Category: Electrifying Lives (Blog)

Curiosity Killed the Cat

Posted on by Racheida Lewis
But it never killed our educational system. In fact, curiosity is what probably inspired so many of the great things we have today. At some point in time the greatest inventors, scientists, artists, etc. felt compelled to ask the question "what if?". The question, that when answered, led them down the rabbit hole into our current history books. When thinking about a "learner centered classroom" you have to design your course keeping in mind, wait for it: THE LEARNERS. Revolutionary isn't it? But as simple as it may sound, things are always easier said than done. So how do we go...Read More

Beyond the Imagination

Posted on by Racheida Lewis
As technology continues to advance, I believe education is constantly trying to think about how to be more engaging as "multitasking" becomes more of a thing amongst students. There are so many distractions in this world as opposed to 50 years ago. But like anything that has ever become worth talking about, education must become viral. But going viral isn't easy. Different things engage different people and when the ultimate goal is to get a few learning outcomes across, things can get messy. However, we can't sit around and expect students to just read the textbook or review the powerpoint...Read More

The Podium Is Your Stage

Posted on by Racheida Lewis
Or maybe you're in one of those large lecture halls where you legitimately have a stage to teach on. And your students - they're your audience. The people that you have to please through accurate and useful teaching. One thing that Sarah Deel and I both have in common was being assigned to teach the first semester of graduate school and thinking "So um how does this work exactly?" I remember as I prepared for my first class at 9:30am in Randolph 212 I was nervous. What if I don't find a parking space in time and show up late?...Read More

I Am Only Teaching If You Are Actually Learning

Posted on by Racheida Lewis
The whole point of education is to get people to learn - Ken Robinson It seems that there's a general perception that educators (of any level) do nothing more than merely stand at the front of the classroom writing on the board and grading papers. It is unfortunate that teaching is one profession that doesn't get nearly as much respect as it deserves, yet there's so much focus on the level of mastery students should leave school with. How can we expect students to achieve a certain level of mastery when teachers seem to be diminished to the stereotypes previously stated?  ...Read More

Metacognitively Speaking

Posted on by Racheida Lewis
In engineering education there is always a conversation about getting students to partake in metacognition i.e. thinking about thinking. There's studies out in the universe that shows that having students self reflect and evaluate their own learning lends to better retention of the information given to them. But how does one go about doing so? Growing up I'm sure most people had a journal at one point - either personally or for academic reasonings. My question is: why'd we stop keeping them? As the world migrated to the digital age, some people that I knew who were avid journalers migrated...Read More