As high school teachers, we know that understanding how measurement works is crucial for lab skills and for understanding significant figures. We think measurement should be an easy topic for students to learn; especially because we know that teachers begin working with students in elementary school to teach these skills. However, I, and many other teachers, have spent countless hours teaching and reteaching a seemingly simple skill.

A couple of days ago on Twitter, the ever-lasting debate between lecture and active learning reignited due to some talks at an Educational Research Conference held in Dublin. These talks stated direct guidance (which includes lecture) was superior in terms of student learning due its reduction of students’ cognitive load. The main citation used for this argument was an article by Kirschner, Sweller, and Clark published in 2006. So, let’s dive into what this article says.

The Devil's Milkshake is a simple, yet interesting chemistry experiment that fits well as a Halloween demo. 

Standards based grading (SBG) is a method of assessment that is gaining in popularity.  There is ample research to suggest that students who participate in SBG do just as well or even better than those students in traditional classrooms

Want to heat up a department meeting? Just say you want to have all courses to have an on-line option. We definitely have some colleagues that feel very strongly - be it on one side or the other. What overlooked component can be distilled from a normal in-person course into an online that could have a significant impact? Perhaps the face-to-face “live” interaction.