Category: Education Article

To Implement the Four Corners Strategy in your classroom:

1. Prepare a question with four possible correct answer choices that align with the lesson content or the goal of the check for understanding activity. Attempt to design your questions so that they can elicit an open-ended response, and where more than one answer choice could be correct, depending on the justification and rationale provided by the student.
2. Display the question on the projector screen or read the question aloud.
3. Inform students of four locations in the classroom, one that represents each answer choice. Students should move to the location in the room that represents their choice.
4. Encourage 100% participation and remind students to make their own choice and not be dependent on what other students choose.
5. Choose at least one student from each answer choice to defend their answer verbally, or allow groups to discuss the reason for their choice.
6. When

This Top 20 LMS list has been created using a holistic approach and is based on input from actual LMS users. The order of appearance depends on Customer Satisfaction (CSAT Score), Customer Effort (CEF Score) & Customer Expectation (CEX Score). You can also find LMS Customer Experience Resources that will help you choose the right software.

This Top 20 LMS list has been planned following a holistic approach based on input from actual users who were willing to share their experience with the LMS. Only reviews that were posted in the last 24 months were considered during the evaluation process. The reviews have been verified one by one by eLearning Industry. The order of appearance is a function of the following metrics:

Customer Satisfaction (CSAT Score): measures the degree of customer happiness with a particular product, service, or interaction.

Customer Effort (CEF Score): quantifies the amount of effort required to

Cooperative Writing

During Cooperative Writing, one specific strategy involves the teacher assigning writing tasks to two students, and they take turns completing a writing task. The teacher may often provide some specific instructions like

“Discuss in pairs _____ and then take turns responding to the prompt___.”

Students then take turns to record their writing, building on each other’s sentences or paragraphs. They can also use this time to check each other’s work.

Pairing students during cooperative writing can serve many purposes:

• Struggling students paired with higher performing students can provide an avenue for the struggling student to learn proper grammar and vocabulary usage. In contrast, the higher performing student can practice reviewing writing rules with his or her peer.
• Two higher performing students can challenge each other to include additional details, more complex vocabulary, or a more refined sentence structure.
• Two lower performing students, with the help of the teacher,

Are there parts of your course you wish could be taught more effectively?
Would you like to prepare students for learning material with which they tend to struggle?
Do you want to help students transition effectively from one learning activity to another?

Priming your students will provide solutions to these questions. Read on for three useful ways to improve student learning.

Priming

Priming is a strategy that introduces a new topic to students in a way that facilitates their academic learning because they know what they can expect. Priming prepares students for upcoming information or a learning activity before they receive the information or participate in the activity in a course. Priming exposes students to new material in a way that influences their learning behavior later, without them necessarily being aware.

According to cognitive psychology, priming is a process in which we use a mental framework (or schema) to organize

This article first appeared in the Teaching Professor on September 26, 2016. © Magna Publications. All rights reserved.

Editor’s note: There are two articles in this issue on rubrics. First, Raz Kerwin shares how he engages students (via Google Docs) in the creation of assignment rubrics, while Perry Shaw’s piece focuses on how faculty can improve their use of rubrics. Both articles reflect the growing interest in and use of these more elaborate delineations of grading criteria.

Wide consensus confirms the usefulness of rubrics. For instructors, rubrics expedite grading with standards; at the same time, they reinforce learning objectives and standardize course curricula. For students, rubrics provide formative guidelines for assignments while—ideally—spurring reflection and self-assessment.

Rubrics can do these wonderful things for students only if students actually look at, understand, and use them. Many of us have seen students do just the opposite—file them away or, even worse, toss them