ultimately only answers that are correct relative to a given social/historical framework?  These are the questions at the core of David Plunkett and Russell Muirhead’s course, Current Research in Social/Political Philosophy, winner of the 2016 Apgar Award for Innovation in Teaching at Dartmouth. Puzzle Pieces by Michael Levine-Clark is licensed under CC-BY-NC-ND 2.0 The award recognizes innovative teaching initiatives that cross traditional academic boundaries, and crossing boundaries is just what this course was designed to do. Russell Muirhead, Robert Clements Professor of Democracy & Politics and Professor of Government, has approached questions such…

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  • Hospitality in the Learning Experience

    When we talk about improving teaching and learning, the focus is often on moving beyond the content-is-king approach to consider more deeply who our learners are and which methods will most effectively facilitate learning. Widening the lens on teaching to include these elements is often the work of instructional designers and faculty developers. Our tool kits contain tips about learning styles, adaptive technology, age appropriateness, session objectives and everything in between. But there is one thing we rarely discuss, something so simple on the surface that it’s often an oversight but can, I think, make or break a learning experience. It’s teaching as an act of hospitality. I’m not talking about concierge education or luxury service. I mean hospitality in…

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  • Coproduction in Education

    Coproduction, an approach to service delivery that emphasizes the collaboration between service providers and users, has been present in the social sector and service industries since the 1970s. More recently, it has been adapted for application in health care, which is where I heard about it first. The students, faculty and staff in my program discuss coproduction in the context of patient-centered care, shared decision-making and transforming care delivery so that it meets the needs, goals and interests of the people it serves. It’s an approach that makes sense in a wide range of contexts and has been explored across disciplines: restorative justice, governance, environmental management and urban planning, among others. With historical roots in…

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  • Love & Pedagogy

    Love in pedagogical work is an orientation. It’s a commitment to the personhood of learners, to their intersectionality, to their deep emotional backgrounds, to the authenticity of their lives. It is a decision to commit first to the community of learners and second to the material we’ve come to teach. When we speak about love in pedagogical work, we suspend our habitual talk about assessment, content, educational technology, plagiarism, compliance. We do not need to eliminate that talk, but when we return to it after orienting ourselves to a pedagogy of care, it is no longer habitual talk — it is considered discussion, that often includes the learner. Love gives…

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  • Is This On Point? Fixing America’s Universities

    Rising costs. Unfair admissions. Threats to academic freedom. The future of the American university. NPR’s On Point today tackled the American university system and the threats it is facing. Guest host Ray Suarez talked with Columbia University’s Jonathan Cole about his new book, “Toward a More Perfect University” and Richard Vedder, director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity. In his intro, Suarez laid out some of the well-known challenges on the horizon for higher education: “Faulty business models, impossible admissions standard, misused budgets straining American families and the schools themselves.” The threat, he suggested, is that if American universities do not address these issues, they will lose their best students to schools overseas and fall short of their…

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  • Changing the Grading Game

    Mark Oppenheimer‘s recent Washington Post article, “There’s Nothing Wrong With Grade Inflation,” widens the lens in useful ways on the conversation around grading in higher education. The inflation of grades is not the problem, he suggests, though it is problematic in many ways. The real problem, he says, is grades in general, and I tend to agree. Grades have historically been viewed as markers of a student’s progress, knowledge, and skill, both to students themselves and to potential employers and graduate schools who may be evaluating them in the future. The fear over grade inflation generally circles around the idea that if everyone gets an A, an A becomes meaningless. How will institutions distinguish top…

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  • Get Ready to Get Down: LX Design

    I’m often challenged to describe what I do and what I am, professionally speaking, and have spent many conversations grasping for a succinct explanation using relatable words: “I’m a…well, I do…umm…learning things?” This is not coherent English. Things were much simpler when I was a teacher, a grant writer, a camp counselor. Everybody knows what these things are. Everybody is relieved when you can explain so much of your life in one tidy phrase. But my work now lies at the messy intersection of many different things and doesn’t fit neatly into any particular category or role. I’ve called myself an educator, facilitator, faculty developer, trainer, designer, storyteller and change agent. While these are all…

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