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A series of instructional web pages for instructors and teaching teams about using AI tools for teaching and learning.

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Created by Laura Schmidli with Molly Harris, Alison Caffrey, Antonella Caloro, Jonathan Klein, Luis Loya, David Macasaet, Erika Schock, and Parker Story. Published January 5, 2023. Updated December 8, 2023.

In late 2022, ChatGPT made headlines. This and other generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools have many in higher education discussing AI's potential threat to our work and purpose. To read more from late 2022 and early 2023, see References and Further Reading.

Like with any new technology, one approach instructors can take in the classroom is to transparently make use of it. This allows you to move beyond stress over whether or not students are using GenAI, and instead have a voice in when, why, and how you and your class use it. You can even invite students to consider and explore AI with you (Tufekci, 2022). Although this approach may not work or be right for all instructors and courses, this strategy has the advantages of encouraging student participation in a larger societal question and helping students to develop their own ethical grounding and practical understanding of academic integrity related to AI.

Check out our 2024 Article!

In Revise Assignments in Response to Generative AI, we consider generative AI and assignments, using research literature and instructor and student perspectives. How are student and instructor perspectives on generative AI shaping classroom activities and vice-versa? What adaptations to assignments have been successful for instructors and students in L&S? Read the new article to learn more and consider applications in your classroom.

Steps to Consider

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Share Your Ideas for Using AI

We'd love to add your knowledge to this guide. What plans, ideas, questions, or concerns do you have for using AI in your classroom?
Share Your Idea

Ask 20 Questions of AI: In small groups, students collaborate to write 20 questions for a text-generating AI about how it works. In a larger group, they consider what the AI's responses mean for academic integrity, authority, validity, trust, or other important ideas in your course.

Analyze AI Perspectives: The instructor asks the text-generating AI to respond to a prompt as a specific person - e.g., a historical figure. Students then critique the AI's response, drawing on their interpretation of the person's perspective.

Predict Where AI Excels: Individually students construct one question or prompt on a specific topic that they think text-generating AI can respond to successfully, and another prompt or question they think AI responds to unsuccessfully. In a larger group, students share their work to identify characteristics of prompts to which AI struggles to respond. For a related lesson outline, see Critical Analysis Across AI Tools & Stereoptypes from the AI Pedagogy Project at Harvard's metaLAB.

Compare Exam Questions: Individually students write one multiple choice exam question and ask text-generating AI to write a second. In a larger group, students analyze which submitted questions are AI-written, which are human-written, and evaluate which provide a better assessment of learning.

Evaluate AI Output: The instructor uses AI to generate work, like a thesis, short analytical paper, theater dialogue, computer code, image, or even musical composition. In groups students analyze the sample work created by AI, with particular attention to evidence, sources, perceived bias, or other important elements for your course. Students can then revise it for improvement in groups, and share back revisions for comparison. For an example lesson outline, see Correct a Bad Essay from the AI Pedagogy Project at Harvard's metaLAB.

Rubric Calibration with AI Writing: The instructor uses AI to generate an essay, thesis, or other written work. Groups then use a rubric to evaluate the AI's work, and suggest changes or improvement to the rubric. This can help students think about how they define high-quality work, and how a rubric might help identify AI-generated work.

Planning and Evaluating AI Use: Students create a plan for using AI within a specific assignment, like a scaffolded research paper, where they articulate for which steps it is valuable and appropriate to use AI, and when original thought and creativity are needed and why. This activity works best when sequenced with other activities that explore AI capabilities.

AI Drafting Process: Students use AI to generate a draft of a simple writing assignment. Students then analyze the AI's writing, focusing on accuracy, bias, or other characteristics important in your course. You may also ask students to improve the AI's draft to complete a second draft.

AI Feedback: Students ask AI to evaluate an initial draft of a short writing assignment, asking AI to focus on a specific element. Students then incorporate any valuable feedback into their work, and share their revisions with a small group. This can help students get another perspective on writing quickly, while encouraging them to consider that feedback critically.

AI Thesis Revision: Students use AI to quickly generate thesis statements on a variety of topics. Individually students revise these statements and share two that are strongest to a group for feedback, including what prompts they provided the AI and what revisions they made to each statement. Students use AI to "get started" by quickly generating ideas, and then leverage their own skills to refine and improve.

Writing with Images: Students or instructors use image-generating AI as part of a reflective writing, freewriting, or creative writing process in any language. Students can use AI to quickly visualize descriptions from their writing, or students or instructors can use AI to generate images that prompt elaboration in writing. For an example lesson outline for generating images, see AI Image Remixing from the AI Pedagogy Project at Harvard's metaLAB.

Co-create Class Expectations: Students collaborate to suggest "ground rules" for using AI within a specific course or assignment. As a class, consider specific tasks where AI is helpful, tasks where AI is unhelpful, when students and instructors think using AI is cheating, and if and how students should cite AI in their work. Ultimately the class will produce documented expectations with the instructor for using AI. For an example lesson outline related to co-creating and discussing expectations, see Debating the Ethics of Generative AI from the AI Pedagogy Project at Harvard's metaLAB.

Structure an AI Discussion: Based on the "structured academic controversy" model, students are assigned a stance related to using AI in the classroom. Groups collaborate to develop arguments for one perspective and take turns presenting while the other team listens actively and then summarizes the arguments they heard. Individually or in a large group, students then reflect on what they learned, how their personal stance may differ from the stance they were assigned, and whether or not their personal position has changed.

Make Instructor Expectations Clear: Whatever your aims for using (or prohibiting) the use of AI within your classroom, make your expectations clear to students at the semester's start. This may include adding a statement to your existing academic integrity statement, and reviewing expectations with students in class. Students should also have the option to not use any tool that requires personal information shared with a third party not contracted by the University.

