Browse our Products

Magna 20 Minute Mentor programs are intensive—but brief—programs designed to help you address your everyday teaching challenges. Fast, focused and on-demand, they're great resources to have on hand at the departmental or institutional level. Each program cuts to the point, answering one critical question and offering specific strategies you can start using right away at your university.

Blended learning is one of the most talked about trends in higher education today, with a documented ability to improve student performance more than either face-to-face instruction or online technology can independently. Learn how you can design a course making the best of both worlds in this new 20 Minute Mentor Blended Learning 4-pack.

In this pointed and practical 20 Minute Mentor, higher education presenter Barry Dahl, Ph.D., offers a quick overview of the use of texting in an academic setting, concerns some have expressed about text messaging, and a step-by-step guide to practicing safe texting, especially for online teaching.

In this Magna 20 Minute Mentor, you’ll explore what Facebook does well and how you can harness social media to support face-to-face and e-learning objectives for your students.

Many educators believe that service-learning can be a valuable practice … for other educators. But they’re sometimes at a loss to understand how it can be incorporated into their own disciplines. In this Magna 20 Minute Mentor, we show you what service-learning can add to your courses and provide concrete implementation strategies.

While making our lives easier, technology has also provided a number of new challenges in the classroom–particularly with cell phones, laptops and social networking sites. You need to work with Millennials more effectively on the use of cell phones, laptops and Facebook. Our program offers specific strategies on effectively managing when, where and how these tools are related to classroom learning.

Document sharing software is a proven and effective way to facilitate group projects. With capabilities that allow for shared review, editing and other tasks, document sharing improves collaborative learning by making interaction more streamlined, efficient and convenient. It helps accelerate learning and makes group work more meaningful. Learn how to use free programs and setup group projects with this seminar.

We show you how to make the most of that first meeting with your students. Teaching and learning depend on building and sustaining student interest and strong course openings get it all started. You learn to draft your own “enthusiasm statement” to use in your own courses to draw students into the subject matter.

To effectively teach and assess student performance, as well as to help students learn at an optimal level, it is important that learning goals be as clear as possible. Linda Suskie will show you a variety of ways to clarify learning goals that may be vague or unclear.

When students see a clear link between their concerns and your course content, teaching and learning improve. The trick is establishing those connections. We show you how to get students to make a personal investment in their learning – no matter how large or small your class may be.

Active learning is the name of the game in higher education today, but no matter how much emphasis your curriculum places on engaging students, sometimes you still have to disseminate information. Based on research in cognitive and educational psychology, and integrating best practices from business and teaching theories, this fast and focused session offers you the insights you need to upgrade your teaching and the practical guidance to help you get started.

Committed educators are always looking for dynamic ways to grab and hold their students’ attention, but we do more than list in-class activities. This practical and focused session is grounded in learning theory, such as idea-based, brain-based and situated learning, to give you a framework for ongoing exploration and innovation.

Teaching online requires shifts in your approach. This program gives you the instructional and logistical perspectives to succeed in the virtual classroom. Starting with a clarification of terms, you’ll see how the synchronous environment of the online classroom lends itself to using other media to draw students in.

Adapting to life on campus can be difficult for student veterans. Learn practical tips on how you can support student veterans in their return to civilian life. These techniques include incorporating service-learning and team activities to draw on student veterans’ strengths and reduce their social isolation.

Developing critical thinking skills is the real business of higher education – teaching students to analyze and dissect every idea, ruminate about it, and arrive at thoughtful, informed opinions. This fast, focused program will show you how to incorporate active learning components into every aspect of your courses, from lectures to labs, from writing assignments to tests.

Lesson planning is a complex process that can take hours and hours of your time. You need to answer the question, “What are my students going to learn today?” Mary Clement, Ed.D.,  has mastered the lesson planning process and developed a four-step plan that simplifies how you plan and creates even stronger, more engaging lessons.

Poster sessions are a common teaching tool for professional meetings and conference presentations.  They can also be an extremely effective group assignment in the classroom environment. Students learn how to research, create, and explain their poster for a transformative learning experience.  Learn how to successfully implement group poster sessions into your classroom.

Learning and using names is probably the simplest, most direct way for you as a teacher to demonstrate interest in your students. By learning and using your students’ names, you succeed in building trust, increasing teacher-student rapport, and making it more likely that students will participate in class discussion—all factors that can contribute to student academic success. We help you understand the benefits of learning and using students’ names and will present specific techniques to help.

Exams.docx Learn how you can transform exams into enhanced opportunities for student learning with practical solutions to the three core problems with exams today. Making exams better suit your learning goals requires student participation at every step of the process. Your presenter, Maryellen Weimer, Ph.D., shares real-world, tested guidelines for integrating student input.

Without deep learning, your students can come away from courses with misunderstandings and oversimplified views of complex issues. In this Magna 20-minute Mentor you learn how the process of critical reflection is a reliable way to deepen the learning experience.