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Recent Posts

How can I get all students to contribute to group work?

  • Mar. 23, 2023

A Dear Aggie reader has heard a lot of buzz about growth mindsets and wanted to learn more about them, and whether it is possible to help students develop a growth mindset.

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What is a growth mindset?

  • Mar. 09, 2023

A Dear Aggie reader has heard a lot of buzz about growth mindsets and wanted to learn more about them, and whether it is possible to help students develop a growth mindset.

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How can I help my students really master the material?

  • Feb. 23, 2023

As a follow-up to the Feb. 9 post about avoiding cramming, Aggie offers another suggestion for helping students really master the material. Interleaving is an approach that promotes problem-solving skills, long-term retention and transfer of skills and knowledge to new situations.

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How can I convince my students not to cram?

  • Feb. 09, 2023

While many students can pass exams by cramming hard the night before, cramming does not support long-term learning. There are things that you and your students can do to support long-term learning, including more testing (!). Aggie provides several suggestions for students and your course design.

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How can I establish an instructor presence, especially online?

  • Jan. 26, 2023

In the age of AI bots (we've all heard of ChatGPT by now), how can I make sure that my online students know that I am a real person? What can I do to make myself seem more present with my online courses? Aggie offers some ideas to establish your instructor presence.

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Is learning my students' names important in college?

  • Jan. 12, 2023

Have you ever wondered if it is important to learn your students’ names? And if you have a large class, have you wondered how you can do that? Aggie discusses some research around using students’ names and provides some tips for learning their names.

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Where can I find support for course design and redesign?

  • Dec. 01, 2022

I have to design or redesign a course and don’t know where to start or what changes to make. It always seems to take so long. Where do I even begin?

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Why should my assessments align with my course learning objectives?

  • Nov. 10, 2022

Assessing student learning is the second step in backward design. Dear Aggie's guest columnist, Chadrhyn Pedraza, builds on her previous post about learning objectives by discussing the importance of aligning assessments with your course learning objectives.

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Why do I need learning objectives?

  • Oct. 27, 2022

Learning objectives may feel like one thing too many when developing your course. However, they can be really useful to both you and your students. Our Dear Aggie guest columnist, Chadrhyn Pedraza, offers some great information about learning objectives in this week’s column.

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How do I choose a course delivery format?

  • Oct. 13, 2022

There are so many course delivery formats (e.g., flipped, blended, hybrid). Dear Aggie describes some of these, and why they may (or may not) be right for you and your students.

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If you have a teaching question for Dear Aggie, please e-mail her at dearaggie@nmsu.edu