Additional Resources

Connect with Help

We are happy to connect with instructors about using AI in your classroom, designing assignments, or brainstorming solutions for your course. Meetings typically last 45 minutes and take place virtually. We listen carefully to understand your needs and recommend actionable next steps.
Request a Meeting

Generative AI Research Guide

Created for a student audience by UW-Madison Science and Engineering Librarians, this Research Guide provides an overview of how these tools work and considerations when using them in course work, including tips for citing these tools.

Example Assignments and Lesson Outlines

The metaLAB at Harvard is curating assignments that integrate AI tools, contributed by instructors from around the world.

AI & Academic Misconduct

We recognize that the advancement of AI creates concern about academic integrity enforcement. While the focus of this guide is different, the following resources may be helpful for students and instructors.

Guidance for Writing

UW-Madison's Writing Across the Curriculum staff have collaborated to draft guidance for instructors on supporting student writing practices in an age of AI, which will evolve as campus guidance and policy changes.

References & Further Reading

Barbaro, M., et al. (2022, December 16). Did Artificial Intelligence Just Get Too Smart? The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/16/podcasts/the-daily/chatgpt-openai-artificial-intelligence.html

ChatGPT. (2023). In Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=ChatGPT&oldid=1132927055

Jolles, Ward. (2023, January 4). New AI technology writes essays for you-And UW-Madison students are using it. Retrieved January 5, 2023, from https://www.wkow.com/news/new-ai-technology-writes-essays-for-you-and-uw-madison-students-are-using-it/article_4b051b8a-8ca2-11ed-8d15-3b4d9fa4403b.html

Marche, S. (2022, December 6). The College Essay Is Dead. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2022/12/chatgpt-ai-writing-college-student-essays/672371/

Roose, K., Newton, C., Land, D., Szuchman, P., Powell, D., Ittoop, E., Niemisto, R., & Moxley, A. (2022, December 9). Can ChatGPT Make This Podcast? The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/09/podcasts/can-chatgpt-make-this-podcast.html

Thunström, A. O. (2022, June 10). We Asked GPT-3 to Write an Academic Paper about Itself;Then We Tried to Get It Published. Scientific American. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/we-asked-gpt-3-to-write-an-academic-paper-about-itself-mdash-then-we-tried-to-get-it-published/

Tufekci, Z. (2022, December 15). Opinion | What Would Plato Say About ChatGPT? The New York Times. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/15/opinion/chatgpt-education-ai-technology.html

USING AI TO WRITE ESSAYS ISN'T CHEATING, STUDENT SAYS. (2022, May 16). Retrieved November 13, 2022, from https://www.canta.co.nz/canta/newsarticle/115524?newsfeedid=1453013

Warner, J. (2022, December 11). ChatGPT Can't Kill Anything Worth Preserving. The Biblioracle Recommends. Retrieved January 3, 2023, from https://biblioracle.substack.com/p/chatgpt-cant-kill-anything-worth

Wolfram, S. (2023, January 9). Wolfram|Alpha as the Way to Bring Computational Knowledge Superpowers to ChatGPT. Retrieved January 20, 2023, from https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2023/01/wolframalpha-as-the-way-to-bring-computational-knowledge-superpowers-to-chatgpt/

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Dorothea Salo, Dave Bloom and other UW Libraries staff, several anonymous commenters, and IDC team members for crowdsourcing and discussing these ideas.

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Considerations for Using AI in the Classroom

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How can ChatGPT and other AI tools be used in the classroom? Consider and contribute ways to engage students with issues around academic use of AI applied within your course and discipline.

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Universal Design for Learning in Postsecondary Education: Reflections on Principles and their Application

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Universal Design for Learning in Postsecondary Education: Reflections on Principles and their Application

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David H Rose

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The practice of using single point rubrics is slowly but surely catching on. The simplicity of these rubrics - with just a single column of criteria, rather than a full menu of performance levels - offers a whole host of benefits:

Teachers find them easier and faster to create, because they no longer have to spend precious time thinking up all the different ways students could fail to meet expectations.

Students find them easier to read when preparing an assignment. With only the target expectations to focus on, they are more likely to read those expectations.

They allow for higher-quality feedback, because teachers must specify key problem areas and notable areas of excellence for that particular student, rather than choosing from a list of generic descriptions.

Want to Learn More?

I first talked about this type of rubric in an earlier post ( Know Your Terms: Holistic, Analytic, and Single-Point Rubrics). If this is the first time you've encountered this type of rubric, reading this will give you some background knowledge on all the different types of rubrics and why the single-point deserves world domination.

To give credit where it's due, I did not come up with the name single point rubric. Although the idea for a simplified rubric with a single set of criteria came to me independently, when I went looking for academic support for its use, I found that the type of rubric I had in mind was given the name "Single Point Rubric" in 2000 during a conference presentation by someone named Mary Dietz. Attending that conference was a researcher named Jarene Fluckiger, who published a study on its effectiveness in 2010. (The reference to Dietz is in Fluckiger's paper, but no one named Dietz has published anything on the topic.)

Show Us Your Rubrics!

I urge you to take one of your most convoluted rubrics and make a single-point version of it. Then show it to the world, so other teachers can learn: Take a screenshot of it and post the picture on Twitter with the hashtag #singlepointrubric. If you aren't on Twitter or don't feel like doing this, just put a link to your rubric in the comments below. Help us start a movement to rid the world of ineffective rubrics!

Another Variation (Added in 2017)

After considering some of the limitations of this format, I played around with the rubric a bit more and came up with this variation:

The original version of the single point rubric allowed no space for actually pointing out when the student hit the standard, apart from maybe circling or highlighting the middle column. With this format, teachers can pinpoint where the student is on each descriptor, then offer feedback, either constructive, positive, or both.

To grab a copy of this for your own modification, click here.

Need Ready-Made Rubrics?

My Rubric Pack gives you four different designs in Microsoft Word and Google Docs formats. It also comes with video tutorials to show you how to customize them for any need, plus a Teacher's Manual to help you understand the pros and cons of each style. Check it out here:

Stick around.
Join my mailing list and never miss another post. You'll get weekly tips, tools, and inspiration - in quick, bite-sized packages - all geared toward making your teaching more effective and joyful. To thank you, I'll send you a free copy of my new e-booklet, 20 Ways to Cut Your Grading Time in Half. I look forward to getting to know you better!

