Archives for February 2020

Cognitive strategies are pedagogical ways that enable learners to manage their own learning. They mediate the transition from teaching to student learning. Instructors and students acquire cognitive strategies from their experience and schooling—for better or worse. Many instructors settle on those strategies that "work," or seem to. This is ...

As a teacher trained in textual analysis and the religious practices of living human communities, the language of images, videos, and recorded sound are not my mother tongue. Yet, I know that for my students, communicating in an era where these visual forms of communication are the lingua franca of ...

In the first blog of this series (“Nobody Goes to the Cinema to Read the Screenplay"), I noted that I’ve tried to boost my multimedia literacy by becoming a student of the cinema and seeking convergences between filmmaking and homiletics for the purposes of enlivening the preached word, communicating ...

One of the most common pedagogical errors I see in course syllabi is confusing a learning activity for a learning outcome. This often becomes evident when reviewing course learning objectives. A professor will write a course objective that reads "The student will participate in class discussions." Or, "The student will ...

In 2015 my wife, Dr. Vanessa Watkins, took a trip with National Geographic to Cuba led by one of their photographers. One of the things I love about National Geographic trips is that the tour leader lectures in the hotel prior to going out to engage the culture. This leader lectured, ...