Active Learning: A model of instruction that encourages meaningful learning and knowledge construction through collaborative activities that support thinking and doing; “hands-on, minds-on teaching”.
Argumentation: Here, argumentation does not refer to a negative form of communication filled with conflict, anger, and division. Rather, argumentation refers to the fortification of a learning community and enabling collective action. Argumentation involves positing arguments, such as sharing a perspective on an ethical issue, and then persuading others of the argument by providing evidence, information, data, and reasons as to why the argument is sound.
Assessment: Tools or methods used to evaluate, measure, and document the outcomes of instruction; may be formative (low stakes, in-course) or summative (high stakes, end-of-course).
Attribution Theory: What we think causes our success or failures.
Augmented Reality: An interactive computer-enhanced depiction of real-world objects or events which may include pictures, sounds, or texts; superimposing or overlaying real objects with digital information.
Behaviorism: Theory that all behaviors are acquired through conditioning; as a response to a stimulus.
Clicker: A hand-held device or a mobile application used by students to respond to questions posed by an instructor; responses are recorded and tallied by a combination of software and hardware to display visual feedback.
Collaborative Learning: A generic umbrella term to describe any of several instructional approaches in which small groups of students work together to solve a problem, complete a task, or create a product.
Concept Mapping: A technique for creating two-dimensional, hierarchical, node-link diagrams depicting the most important concepts and relationships in a knowledge domain.
Constructivism: An epistemological position based on the idea that learning is a product of “mental construction”; learners construct their own understanding by relating new knowledge with what they already know.
Cooperative Learning: A form of collaborative learning in which teams are composed of students of heterogeneous ability; an instructor typically assigns a structured activity, and individuals are accountable for their own work and that of the group.
CURE (Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences): Laboratory-based investigations that engage a whole class of students in addressing a research question of interest to the scientific community through asking and answering scientific questions, analyzing relevant data, and making and defending arguments.
Elaboration Theory: Content should be ordered from simple to complex.
Engagement: The extent to which students express interest, curiosity, attention, and/or passion when involved in a learning episode.
Error Discovery Learning: An inquiry-based Web-based active learning method that engages students in solving fast challenge problems through their own thinking and then assessing competing conceptual arguments and identifying specific conceptual errors.
Evidence-Based Practices: Instructional practices that are guided by research findings as opposed to intuition, unsubstantiated beliefs, common experience, or personal preference.
Flipped Instruction: An instructional strategy that reverses the traditional classroom environment by introducing concepts outside of the classroom in the form of readings, videos, and/or computer-enhanced methods and moving traditional homework into the classroom often engaging collaborative activities.
Formative Assessment: Encompassing all those activities undertaken by instructors and/or by their students, which provide information to be used as feedback to modify the teaching and learning activities in which they are engaged.
Gamification: An instructional approach that seeks to motivate students by using video game design and game elements in learning environments with the goal to engage learners by capturing their interest and inspiring them to continue learning.
Growth Mindset: The belief that intelligence is malleable.
Interleaving: Mixing up topics to be learned.
Meaningful vs. Rote Learning: In meaningful learning, new concepts are linked to existing concepts in the learner’s knowledge structure, whereas in rote learning, new concepts are stored in a verbatim, non-substantive, and arbitrary way in cognitive structure; understanding vs. memorizing.
Metacognition: Awareness and understanding of one’s own thinking or learning processes; executive control; thinking about thinking, learning about learning.
Online Learning: Instruction that is mediated by the Internet; interactions between students and instructor may be synchronous (live) or asynchronous (recorded) and may be enhanced with a wide range of instructional materials.
Peer-Led Team Learning: A complement to the lecture and an alternative to the traditional recitation section, replacing it with a team of students who collaborate to develop their problem-solving skills and conceptual understanding by working on faculty-developed exercises and featuring an undergraduate leader who is strategically trained for his or her role.
Problem-Based Learning: An instructional strategy in which small teams of students attempt to understand a messy, real-life, authentic problem, activating prior knowledge, generating and testing hypotheses, defining learning objectives, researching necessary information or data, finding solutions, reporting, and reflecting on their own learning.
Project-Based Learning: Like problem-based learning but students working as a team are given a “driving question” to answer and are then directed to create an artifact to present their knowledge. Artifacts may include a variety of media such as writings, art, drawings, three-dimensional representations, videos, photography, or technology-based presentations.
Reflective Writing: A metacognitive strategy in which students consciously think about and analyze a concept and record the changes in their thinking about it. It may involve critically evaluating an experience and linking it with what has been learned from coursework.
Resistance: Refusal to accept or comply with a novel instructional approach; opposition or aversion to the instructor’s efforts.
Retrieval Practice: A learning strategy that brings already-learned things to mind, boosting learning.
Scaffolding: Guided support is given to learners which is systematically removed as they learn.
Self-awareness: The ability of a learner to assess their own strengths and limitations.
Self-efficacy: Beliefs about one’s ability to perform a task or engage in a process; self-confidence.
Self-regulation: Ability to manage one’s own emotions and behavior. Self-regulated learning strategies may include such methods as organizing and transforming information, self-consequating (i.e. choosing one’s own rewards and penalties based on one’s performance), seeking information, and rehearsing or using memory aids.
Situated Learning: Learning should be situated in the real world. In situated learning, knowing cannot be separated from doing because all knowledge is situated in activities that are bound to social, cultural, and physical contexts.
Social Constructivism Theory: This theory (proposed by Vygotsky) suggests that the socio-cultural context of learning matters, and that interacting with peers and instructors with differential knowledge helps the learner to form concepts and mental models of the world.
Social Learning Theory: We learn by observing others.
Social Media: Types of Internet-based communication in which the users create online communities to share information, ideas, personal messages, and other content; examples are Facebook, Twitter, and blogs.
Spiral curriculum: Revisiting content with increasing complexity each time.
Studio Classrooms: Flexible learning spaces that replace conventional lecture halls and teaching laboratories that are equipped with multiple projection screens, whiteboards, one or more overhead projectors, round tables that seat small groups of student collaborators, and technology and scientific equipment available for student use.
Systems Analysis: This involves understanding the relationships among variables in a system, or dynamic sets of interlocking parts.
Team-Based Learning: A structured system of collaborative engagement characterized by individual pre-work, readiness testing, clarification sessions, application exercises, and peer evaluation.
3D Printing: The process of making a physical object from a three-dimensional digital model, typically by laying down many thin layers of a material in succession.
Video Vignettes: Web-based assignments that combine online video with video analysis and interactivity, each addressing a known learning difficulty informed by discipline-based education research; invites students to make predictions, perform observations, and draw conclusions about a single phenomenon.
Virtual Learning: Enhancements that offer Web-based presentation of resources, activities, and interactions within a course structure and provide for different stages of assessment and/or report on participation; may have some integration with other instructional components.
Wicked Problems: These are problems that require information, expertise, skills, and experiences that are beyond anyone individual’s capabilities. Solutions need to be community-minded, evolving, and dynamic, such as long-term solutions to climate change.
Zone of Proximal Development: Theory proposed by Vygotsky which expounds the difference between what the learner can do without guidance and what they can do with guidance.