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The practice of using single point rubrics is slowly but surely catching on. The simplicity of these rubrics - with just a single column of criteria, rather than a full menu of performance levels - offers a whole host of benefits: Teachers find them easier and faster to create, because they no longer have to spend precious time thinking up all the different ways students could fail to meet expectations.

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Uri at first asked the other mathematics faculty what they thought the reason was. They came up with a range of reasons: perhaps African American students came into the university with lower math scores or an insufficient mathematical background; perhaps they were from less wealthy homes. None of these suggested reasons were correct. What Uri found, through studying the students at work, was that there was one difference-the African American students worked on math problems by themselves, whereas the Chinese American students worked collaboratively. The Chinese American students worked on their assigned math problems in their dormitories and in the dining halls, thinking about them together. By contrast the African American students worked alone in their dormitory rooms and when they struggled on problems, they decided they were just not "math people" and gave up.

Uri and his team set up workshops for the more vulnerable students, including students of color. They created what Uri describes as a "challenging yet emotionally supportive academic environment." In the workshops students worked on math problems together, considering together what it would take to achieve at the highest levels on different problems. The academic improvement that resulted from the workshops was significant. Within two years, the failure rate of African American students had dropped to zero, and the African American and Latino students who attended the workshops were outperforming their white and Asian classmates. This was an impressive result, and Uri has continued this approach at Austin. His approach has now been used in over two hundred different institutions of higher education. In writing about the experience, Uri says:
We were able to convince the students in our orientation that success in college would require them to work with their peers, to create for themselves a community based on shared intellectual interests and common professional aims. How‐ ever, it took some work to teach them how to work together. After that it was really rather elementary pedagogy.
The fact that it took work to teach students how to collaborate with each other after they had spent thirteen years in school speaks to the problems in our school system, where the common pattern is that teachers lecture and students work through problems alone. The team leading the work‐ shops was right to point out that success in college requires working with others and making good connections. Many people know this, but they still see no role for collaboration in learning. When Uri and his team encouraged students to work together, their mathematical learning paths changed and they found success. This success story was about learning calculus in college, but we could substitute any other subject and expect similar results.

Part of the reason students give up on learning is because they find it difficult and think they are alone in their struggle. An important change takes place when students work together and discover that everybody finds some or all of the work difficult. This is a critical moment for students, and one that helps them know that for everyone learning is a process and that obstacles are common.

Another reason that students' learning pathways change is because they receive an opportunity to connect ideas. Connecting with another person's idea both requires and develops a higher level of understanding. When students work together (learning math, science, languages, English- anything), they get opportunities to make connections be‐ tween ideas, which is inherently valuable for them.

A similarly noteworthy finding came from the results of a large‐scale testing program. In 2012, PISA assessments (international tests given to fifteen‐year‐olds worldwide, as mentioned earlier) showed that boys achieved at higher levels than girls in mathematics in thirty‐eight countries.

This result was disappointing and surprising. In the US and in most other countries, the achievement of girls and boys in school is equal. This reminded me again of the ways that tests distort what students actually know and can do.

This was underscored when the PISA team issued a report showing that when anxiety was factored into the analysis, the gap in achievement between girls and boys was fully explained by the lower confidence of girls.What appeared to be a gender difference in mathematics achievement was in reality a difference in mathematics confidence levels. Girls became more anxious when they took the individual math tests, a phenomenon that is well established,and one that should make any educator pause before basing decisions on test performance.

The impact of the different testing conditions as well as the potential of collaboration for reducing inequalities were also shown by another assessment the PISA team conducted. In addition to the usual individual mathematics test, they did an assessment of collaborative problem solving. In this assessment students did not collaborate with other students but with a computer agent. They had to take on the ideas of the agent and connect with and build upon them to collaboratively solve complex problems.This, to me, gauges something much more valuable than what a student produces on an individual math test. Instead of reproducing knowledge individually, students are asked to consider another's ideas and work with them to solve a complex problem. This is also more consistent with the world of work students are being prepared for.

In the test of collaborative problem solving, administered in fifty‐one countries, girls outperformed boys in every country. This notable result was accompanied by two others-there were no significant differences in outcomes between advantaged and disadvantaged students, a rare and important finding. And in some countries diversity boosted performance. The team found that in some countries "non‐ immigrant" students achieved at higher levels when they were in schools with larger numbers of "immigrant" students, a fantastic result, suggesting that diverse communities of learners help students become better collaborators.

The results of the PISA assessment of collaborative problem solving shine a light on the pursuit of equity, revealing also the discriminatory nature of individual testing, something that anyone who gets anxious about high‐stakes testing fully understands. What does it mean that for girls collaboration, even with a computer agent, increases their confidence levels and causes them to achieve at higher levels? Similarly, what does it mean that African American students go from failing calculus to outperforming other, previously more successful, students when they collaborate? This research reveals the potential of collaboration, not only for girls or students of color, but for all learners and thinkers. When you connect with someone else's ideas, you enhance your brain, your understanding, and your perspective.

Neuroscientists also know the importance of collaboration. Research shows that when people collaborate, the medial orbitofrontal cortex and the frontoparietal network are activated, the latter of which aids in the development of executive functions. Neuroscientists refer to these different brain areas as the "social brain." When we collaborate, our brains are charged with the complex task of making sense of another's thinking and learning to interact. Social cognition is the topic of much current neuroscientific investigation.

Collaboration is vital for learning, for college success, for brain development, and for creating equitable outcomes. Beyond all of this, it is beneficial to establish interpersonal connections, especially in times of conflict and need.

