The mystery of Room 47: Making growth make sense
I just got back from giving a workshop and author talk at a school in upstate New York that I absolutely love. It was a return visit; they had brought […]
Three good questions
I’ve been working on a couple of different proposals and projects focused on course redesign – either asking faculty for ideas, or offering up ideas of our own, for improving […]
A postscript on faculty dynamics and why things don’t change
I came back last week from an event put on by the John N. Gardner organization, a three-day conference on promoting student success in gateway courses. I go to a fair number […]
Why won’t my faculty listen? Risks and rewards of change
Recently I did something I haven’t for many years: sat in as a student in a face-to-face course. What got me back on that side of the seminar table was […]
Should learning analytics be like email? Teaching routines and why we need small analytics
Ed tech insiders are probably used to articles rife with warnings, concerns and other worries, especially around the issue of commercialization. But the piece on learning analytics from this week’s Chronicle […]
On the amazing longevity of the learning styles notion, and what cognitive science has to say about it
I had a conversation the other day with NAU colleague Larry Gallagher that inspired me to return to something I’d been thinking and writing about a while back: the astonishing persistence […]
NAU Commencement Address 2015: Lifelong learning, and an alternate idea
Last semester, I had the opportunity to do something completely new to me: give the address at NAU’s fall commencement ceremony. A whopping amount of work (mine as well as […]
Baby steps toward better endings: Ringing out the semester with grace
When I write about classroom atmosphere, it’s usually about ways to open the semester strong: setting high standards and an expectation that the class will be challenging, getting feedback out […]
Student effort: Taboo, a third rail, or something we need to be talking about?
I work in public higher education, where cost-quality tradeoffs have become a more-or-less permanent feature of the landscape. Granted, the financial pressures within higher ed are nowhere near the ever-worsening […]
Building faculty buy-in: Lessons learned and some useful rules
If you are going to have an impact on teaching and learning beyond your own classes and your own students, you need to have the support of fellow faculty. If […]
Fun with infographics: A memory tip sheet for my students
I’m far more of a word person than a picture person, but even I get a charge out of the occasional graphic. I’ve been playing around with Piktochart lately after seeing some […]
How did we get here? And what’s next?
Do you remember the days of earnestly debating whether online learning was possible? When posting slides or using clickers made you an ed tech whiz, a lone innovator exploring the frontiers […]
Welcome to the Minds-Online blog!
Welcome to the Minds-online.com blog! I’m Michelle Miller, a professor at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, Arizona, where I also direct the First Year Learning Initiative. I teach and do […]