Tag: teaching

Bloom’s Taxonomy: A Primer

A year or two ago I was having a conversation with someone who had been an educator for decades. I tossed out a passing reference to Bloom’s Taxonomy and they said, “What’s that?”  I was astonished.  I consider this to be an extremely foundational principle for any educator to understand and use. Bloom’s Taxonomy is

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Specifications Grading: My Experience

Early in the summer of 2020, I discovered the concept of specifications (or spec) grading.  I bought the book, which I reviewed earlier this week.  You need to read that book review to understand this post. I decided to apply spec grading to all three classes I was teaching in the fall: a 1-credit Intro

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Book Review: Specifications Grading

I was reading a news article at the Chronicle of Higher Ed a few weeks ago about remote teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic.  There was a throw-away line under a subheading “High-stakes assessments are overrated” about using ungrading or specifications grading.  I had never heard of either of these, so followed the links provided about

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Giving Effective Feedback to Interns & Residents

This post was by request from an experienced clinician who is seeking more tips to improve giving feedback to advanced clinicians-in-training.  I don’t really have all the answers, but here are some ideas I hope will help. First, effective feedback has three fundamental requirements: it has to be timely, it has to be specific, and

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The Financial Implications of Private Practice vs. Academia

(This post was originally written as a guest post for Richer Life DVM. If you haven’t read her blog, you should. It’s a great resource about finances for veterinarians. And if you didn’t read it there first, it’s new to you!) In discussions among academic veterinarians attempting to recruit a new faculty member, salary is

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Top 5 Reason to Not Do an Internship

I make no secret of the fact that I think most new graduates are better off doing an internship than not.  However, there are some circumstances where I think an individual should NOT do an internship. 1) You have family obligations. Your family has put you through vet school, suffered through you not being there

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Book Review: Teach Students How to Learn

I acquired Teach Students How to Learn: Strategies You Can Incorporate Into Any Course to Improve Student Metacognition, Study Skills, and Motivation by Saundra Yancy McGuire in a burst of purchasing designed to improve my own pedagogical approach.  It was recommended to me by someone I feel is a good educator, and then it sat

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