Victor and Mildred Goertzel studied seven hundred people who had made huge contributions to society, choosing those who had been the subject of at least two biographies, people such as Marie Curie and Henry Ford. They found, in‐ credibly, that less than 15 percent of the famous men and women had been raised in supportive families; 75 percent had grown up in families with severe problems such as "poverty, abuse, absent parents, alcoholism, serious illness," and other major issues. Their study was conducted in the 1960s. Clinical psychologist Meg Jay, in her interesting Wall Street Journal article on resilience, reports that similar results would be found today and cites Oprah Winfrey, Howard Schultz, and LeBron James as examples of people who grew up in extreme hardship.

Jay has studied resilience over many years and points out that people who survive hardship often do better, but not through "bouncing back," as some think, because the recovery process takes time and is more of a battle than a bounce. She also points out those who ultimately benefit from hardship, becoming stronger and resilient, do so when they maintain self‐belief, when they "own the fighter within," and when they connect with other people. The thing that people who overcome hardship and do not become defeated by it have in common is that in times of need they all reached out to someone-a friend, a family member, or a colleague-and those connections helped them survive and develop strength.

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How Collaboration Unlocks Learning and Lessens Student Isolation | KQED

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Working together helps students know that obstacles are a shared experience and that they're not alone in their struggles. Collaboration also helps deepen connections to learning.

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6 Potential Brain Benefits Of Bilingual Education

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Kids are showing reading gains in dual-language classrooms. There may be underlying brain advantages at work.

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Digital text is changing how we read - just not in the way we think

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Digital text is changing how we read - just not in the way we think

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Digital Text is Changing How Kids Read—Just Not in the Way That You Think | KQED

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Technology is increasing the number of words kids see, but the way they interact with digital text may create challenges to reading deeply.

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"There is that danger of silencing that discourse, to the degree that teachers were using it anyway," Hess said. He acknowledges that too few teachers know how to effectively facilitate academic discussions in classrooms, and that often "turn and talk to a partner" devolves into "turn and gossip." But those issues have always existed in classrooms and aren't the fault of technology. In fact, Hess maintains that to be a good teacher who uses technology, a person must first be a good teacher. Technology won't repair those gaps.
READING ON PAPER VS. READING DIGITALLY
Reading print media is undeniably different from reading digital content. Researchers have been trying to understand how and why people interact differently with the two media and have shown that when students read online they comprehend less. But there isn't enough longitudinal data to know if those deficits can be remediated by learning strategies specific to digital content.

Those who prefer reading in print talk about the ability to flip pages, write in the margins and that they remember a scene based on where it was located on the page. It's more of a linear experience and readers interact with it in specific ways.

In contrast, digital reading takes place on a flat screen and the ability to hyperlink to related content makes the experience feel more like stream of consciousness than like a linear reading experience. It takes more self-control to stay focused when reading digitally, a challenge for many students used to quickly navigating around the Web. "It's an amazing thing, but it also causes a lot of fragmentation," Hess said.

The key to getting kids to read deeply in any format is to have them engage with the text in meaningful ways. In the digital space, that means disrupting a pattern of skipping around, writing short chats and getting lost down the rabbit hole of the internet. It means teaching kids ways to break down a complex text, find key ideas, organize them and defend them. Practicing those skills in class can be time-consuming, but it also builds good digital reading habits that hopefully become second nature.

"The goal in almost all the strategies is to slow the kids down so they are focusing on this text," Hess said. "Number two is to engage them in an active way with the text, and number three you want to encourage oral discourse. And number four you want them to do some reflection." Those steps should sound familiar to teachers because they are important for any kind of reading for comprehension and analysis. The trick for teachers is to learn how to transfer these processes into the digital space and push them even further.
"HEADINGS AND HIGHLIGHT" STRATEGY
Most of Hess' tricks are easy to do in Google Docs, a free tool many schools are adopting because it's easy for students to access their work anywhere. In this strategy, students have an excerpt of a difficult article open in Google Docs. First, the teacher asks students to read through on their own and highlight words they don't know. This is basic decoding work.

After everyone is on the same page with the vocabulary, teachers can ask pairs of students to read a paragraph together and highlight key ideas. As they do this, they'll have to discuss why they believe those parts are important. After they have a few minutes to do this activity, the teacher can ask them to individually devise a four-word heading for that portion of the text based on the main ideas they've highlighted. They can type their heading into the Google Doc and then compare the headings each created.

"If you came up with something different, you have to now justify why yours is better," Hess said. Once again, students have to defend their thinking using text. "Making that heading has forced us to dig into the text," Hess said.

The teacher can then ask for all the agreed-upon headings and pair different groups together so that four students have to discuss their headings and come to consensus on the single best representation of the main ideas. "When you walk around and listen, what the kids are talking about is the text," Hess said. At the end, the teacher might have groups present or even have the whole class vote on their favorite heading. And individually students can reflect on the process they went through, how the heading helps them understand the reading, and how it helps them answer the driving question of the unit.

Hess is the first to admit that this strategy could easily be done with paper and pencil. The only real affordance of the technology is the ability to change the heading multiple times in a clean way. But it does help teachers see how to bring dialogue and discussion into the classroom, even when students are reading on the computer, and it has achieved the goal of slowing down reading. When students practice this method they may internalize it as well and start looking for the main idea in each paragraph as they read.

"Part of it is getting kids to be thinking about why they are reading something," Hess said. Often kids will read an entire paragraph, understand all the words in it, but never slow down to make meaning or look for main ideas. This basic reading strategy forces them to do so. Once students can identify the main idea of a reading, the next task is to understand the flow of the ideas and to connect concepts.

The "Document outline" tool in Google Docs can be an easy and effective way to ask students to pick out evidence that supports the main ideas they've found. When this tool is turned on, students can write a heading for the paragraph or group of paragraphs and select "Heading 1" from the drop-down menu. When they come across a sentence or phrase that represents evidence supporting that main idea, they summarize it and label it "Heading 2."

