Monday, April 23, 2012

April 23, 2012

Good Evening Online Instructors,

I received some great responses from last week's blog post where I shared with you one of Sam Osterhout's "Teaching Tips."  I'm so glad you are finding these tips helpful and beneficial.  If you have a tip of your own you'd like to share, please just send it my way!

This week's "Teaching Tip" comes from Catherine Neset.  She shared with me a great article from the American Psychological Association.  This article highlights study strategies to help students at all levels of education succeed.  Catherine has shared this article with her Ethics graduate class and I would like to share it with all of you in case you too, would like to share it with your own students.  The article title is:   Study smart:  Make the most of your study time with these drawn-from-the research tips and can be accessed at http://www.apa.org/gradpsych/2011/11/study-smart.aspx

A particularly interesting finding highlighted in the article discusses the importance of interweaving - or mixing - topics and tasks when studying rather than focusing solely on one topic for a long period of time.  As stated in the article, "the mixing — he calls it 'interleaving' — forces students to notice and process the similarities and differences among the things they're trying to learn, giving them a better, deeper understanding of the material" (2012).  By emphasizing this to our students, we can help one another by helping our students see the connection of their course material and thinking more broadly about their education as a whole, which will ultimately help them to be more successful.

I encourage you to check the rest of the article out and share some of these ideas with your own students.

Thanks and have a great week!
Heather Thomton-Stockman
Online Instructional Specialist

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