Did you know that K12 schools are integrating 21st Century Skills and making broad shifts in education? These changes include integrating more real-world problem solving, peer collaborations, and innovative technologies into classrooms. In Tuesday's TeachT@lk webinar, our guest, David Roman , a K12 Education Specialist from Pinal County, helped us understand what these skills are, and what faculty should expect in future college students. David introduced us to "P21" a framework for helping to develop 21st Century Learning, which includes these 3 skill areas: Life/career skills Learning/Innovation Skills 21CLD Collaboration Rubric Information/Media/Tech skills The webinar also included an introduction to the 21CLD Learning Activity Rubrics , which describe 6 specific skills for higher education, including: Collaboration Knowledge construction  Self-regulation Real-world problem solving Use of ICT (Information and Communications Tech...

Today's post is by Liz Barnes, a PhD Graduate Student in Sara Brownell's Biology Education Research Lab at ASU's School of Life Sciences. Liz found her niche in evolution education research and completed a master’s thesis titled “Professor Attitudes and Beliefs about Teaching Evolution”. After obtaining her master’s degree in the summer of 2014, she began working on her doctoral research, which focuses on how the personal belief systems of individuals influence their perceptions of science and science education. Further, she is studying the ways in which science educators can effectively teach controversial subjects in biology while fostering positive attitudes towards science. Evolution is one of the most important theories in biology and yet one of the most controversial in society (Dobzhansky, 1973; Newport, 2014). This concurrent foundational and controversial nature of evolution makes it one of the more difficult topics to teach in biology. While studen...

Donald Meeks, a student at Arizona State University, and creator of "Go Native" , a video game aimed at teaching people how to speak and interact in different countries, opened our webinar on Tuesday, May 3. His comments helped faculty understand how games impacted the way he learned, and how they have the ability to teach new skills by engaging students in problem-solving and immersive environments. (Click here to see Donald's talk) Faculty went on to review research on games and education, define game "elements", and connect what they are already doing in traditional classes with games. Finally, they reviewed 3 case studies, from a fully converted course from Andy Petroski from Harrisburg University into a game, to some of ASU's courses that are making small changes in course assignments and activities to integrate gaming themes like:   "Spore Controversy" - where students play a "science" game and then discuss what it got w...

"According to a 2005 study done by Nature, Wikipedia contains only slightly more inaccuracies in science-related topics than does Encyclopaedia Britannica" (Chandler, 2010) Shigeru Tamura circa 1939 College courses rarely encourage students to do their research with Wikipedia, but there is value in teaching students the importance of critically evaluating sources, and contributing to the worlds' general knowledge on subjects. Faculty can guide their students, as well as contribute their expertise on subjects. Wikipedia is widely used and ambitious in that it aims to provide a free encyclopedia to anyone in the world. While the encyclopedia is the largest of its kind, there is still an imbalance in the depth and quantity of articles about women. On April 8, 2016, a group of freshly minted and enthusiast ASU editors (students, staff and faculty) participated in the inaugural “Wikipedia edit-a-thon for Women in Science and Engineering.” The event started with a short...

TeachT@lk is streamed live at 3pm AZ time  every first Tuesday of the month .  Come and join us at:  http://connect.asu.edu/teachtalk ! Students are actively engaged at ASU! Active Learning, in which students engage with content through " reading, writing, talking, listening, and reflecting " (Center for Educational Innovation, UMN), has shown to lead to higher learning outcomes and levels of engagement. Think-Pair-Share is one popular Active Learning technique that can be applied across multiple subjects and levels. But are there additional methods to foster Active Learning? In our latest  TeachT@lk Webinar  (April 5), we highlighted several useful Active Learning techniques that go beyond the tradition Think-Pair-Share . We discussed the implementation of activities, such as Fishbowl, Cases, Jigsaw, or Muddiest Point, and presented possible ways for face-to-face and online classes. If you missed this engaging conversation, please take a moment to r...