Meanwhile, along the side of the Google Doc an outline will automatically populate with main ideas in Heading 1 and supporting evidence nested below in Heading 2. At the end, the whole essay is outlined and can be "exported to table of contents," which will put it at the top of the document, where it can be used as a jumping-off point for writing.

The technology didn't do any of the thinking for students, but in this case the software helped build an outline as students discuss and winnow down their evidence, and their work has been conveniently saved in an easy-to-review manner. That makes initiating writing -- often hard for students -- much easier. And the headings in the outline are links that automatically skip to the part of the text where students inserted that heading. "You've created an active document," Hess said.

Even better in Hess' mind, when a teacher sees an outline like this he or she can easily tell if the student understood the reading. To create the outline students have to comprehend the text; decoding isn't enough. Hess says he uses this strategy all the time when reading documents for his own work because it's useful, not just a tedious exercise to force kids to slow down.

If a school or teacher isn't using Google Docs, a similar type of "talking to the text" can be achieved using Diigo, which also allows users to share marked-up documents with one another that include comments or highlights.
HIGHLIGHTING STRATEGY
Students have been highlighting print texts for a long time, but anyone who has picked up an old copy of a high school text knows that sometimes the various highlights can get confusing. Teachers sometimes try to organize students by having them highlight different concepts in different colors, but the text can end up quite messy and hard to read after all that highlighting.

Hess worked with a student to improve on a "highlighter tool," Google Doc add-on that the student created in his computer science class. The tool lets users create individualized highlighters in different colors. So, for example, all the text that supports "Argument #1" might be in red, while the evidence in "Argument #2" might be in green, and so on. The highlights can be exported by color, which creates a table with all the ideas. Hess often suggests that students then add another column to the highlighter table, where they can write summaries of everything in that highlighted category.

"It helps them discern between different things, and secondly, you've asked them to summarize what they've done," Hess said. That provides good reflection and consolidation of the information they just picked out. Since some kids have difficulty prioritizing what to highlight, a teacher could limit the number of items for each color.

In this case, the highlighting strategy is made much easier and more effective because it is digital. The various colors are labeled so the student doesn't need a key to decipher highlights and all the information can be exported in one table, rather than having to sift back through the entire article.

Hess warns that many of these strategies should first be taught using a text that isn't a difficult cognitive lift for students so they can learn the reading strategy and the digital tools without also having to puzzle their way through a difficult text. A new tech tool and a new learning challenge at the same time are a recipe for frustration.

While these strategies take time, they also get students deeply engaged with texts that may be difficult for them. Digital tools that modify articles for different reading levels, like Newsela, have a time and a place -- like getting students on the same page about a topic so they can debate -- but there are drawbacks to offering students only texts at their level.

"If you are constantly bringing it down, you lose some of the richness," Hess said. And challenging texts that force students to struggle also help them grow. "You can have someone reading a very complex text if you can scaffold it," Hess said.
TEACHER REACTIONS
Evelyn Cervantes is an eighth-grade social studies teacher at Bret Harte Middle School in San Jose, California. Although located in the heart of Silicon Valley, the school only has a few laptop carts that all the teachers share. Cervantes knows many of her students are online at home a lot and she wants to make sure the lower-income students the school also serves are learning good digital skills when at school. In the past she experimented with showing videos in class and using a polling app, but wasn't very impressed with how those tools impacted learning for her students.

"I felt like it was very much about giving information to the kids, so more delivery of information, and not much beyond that," Cervantes said. She has been pushing herself to use some of the strategies Hess taught her and likes the way they require students to engage deeply with text. She's tired of students copying and pasting text without doing any analysis.

"The strategies make it so that students have to slow down and analyze what they're reading," Cervantes said. She also noticed that when kids had their own computers they often didn't really engage in dialogue when they were asked to share with a partner. Instead, they would merely share their screens. In response she halved the number of computers in the room, so pairs of students would have to share. After that modification she started to see much more robust dialogue.

Cervantes says although many of the strategies Hess taught her could be done on paper, she likes using Google Docs because the outlines and annotations students create during class can easily become their notes. She can review them and return them quickly, touching on common themes or helping to point out holes in the thinking of the class.

Hess emphasizes that all these digital reading tools must be used within the context of bigger, interesting questions, or else the strategies just become a list of steps. While Socratic seminars can take a lot of preparation, students are identifying main ideas, categorizing evidence and highlighting important passages in the service of an argument that they care about, which makes the whole process more meaningful.

A New Yorker article dedicated to the question of whether students read as deeply on digital devices as in print focuses on the work of Maryanne Wolf, as well as others studying the space. Several studies found the decrease in comprehension on digital devices was more due to distractions on the internet than to the medium itself. Perhaps self-control is among the key skills to teach students expected to read more online.

In the article, Maria Konnikova ends on a hopeful note:

"Wolf is optimistic that we can learn to navigate online reading just as deeply as we once did print-if we go about it with the necessary thoughtfulness. In a new study, the introduction of an interactive annotation component helped improve comprehension and reading strategy use in a group of fifth graders. It turns out that they could read deeply. They just had to be taught how."

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Strategies to Help Students 'Go Deep' When Reading Digitally | KQED

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Teachers are finding that when they explicitly teach deep reading strategies geared to digital media, students can access and comprehend complex texts.

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The Myth of Average:  Todd Rose at TEDxSonomaCounty

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Original Thinkers

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The surprising habits of original thinkers

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How do creative people come up with great ideas? Organizational psychologist Adam Grant studies “originals”: thinkers who dream up new ideas and take action to put them into the world. In this talk, learn three unexpected habits of originals -- including embracing failure. “The greatest originals are the ones who fail the most, because they’re the ones who try the most,” Grant says. “You need a lot of bad ideas in order to get a few good ones.”

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Why ‘Unlearning’ Old Habits Is An Essential Step For Innovation | KQED

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Educators at a school near Boston is making the effort to unlearn old habits and perspectives that get in the way of more effective solutions.

