Three weekly tidbits from the Center for Teaching & Learning plus upcoming events.
Teacher Confirmation Theory (Ellis, 2000) explains how instructor behaviors communicate to students that they are valued, respected, and capable of learning. These confirming behaviors reduce psychological distance, increase motivation, and improve affective and cognitive learning outcomes. The theory identifies four core dimensions: willingness to engage, recognition, acknowledgment, and endorsement.
Color contrast is critical in your digital content because it ensures people with low vision, color blindness (approximately 1 in 12 men), or situational impairments (like screen glare) can easily read text on the screen. Ideally, the ratio between the text color and the background color should be 4.5 to 1, but what does that mean and how do you know whether you are using the right colors?
This study investigated a hybrid assessment format called Multiple-Choice with Elaboration Questions (MCEQs). In these questions, students not only select a multiple-choice answer but also must justify their choice in writing. The research was conducted across four sections of an upper-division psychology research methods course at a large public university.
Faculty feedback is an essential component of the learning process. Research suggests that the modality of the feedback is most effective when aligned to the task type and learner needs.
Creating spaces where all students feel empowered to discuss tough topics openly and respectfully can be difficult. The Conversation Café provides a practical way to foster equitable dialogue by guiding students through structured rounds of sharing and listening in small groups. This free resource from OneHE shows you how to set this up in your own classroom.
This paper argues that students’ frequent use of ineffective learning strategies (like rereading and highlighting) isn’t just due to lack of awareness, time pressure, or goals — it may also reflect habitual behavior. Traditional research on self-regulated learning emphasizes deliberate choice and metacognition, but this article suggests that many study practices have become automatic routines triggered by environmental cues. Ineffective strategies often become habituated because they are easy, familiar, and contextually ingrained.
When students are provided with practice or application assignments after learning new content, they often use incorrect strategies because they do not fully understand the underlying concepts. You can prevent this ineffective struggle by providing students with worked examples when introducing a new skill or process.
How many browser tabs do you have open on a given day? Do you find yourself keeping them open and just putting your computer to sleep at the end of the day because you need to go back to those sites? Or maybe all of those open tabs are slowing down your computer.
Fiorella and Mayer argue that learning is generative—students learn best when they actively make sense of new information by selecting, organizing, and integrating it with prior knowledge. They synthesize research identifying eight evidence-based strategies that consistently promote deeper understanding and transfer across contexts. These strategies shift learners from passive reception to active sense-making.
It’s important to identify missing students as soon as possible in the beginning of the semester and to encourage those who have not yet engaged. A simple way to do this is to create a small assignment in Brightspace that all students should submit to by the end of the first or second week of class. After the due date, click on the name of the assignment in Brightspace, and then click Email Users Without Submissions. This will open a new email draft window with the students who have not submitted the assignment in the BCC field. Send a quick message to remind them about the assignment and to let you know if they are having issues with the course.