Derek Bruff

More thoughts inspired by Clay Shirky’s new book, Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age… In Chapter 4 (“Opportunity”) Shirky describes some of the research on the Ultimatum Game. This simple game involves two players, a “proposer” and a “responder.”  The proposer is given some amount of money, say, 10 dollars. She decided [...]

Back in June (which feels so very long ago), I did a series of posts on applications to teaching from Dan Roam’s book, The Back of the Napkin. I’ve got at least one more post about Roam’s book in me, and this one deals with the differences between novices and experts. In Chapter 5 of [...]

Last week I facilitated a faculty workshop titled “Assessment of Student Learning: Grading Effectively and Efficiently,” just in time for the start of classes. Below are my slides from the workshop, and if you head over to the Vanderbilt Center for Teaching blog, you can find a few thoughts from participants about the challenges of [...]

Here’s the next installment in my series (parts one, two, three, and four) on Clay Shirky’s new book, Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age. In Chapter 4 (“Opportunity”), Shirky discusses the fundamental attribution error, “the desire to attribute people’s behavior to innate character rather than to local context,” in the context of [...]

Here’s the next installment in my series (parts one, two, and three) on Clay Shirky’s new book, Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age. In Chapter 2, Shirky described the means by which people are now able to pool their cognitive surplus for the greater good. In Chapter 3, Shirky described various motivations [...]

Earlier this week, I gave a virtual presentation at the Muskegon Community College Math and Technology Workshop organized by Maria Andersen. The participants were all math instructors spending the week at MCC learning from Maria and others about various uses for educational technology in math instruction. I’ve blogged often about teaching math with clickers here, [...]

I recently put together a workshop on using visual thinking techniques in the classroom for a group of graduate students at my teaching center. Here’s a brief outline of the talk: Presenting Visually Complement, don’t clutter. Use metaphors. Show relationships and patterns. Interacting Visually Ask students to select images. Ask students to create images. Capture [...]

Back in May 2010, I led a webinar on teaching with clickers as part of the CIRTLcast series for the Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning (CIRTL), an NSF-sponsored network of six universities interested in preparing future science, engineering, and mathematics faculty. The full webinar was 60 minutes, and you can access [...]

There’s a lively discussion happening on the POD Network listserv this week on teaching large classes. The discussion detoured into a discussion of teaching with clickers. In responding to one of these posts, Louis Schmier wrote: “Well, Ron, clickers might get feedback and active and collaborative involvement, but learning? Technology is a tool, not a [...]

More thoughts on Clay Shirky’s new book, Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age… As I mentioned the last time, Shirky discusses in Chapter 2 the means by which people are now able to pool their cognitive surplus for the greater good. In Chapter 3, he focuses on what motivates people to contribute [...]