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High school English teacher Michael Godsey's favorite work by William Shakespeare is Hamlet. But a few years ago, he stopped teaching his students about the centuries-old classic in favor of a story that was unfolding in the fall of 2014: Serial, the podcast.

The story of Adnan Syed, Hae Min Lee and the community at Woodlawn High School captivated podcast listeners around the world, including Godsey. The story was so engaging, he made listening to Serial in real time an assignment for his students and eventually made podcasts a regular part of his English class. He also teaches with episodes of This American Life, RadioLab and Serial Season 2 that cover subjects relevant to the lives of students.

When he first started teaching with podcasts, students were applying English Language Arts critical thinking skills to podcast episodes, much like they would after reading a book. However, the more he taught with podcasts, he began to discover that his students were learning in ways he hadn't anticipated.

Godsey developed lesson plans for teaching with podcasts and started hearing from teachers around the country about how podcasts were getting students excited about learning again.

Hear from Michael Godsey and his students on the latest episode of the MindShift Podcast. Find out how he uses podcasts in the classroom and how his students were transformed by the experience. Find us on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, NPR One, , or wherever you get your podcasts.

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How Listening to Podcasts Helps Students Read and Learn | KQED

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High school English teacher Michael Godsey's favorite work by William Shakespeare is Hamlet. But a few years ago, he stopped teaching his students about the centuries-old classic in favor of a story that was unfolding in the fall of 2014: Serial, the podcast.

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Gaming can make a better world | Jane McGonigal

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http://katienovakudl.com/million-dollar-question-what-does-udl-look-like/

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I really struggle when someone asks me, "What does UDL look like?" It is not because I don't know the answer. It's because I don't know what it looks like for YOU. As the brilliant Dr. Liz Berquist explains in UDL: Moving from Exploration to Integration ,

"Because the implementation of UDL is variable and unique - in this sense it is a model of UDL itself. UDL looks different in every learning environment, just as it looks different in every school, district, and state. Although there are patterns to be found in this variability, there is no right way to implement the UDL framework."

Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is not just a framework for curriculum design. It is a belief that all students are capable of learning and that instructional methods, when implemented intentionally, can help all students succeed.

So, maybe the better question to ask is, "What are the patterns of UDL?"

To put it simply, when teachers implement UDL, students have choices. And those choices allow all students to access rigorous, standards-based curriculum. What kind of choices? There are four interrelated components of a UDL curriculum and when implemented well, students have choice in all four areas. First, let's unpack those four areas.

Four Components of a UDL Curriculum

Goals

As CAST notes, "within the UDL framework, goals themselves are articulated in a way that acknowledges learner variability and differentiates goals from means." Oftentimes, teachers create goals that include embedded methods. For example, "All students will learn how to write arguments by giving a persuasive speech about which new club belongs in our school." When teachers can step back and see the goal, "Write arguments," they could provide numerous choices for students to achieve that goal that doesn't require all students to stand up in class and read a speech about a club. Ask yourself this: Is the standard actually requiring that students all do the exact same thing in the same way? (The answer is always no!)

Methods

Methods are the instructional decisions, approaches, procedures, or routines that expert teachers use to accelerate or enhance learning. Oftentimes, however, all students are expected to follow the same procedures in how they learn or express their knowledge (read a short blog on UDL and the Death of Lecturing ).

Materials

Materials are usually seen as the media used to present learning content and what the learner uses to demonstrate knowledge, but oftentimes, the same materials are provided to all students. I call this "packet syndrome." CAST calls it, "one-size-fits-all," teaching and learning.

Assessments

Assessments are an expression of student learning. When designing assessments, it's critical that teachers consider exactly what students need to know and do and then strip away any specific methods that have been tied to the goal. Essentially, when reviewing your standards, you will ask yourself, "How will students provide evidence that they met the goal? Can they have choices?"

Translating the UDL Principles into Choice

Now that you have a better sense of the types of choices you're looking for, you may still be wondering how each of the principles of UDL translates into choices for students. The following may be helpful.

Engagement

Students are engaged in authentic, relevant learning opportunities.

What does this look like?

There is a clear culture that values creativity, risk-taking, growth mindset and the fact that there are many ways to arrive at the same destination but that the journey is different for everyone.

A daily agenda or checklist is provided to help students monitor their progress.

Classroom arrangement is set up for minimal distractions.

Students are allowed to work collaboratively. Teachers may facilitate Paideia seminars, Socratic circles, etc...

Engaging choices for assignments: simulations, mock interviews, poetry slams, blogs, debates, etc... are offered regularly if not daily.

Students have an opportunity to personalize their goals. For example, if students are writing arguments, they are all writing about topics of interest to them, exploring the resources that work for them, and express what they know with an authentic product.

Rich, mastery-oriented feedback is provided from teachers and peers consistently - including feedback from students to teachers so they can become an integral part of the design and delivery of their own instruction.

There are many opportunities for students to self-assess their progress, make changes if necessary, and get feedback on how to continue to work toward their goals so they can make better decisions about methods and materials in the future.

Teachers are monitoring the classroom to keep students on task, helping them stay organized and prevent frustration, but students also collaborate to push each other to continue to apply effort and persistence.

Representation

Content and skills are presented in multiple ways and students have a choice about which methods and materials to use to reach the goal.

What does this look like?

Learning objectives or standards are posted and visible to students so they know what the ultimate goal is. Teacher explains the standard to students and its rationale. All students could tell an observer the goal of the lesson.

More than one presentation method is apparent and students are accessing different experiences: lecture, reading text, audio, video, reciprocal teaching. If there is one predominant presentation method, there are additional representations embedded (i.e, teachers read directions while projecting them with a document camera, or students watch a video with closed captioning.)

Teachers pre-teach vocabulary and activate prior knowledge. May use Frayer models, vocabulary tables, images etc...

Teachers provide opportunities or stations where students can learn information on their own (i.e, read a text, view a video, listen to audio, work in a collaborative group, etc...)

