The LARA method for tense talks
What is it? As outlined in ‘Creating safe spaces and brave spaces‘, university learning often involves encounters between students with different social viewpoints. If these discussions are overwhelmed with emotion, students will find it hard […]
Creating safe spaces and brave spaces
What are they? Safe spaces came into existence to give people from a marginalised or persecuted group a way to meet, sometimes with political purposes, without having to defend themselves against prejudice or abuse. The […]
Cognitive control in an age of digital distraction
What is cognitive control? Cognitive control is crucial to deep, purposeful learning and is achieved through the following functions (Gazzaley and Rosen, 2016, p80; Parry, 2019): attention – a mental spotlight which needs to be […]
Student-generated questions
What is it? After studying independently, students are ask to generate questions about the material. This can also happen after live teaching, when it is sometimes called a ‘Minute paper’ or ‘Exit ticket’. Why do […]
Learning from transition – the pivot to online learning (event)
The May 2020 ‘Lightning Lunch’ event was online (you know why) with a panel of four King’s educators responding to questions about teaching online. This panel had shared their practice in advance as five-minute recorded […]
Discussion forums
What is it? Forums allow students and staff to have a group conversation, with each participant posting their contributions at times convenient for them. Most posts are text-based, but often support images, links and even […]
Interviews for evaluating teaching
This is an evaluation guide. What is it? An interview is a discussion, individually or in a group, prompted by a series of questions. Interview questions tend to be open-ended (if you need to ask […]
Developing your questions for evaluating teaching
This is an evaluation guide. Pat Hutchings’ (2000) taxonomy of educational inquiry questions can be helpful in specifying the main purpose of your evaluation. “What works” questions are evaluative; they set out to prove effectiveness. […]
Questionnaires for evaluating teaching
This is an evaluation guide. What is it? A questionnaire is an efficient, economical way to obtain a large amount of responses. When administered digitally, questionnaires scale up with minimal extra resource since they tend […]
Classroom observation protocols for evaluating teaching
This is an evaluation guide. What is it? Classroom observation protocols support the collection and categorisation of observational data about what students are doing in relation to what their educator is doing, typically in large […]