Teaching and learning

Forget constructive alignment and instructional scaffolding, things like saying ‘hello’ and being encouraging are the real key to good, inclusive lectures, says Andy Grayson

Block teaching has been around since the mid-noughties, but those short-lived early trials were ahead of the curve. Simon Thomson and Carl Flattery explore why block planning might finally be having its day

Why should higher education institutions in emerging countries invest in social media rather than flashy marketing campaigns to develop brand credibility and brand equity? Charitha Harshani Perera, Rajkishore Nayak, and Long Thang Van Nguyen explain

Shorter, more immersive units are helping raise attainment and success for students with complex and diverse needs

Conflating ‘interesting’ with ‘entertaining’ and getting caught in a never-ending loop of shinier and shinier edutainment should be shunned in favour of cultivating sustained interest

Using gamification in the classroom can work wonders for engagement, but does it come at too great a cost to deep thinking, asks Frederik van Dam

Workshops that train pre-university students in open-source electronics and programming platform Arduino can broaden access to and knowledge of readily available technology. Here‘s a guide for how to design them

How to promote consistency of processes and expectations among university course designers and external edtech providers, explained by Rae Mancilla and Nadine Hamman in the third part of a series looking at strategies for successful learning design partnerships

Are you struggling to motivate students in your online class? Angeles Carolina Aguirre-Acosta provides strategies to generate greater motivation and participation

Falling class attendance and shorter student attention spans present challenges for university teachers. Sandi Mann offers advice for tackling the boredom conundrum