Teachers use Powerpoint, Prezi, Glogster, the online textbook, Youtube, or other presentation software to present content. This integrates visuals, audio, and text.

Teacher uses diagrams, charts, and images throughout the lesson. Does not only rely on text.

Allows students to access technology (IPads, Nooks, etc...) so they can customize the display of information.

As students read or do research, teachers remind them to highlight patterns, critical features, and/or big ideas. Not just reading text without scaffolds.

Model note-taking while presenting information (i.e, Cornell notes or slotted notes).

Teachers use some sort of a system like Google Classroom or a Learning Management System (LMS) like Canvas to display and deliver classroom content and activities so that it is available both in class and out of class so that students are able to access the information whenever they need or want it. This access will be available to parents as well.

Expression

Students are provided with choice and/or scaffolding when expressing their knowledge in formative and summative assessments.

What does this look like?

Not all students are completing the same assessments in the same way (but it's because they made the decision - not just the teacher). For example, if all students are asked to solve an equation, students may have the choice of using math reference sheets, manipulatives, calculators, scratch paper, in small groups, with a partner, etc....If students are working toward a written task, they may have the choice of writing on paper, using a device, accessing a graphic organizer, exemplar, rubric, etc...

When teaching specific methods, such as solving an algebraic equation or writing an essay, teacher provides the following: work exemplars, rubrics, frequent mastery-oriented feedback, and all necessary resources and materials necessary to complete assignment (i.e, textbooks, pencils, paper.) but not all students have to use the same methods or materials. It's up to them to self-reflect and create strategies that will allow them to meet the goal.

Teachers may offer engaging choices for assessments, so students can express their knowledge or skills in many different ways: simulations, mock interviews, poetry slams, blogs, debates, essays, multimedia presentations, etc...

Teachers use think-pair-share, private think time, partner tasks, exit tickets or other dipsticking methods so all students are assessed daily.

Teachers have multiple methods of assessing student knowledge when working toward content standards. May be a combination of the following: debates, Socratic circles, essays, objective tests, projects, skits, lab reports, journals, etc...

UDL in Action

Check out the following videos and consider how these teachers provide students with choices by using the UDL Guidelines. Remember, you don't have to do what these teachers do to implement UDL, but you will see that there are patterns between them.

In UDL-topia, students have choices in goals, methods, materials and assessments, and these choices are both engaging and accessible. But early UDL implementation may be only focused on providing choices in one or more areas, so when you're looking for the UDL principles in action, you may see glimpses in a class that is not yet universally designed for all learners to be able to personalize their learning experience in meaningful ways. So, how do you move from point A to point B? As with all things UDL, you need to personalize that process for you and your students, and that starts with asking them for their feedback.

In UDL, student voice is optimized. Strong UDL practice starts with collaborating with students to ask students what they need to be successful. David Rose once said,
"Teaching, at its core, is emotional work."
I truly believe that students know what they need to be successful and that everything that they need to follow their passion and achieve their dreams is inside of them. We as educators have a tremendous opportunity to learn more about our teaching from our students if we are open and ask the right questions and listen to their answers.

So, here is my official answer, if all students are working toward the same rigorous standards but making choices that allow them to honor their strengths, challenge themselves and follow their passions, then that's what UDL looks like.

Dive deeper into UDL. Explore our range of online courses, all universally designed.
Editor's Note: This post has been updated from its original publication.

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Million Dollar Question: What Does UDL Look Like?

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I really struggle when someone asks me, "What does UDL look like?" It is not because I don't know the answer. It's because I don't know what it looks like for YOU. As the brilliant Dr. Liz Berquist explains in UDL: Moving from Exploration to Integration , "Because the implementation of UDL is variable and unique - in this sense it is a model of UDL itself.

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Learning centers diversify student experience, encourage student voice, leverage available resources, and give teachers built-in opportunities for formative assessment and critical one-on-one conversations.

Photo credit: ITU Picturesl via flickr (CC BY 2.0)

The sound of activity echoes throughout the classroom. I find myself engaged in a small-group conversation around the igneous rocks that the students in this group are holding. Remembering that shortly before that conversation I'd been about to redirect some students, I quickly scan the room searching for off-task behavior. To my delight, I find that a wide array of learning is taking place. In one corner, I see students watching a video and typing online reflections. In the other corner, I see students comparing their drawings on the rock cycle. This is what a good day built on learning centers looks like.

As teachers strive to find ways of promoting key success skills while making use of limited resources, learning centers can be an invaluable tool in the secondary classroom. In addition, learning centers provide time-strapped teachers with opportunities for meaningful formative assessment that helps drive the classroom instruction. What are some strategies that secondary teachers can use to successfully launch learning centers in their classrooms?

Use a Roadmap

Developing a one-page roadmap that outlines the station progression is a must. My co-teachers Bob Wandel and Nate Alkire have found that including a "check-off" space for a teacher signature or stamp of approval brings higher levels of accountability. In fact, our middle school students love the traditional stamp or sticker. In addition, we include items such as learning target questions or need to knows if we are in the middle of a project.
Image credit: Ted Malefyt
Leverage Your Resources

As teachers bring authenticity into the classroom, the resources and materials needed become more complex and thus more expensive. Learning centers can ease some of the financial concerns by integrating a lab experience as a center. For example, a teacher may not have enough stereo microscopes in the classroom for each pair of students. By creating a station or two that uses the microscopes, momentum can be maintained. In other situations, limiting the amount of resources can lessen the burden on the teacher. For example, instead of having eight paint stations set up around the room, a single station can eliminate a big mess! In these situations, the cleanup and setup times are reduced, freeing up precious time to meet the demands of the day.

Diversify the Experience
Image credit: Ted Malefyt
Here is your chance to try a variety of methods for helping students uncover the critical content that your learning centers are geared toward. Feel confident in trying different activities, labs, and experiences that you typically have shied away from. Think about how you can add drawing, technology, physical movement, reading, reflecting, observing, graphing, etc. In addition to finding a variety of methods, feel free to diversify where the experience is taking place as well. The bottom line is that many students like learning in different ways, and teachers like safe environments to try new things.

Build in Wild Card Time

Building a culture of voice and choice while providing opportunities to develop self-management skills doesn't happen overnight. By building in wild card time, you allow for students to manage relevant items related to the learning centers. In all situations, wild card time can provide the structure to support the students who want a little more and those who need to catch up. In cases where learning centers are in the middle of a project, wild card time can provide students a valuable opportunity to build their ideas based on what they are learning in the centers. Sometimes the management of project-based learning requires the space for students to carry out simple tasks like email or phone calls.

Carry a Clipboard
Image credit: Ted Malefyt
Sometimes simplicity is the best option! Carry a clipboard with the class list formatted in a spreadsheet. Using this spreadsheet, you have your own record of which student is meeting your expectations and who needs extra help. As formative assessment takes place, quickly document with simple checkmarks. This documentation can provide really important data and information that will inform your next steps.

Search Out One-on-One Conversations

One of the hidden secrets of learning centers is your ability to have the critical one-on-one conversations that our middle and high school students need. Relationships are incredibly important, and we need to find ways that will allow for them to happen. By building in opportunities for more meaningful conversations, we can gain a better understanding of our students in the context of our classroom. Sometimes the simple conversation is what moves the student forward.

The possibilities are endless when we continue to build ideas and structures that support high-quality teaching and learning. Learning centers are a tool that we can all leverage. What are some learning center strategies that you can share?

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Learning Centers in the Secondary Classroom

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Learning centers diversify student experience, encourage student voice, leverage available resources, and give teachers built-in opportunities for formative assessment and critical one-on-one conversations. Photo credit: ITU Picturesl via flickr (CC BY 2.0) The sound of activity echoes throughout the classroom. I find myself engaged in a small-group conversation around the igneous rocks that the students in this group are holding.

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The mysterious workings of the adolescent brain

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Sarah-Jayne Blakemore: The mysterious workings of the adolescent brain

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Why do teenagers seem so much more impulsive, so much less self-aware than grown-ups? Cognitive neuroscientist Sarah-Jayne Blakemore compares the prefrontal cortex in adolescents to that of adults, to show us how typically "teenage" behavior is caused by the growing and developing brain.

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http://udltheorypractice.cast.org/
(requires free account)

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One Gut Check and Four Steps Students Can Apply to Fact-Check Information | KQED

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A new approach seeks to equip university students with the tools of fact-checkers.

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If you want to understand what Jacob Brubert's Ph.D. in biomedical engineering was all about, you just need to watch him and his friends dance. To explain the science of heart valve bioengineering, Brubert's crew, from the University of Cambridge, used tap dance, salsa, circus, and what can only be described as a cow doing the worm. And in the final scene, the group depicts the ugly truth about Ph.D. research: Sometimes it just doesn't work. A dancing scientist laments "Whyyyyy ...?" as the experiment-and the entire dance-falls apart.

The spectacle put Brubert over the top in this year's Dance Your Ph.D., Science's annual contest that challenges researchers to explain their research in the form of a dance. He wins $1000 for his effort and a trip to Boston next year for a screening and talk at the AAAS annual meeting. (AAAS is the publisher of Science.)

It wasn't all experimental agony this year. Below are winners in the other categories. They each win $500.

Biology

Carla Brown at the University of Glasgow in the United Kingdom, focused on a problem created by one of the great successes of science: the genetic spread of antibiotic resistance.

Social Sciences

Margaret Danilovich at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, Illinois, proposes a solution to the problem of deteriorating physical fitness in aging populations. She used popping to explore her subject.

Chemistry

Evgeny Sogorin, stuck with a fundamental science problem at the heart of his Ph.D. at the Institute of Protein Research in Moscow. Using an elaborate ballroom dance, he focused on the mystery of what prevents ribosomes from "jamming up" as they move along RNA strands expressing genes.

People's Choice

And what was your favorite? The internet has spoken. The People's Choice Award goes to Emmanuelle Alaluf for a dance based on her biomedical Ph.D. research at the Free University of Brussels. You could read her papers about myeloid-derived heme oxygenase-1 and cancer-or you can watch her stunning ballet.

Think you've got what it takes to dance your Ph.D.? Next year is the 10th anniversary! Don't be intimidated, says Brubert, who is now at the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. All it took was several weekends and "some very willing friends" to win the contest. "My adviser thought I was crazy, but he was supportive."
Contest judges: Alexa Meade Weidong Yang Jonathan Eisen Suzanne Walsh
and members of the Berkeley Institute for Data Science
For more information on this contest, visit our Dance Your Ph.D. Contest page.

doi:10.1126/science.aal0305

John is a former contributing correspondent for Science.

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And the winner of this year's Dance Your Ph.D. contest is ...

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If you want to understand what Jacob Brubert's Ph.D. in biomedical engineering was all about, you just need to watch him and his friends dance. To explain the science of heart valve bioengineering, Brubert's crew, from the University of Cambridge, used tap dance, salsa, circus, and what can only be described as a cow doing the worm.

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National Center on Universal Design for Learning

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Dr Mary Helen Immordino-Yang 'We feel, therefore we learn' at Mind & Its Potential 2011

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For more information visit http://www.mindanditspotential.com.au/. Also check out our Happy & Well blog http://www.happyandwell.com.au/ and subscribe to our newsletter at http://tinyurl.com/lnkcr76. We feel, therefore we learn: the neuroscience of social emotion * What is emotion, and why do we have it? * Teaching and learning with the brain in mind * How do our feelings impact on learning?

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Learning Myths vs. Learning Facts - The Effortful Educator

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*The following article originally posted on the American Psychological Association’s Psych Learning Curve website on July 17, 2017: http://psychlearningcurve.org/learning-myths-vs-learning-facts/ Unless you’ve been under a rock, avoiding the most infamous jargon of education, you’ve heard the term…